The tidal wave of landfills, reality football shows, and the seemingly bottomless pit of sports industry content means that the cut is harder than ever, especially for single-institution films that can’t rely on riding some kind of wave of Triumph tournament nostalgia. Access isn’t enough; you really need a good story, and this account of Brighton & Hove Albion’s rise, fall, and rise again—while “authorized” out the wazoo—certainly achieved that.
The high-profile exploits of the late 1970s and early 1980s may seem like ancient history—and are presented here as such—but their 1983 FA Cup final defeat by Manchester United marked the beginning of a prolonged spell in the Wilderness for Brighton’s Home. (Of the two executives cast as bad guys, David Bellotti, former MP and club CEO, is no longer with us, but Bill Archer, DIY retail magnate and later Brighton Chair, is still around, so the film is cautiously biased towards the latter.)
The format hits all the conventional beats, including testimonies from ardent fans (celebrities and normies), backroom staff, well-informed journalists, and hagiographic nude interviews with the two executives who stepped into the breach, Dick Knight and Tony Bloom. Some of the details are revealing: if Brighton, then the lowest division, had lost their relegation battle in 1997 without a stadium, they likely wouldn’t have failed to gain admission to the non-league structure and thus been forced to disband—then, in that final game against Hereford United, the club was truly fighting for its life. However, the team got the draw they needed (sending Hereford down) and began the long, slow road to recovery.
It’s not explicitly stated here, but there’s a case to be made that, ironically, the Goldstone debacle may have been the club’s creation; the issue became a lightning rod for fan activism and dissent, generating sympathy throughout the game, provoking the team to life on the pitch, and sparking the march through the divisions. There certainly seems to be a lot of goodwill for “the Albion,” as everyone calls them, with many former players and managers happy to sit down and chat with the camera. Bloom, in particular, comes across well, his fannish enthusiasm driving the fervent narration—though his steeliness comes out when he justifies giving the boot to popular manager Chris Hughton, whose yeoman service was rewarded with the sack in 2019 after leading the club to the promised Premier League land two years earlier.
The film’s relentlessly celebratory tone—common to all productions of this kind—ultimately becomes a bit of a drawback. While the club’s story is certainly an epic for the ages, the inherent partisanship leads to some awkward moments—particularly regarding Gillingham, who rescued a desperate Brighton with a two-year share—and one or two comments from the fans are a bit… well… old-school. I’d also be interested to hear a bit more detail about Bloom’s spectacularly successful hiring practices; almost all of the club’s managers (with the unfortunate exception of Sami Hyypiä) have turned out to be brilliant appointments. Regardless, there’s a lot to like here, a truly grounded success story that can cheer up even the most grumpy fan of the game.
