Seagull on the wing
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Who is Steve Gritt?
- Thread starter swindonseagull
- Start date
Wasn't a poor reception at all - he got MASSES of applause.....
Bwian
Kiss my (_!_)
- Jul 14, 2003
- 15,898
He got a great reception from the halfway line East Stand Library section-to the point where we were singing the 'He's got no hair and we don't care' song before anybody else did.
Medwayseagull
JCB
It is a shame that thousands of others preferred to queue for a half time drink and throw it down their throats rather than listen to what he had to say.
Willy Dangle
New member
- Aug 31, 2011
- 3,551
Michael Owens agent.
**warning** VERY long post follows:
It is a transcript of an interview I did with Steve Gritt in 2002. Essential reading for anybody who:
(i) wants to know the Steve Gritt / BHA story
(ii) wishes to re-live an amazing period in our club's history
(iii) is having trouble getting to sleep.
Bry.
A More Civilised Place To Be
When Brighton and Millwall emerge from the dressing rooms at 2.55pm on 22nd February 2003 they will be greeted by what will probably be the biggest ovation of the season. But for once the cheers from the home support ringing out across the wooded slopes of Withdean won’t be reserved exclusively for the Albion. Because making his way across the pitch to the visitor’s dugout will be a wiry, track-suited figure who’ll always command a special place in the history of this club: Millwall’s Assistant Manager, Albion Legend and all round top bloke Steve Gritt will be back in town.
$$$$$$$$ $$$$$ asks him if he’s relishing his day at the seaside.
“Yeah - it’s going be a strange experience,” says Steve, chuckling quietly to himself. “Even though we’ve played Brighton recently in cup competitions I wasn’t directly involved myself. But now I’m working with the first team, and I’m really looking forward to it.”
Steve pauses for a half a second. “All the vociferous people…” he asks with a smile, “…they’re in that big stand on the far side aren’t they?”
It’s late on a Friday afternoon in early July, and a thin veil of soft, grey drizzle is wafting across Millwall's south London training complex. Pre-season sprints have finished for the day and angry looking storm clouds loom menacingly over Bromley, completely blotting out the view of Crystal Palace on the horizon; maybe the weather’s not so bad after all…
Steve and I sit in his first floor office overlooking the deserted practice pitches. A cardboard box stuffed full of brand new Mitre footballs props open the door and one of those magnetic tactic planner thingies is screwed to the far wall – all in all it’s definitely a proper football coach’s room. In the corner of the office a television is tuned into coverage of the Wimbledon men’s semi final, and every so often my questions are punctuated by brief bursts of polite applause from SW19. This is my first attempt at interviewing, and I’m grateful for the support.
Anyway – back to business: I’ve come to talk to the man who saved the Seagulls. In December 1996 Steve Gritt accepted what the press were dubbing the worst job in football and to be honest it wasn’t difficult to see why. Brighton & Hove Albion were holed below the waterline and sinking fast. The club had been anchored to the foot of the Third Division since early October and hadn’t won at home since beating Scarborough 3-2 at the beginning of September. A few short weeks prior to Gritt’s arrival the last ever FA Cup tie to be staged at the Goldstone ended in numbing humiliation as mighty Sudbury Town became the second non-league outfit in three years to dump Brighton out of the competition in the first round. And that was just the good news: with the ground sold to property developers and no credible alternative in the pipeline the club was homeless and broke. A stench of decay pervaded everything about the Goldstone and with the board and the supporters locked in a bitter war, the FA were seemingly unwilling or unable to intervene.
Yet today, somehow, just five short seasons on, Archer and Belloti are gone, the club is applying for planning permission for an extension to the trophy cabinet and we’re back in Brighton, playing in Division One. Okay, so we still don’t have a permanent home, but when Steve Gritt walked into the club simply preserving our league status would have seemed like a gift from the Gods.
“What’s happened over the last four years is nothing to do with me,” points out Gritt, reluctant to take any of the credit. “That’s all down to Mickey and Peter.” And that maybe so, but the days when clubs dropped out of the league and then bounced straight back are long gone; anyone in any doubt about that just need look at the forthcoming attractions at Hereford United, Doncaster Rovers, Scarborough and Chester City. Had it not been for Steve Gritt and his never say die spirit, the chances are we’d be contemplating a trip to Leigh RMI on October 26 instead of savouring the prospect of an away day at Selhurst Park. But did Steve really believe he could save us from the ultimate ignominy of sliding into the Conference?
“Absolutely,” he replies, without a moment’s hesitation. “I did. I seriously believed that we could do it. I had that amount of faith in my ability that I felt we had a genuine chance. I felt that if we could pick up two or three early results, then you never know where you can go from there. And obviously that first game,” he laughs, “…given the errr, reception I got before the match, I couldn’t have asked for a better start.”
Mmm - nothing personal, I mumble apologetically as we recall the volley of boos, whistles and catcalls that pierced the air as he was introduced to the 3’762 supporters who’d turned up that day.
”Yeah I realise that,” he replies, “but I thought, God if we don’t score soon who knows what sort of reception I’ll get at the end of the match. I look back now and have a good laugh about it all, but what I said at the time and what I still maintain to this day is that I was there simply to deal with the football and to give the fans some hope and a team that was having a go. Still – it was a very strange introduction, I must say.”
As it turned out Steve needn’t have worried. Miraculously the Albion went one up inside a matter of minutes and went on to run out comfortable winners against a benign Hull City side who obviously felt that it would have been impolite to intrude on the private tragedy being played out on the south coast. It finally ended 3-0, so what had Steve done differently?
“I don’t know really. I’d come in on the Thursday and let John Jackson take training. Then I came in on the Friday and took the players through my routine. Obviously it was quite a long session as it was my first game in charge. I needed to guide the squad; I needed to let them know what shape I wanted to play, how I wanted them to deal with free kicks and set pieces – that sort of thing. And you know - just walking off the training ground I could tell the players were up for it. It was a good sign.”
Another good sign was the rapport that Gritt was steadily developing with the supporters. Fans find it easy to warm to Gritt. He gives the impression that he cares about it as much as we do. It’s no coincidence that the largest contingent of non-Brighton supporters at Fans United were from Gritt’s previous club, Charlton Athletic.
“Yeah – I’d had feedback that they were going to bring a few,” smiles Gritt.
“My philosophy has always been to give everything my best shot and I think fans appreciate that. They see me put my lot in. They see me working as hard as I can. In fact I’ve probably calmed down a bit these days compared to how I was,” he laughs. “It’s just pure enjoyment. We go through the same emotions together. It’s always been the same.”
Over eight and a half thousand supporters of football packed the Goldstone for Fans United and a shell shocked Hartlepool were dispatched 5-0. The gap to the clubs above shrank a tad further and with the last ever game at the Goldstone rapidly approaching it seemed as if Brighton & Hove Albion FC - the team everybody had written off - might just have a chance. Suddenly the national media could sense the makings of a remarkable story beginning to unfold down on the Sussex coast. And the man at the centre of it had a name that was a gift for the headline writers.
“I had more exposure in those few months than at any other point in my entire career,” says Gritt. “But it was important that I kept the squad focused – that what we did as a team was no different to what we had been doing.”
He rifles around in the top draw of his desk and amazingly pulls out a wad of hand written papers entitled 1996 - 1997.
“Hmm … Cambridge away on the Saturday” says Steve, flicking through the pages. “One all. We should have won that: Maskell had a chance to seal it at the end. Look at this!” he suddenly exclaims, pointing at the pad. “I can’t believe it. I gave them two days off after that game.”
We were nearly there. The point at Cambridge had brought us within touching distance. With just two games to go Gritt had closed a yawning chasm of 11 points in mid-December to just 3 by the end of April. If the Albion beat Doncaster at home and Hereford lost away at Orient, it would be all square going into the final game of the season – away to Hereford.
“The players knew that there would be a huge crowd at the Goldstone that day, but they were very calm and relaxed – all I could do was just kept telling them that they still had nothing to lose.”
As Brighton tried to find a way past Doncaster Rovers news started to filter through from east London; Leyton Orient had taken the lead against Hereford. Suddenly, sixty eight minutes in, Stuart Storer reacted quickest to a rebound off the crossbar in front of the South Stand: one nil - the last and most important ever goal at the Goldstone.
By virtue of goal difference, the Albion had finally hauled themselves out of the basement. A draw next Saturday would guarantee safety and throughout the crowd of 11’341 the sense of overwhelming relief was mixed with an unwillingness to believe that this was really Goodbye Goldstone. As supporters surged onto the turf from every corner of the ground to stage one last pitch invasion Steve Gritt talked to the press in a cramped room below the West Stand.
“I had no idea about the Hereford score – not until we got back into changing room after the game. It was the strangest feeling in the world. I was doing the press conference and all I could hear was this constant bang bang banging. I had a bath, had a drink with the staff, and then I went back out onto the pitch at about six thirty, and there was nothing left. I’ve never seen a place ravaged like that place was that day. Everybody had taken their own seat and there were these huge holes in the pitch; but the biggest thing that surprised me was that the clocks had gone. Those huge clocks in the corners of the ground had just gone. They were massive. Jesus – I thought to myself, someone’s taken them too. I could imagine them walking down the Old Shoreham Road with these huge clocks on their backs – just amazing.”
So, did the Manager manage to bag a souvenir of his own to take away from the Goldstone?
“No. I felt it all belonged to the supporters. It was their day – it was their stadium. But I’ll tell you - it was the strangest feeling in the world. The thing is the following week I knew that occasionally we might want use the pitch – and I thought that’s scuppered that,” smiles Gritt. “Even during the week I’d be doing media interviews on the pitch about the final game and they’d be people coming through the gates with wheelbarrows and spades, digging up a couple of square metres of turf for their gardens.”
So for the first time since October 5th Brighton were off the bottom. The last game of the season would be a straight shoot out to decide who’d stay up and who’d go down. The Albion had never won at Hereford, but hey – not to worry; a draw would do. But the trouble was away draws had become collector’s items too – we’d only managed three all season. Yet in spite of that the spirit amongst the squad was buoyant.
“We felt optimistic going into that game - we had an idea that the crowd would work in our favour. We knew that we would be taking quite a few down there, but as it turned out I don’t think any of us envisaged that the support would be quite so tremendous. On the coach going to the ground there were cars full of Albion supporters absolutely everywhere. The driver stuck that song Things Can Only Get Better on the stereo and at that point I sensed that we all really believed we were going to do it.”
Things Can Only Get Better might not have been a bad choice for the half time music too; forty five minutes gone, one nil down and Brighton were creating nothing. Hereford had been bombing long balls into the Albion box and an attempted block by Kerry Mayo had cruelly looped over Mark Ormerod and nestled in the back of the Brighton net.
“Yeah - it wasn’t a great half time,” recalls Steve. “The first thing to do was to get to Kerry and tell him not to worry about the own goal. It happens in football. After that it was a question of asking them if they really wanted to play in the Conference, because at that point that’s exactly where we were headed. Then I put my calm head back on, tried to gee each of them up and sent them back out there.”
Half an hour to go and it was still Hereford to stay up and Brighton to go down and out. Gritt leant across, whispered something to his assistant Jeff Wood and 23 year old striker Robbie Reinelt is given the signal to start warming up. With fresh legs up front Brighton started to get more of the game and on 65 minutes a Craig Maskell shot smacked off the post and rebounded diagonally across the penalty area. Robbie Reinelt, (on for Paul McDonald), beat Ian Baird to the ball and stroked it into the far corner. One all, twenty-five agonizing minutes to go, and suddenly The Great Escape looked to be back on track.
“They didn’t have that board where the forth official shows how much time the ref has added in those days,” says Gritt. “I just kept on looking at my watch. It seemed to go on forever. I think it must have been about five to five by the time it finally finished. “
With official estimates that half of the crowd of eight and half thousand had come from Brighton (well exceeding the official allocation of 3’268), and the inevitable tension surrounding the fixture, dozens of riot police and dog handlers appeared from behind the stands and encircled the pitch. As Neil Barry blew for full time, the riot police were the first onto the pitch, quickly followed by the Hereford fans. The police stepped up in formation and formed a solid fluorescent yellow wall that Alan Hansen would be proud of across the half way line. On one side Brighton players and fans celebrated as if they had just won the league, whilst on the other side inconsolable Hereford players sank to their knees.
“I looked straight across to Graham Turner” (Hereford’s Director of Football), says Gritt “and their whole bench was in tears. There’s nothing you can say at a moment like that. But to be fair, Graham had a drink with me after the game and their Chairman Peter Hill came in and said some nice things too. For everything that had happened that day you have to remember that this was just a game of football.”
In six mad months between December ‘96 and May ‘97 Steve Gritt had achieved what everybody had been saying was impossible, yet he dismisses out of hand any notion that he should have been awarded the Manager of the Season title.
“I never wanted anything like that,” he says. “I just wanted to achieve my objectives for the club and for the supporters; that’s all I ever wanted.”
As the Seagulls headed back to Brighton, escorted by hordes of horn-tooting cars with scarves flapping from the windows, Steve was finally able to find a quiet moment to reflect. But can you learn from an experience like that, or is it just too intense?
“You learn to never give up,” says Gritt immediately. “No matter what. No matter how bad it looks - just never, ever give up.”
As I prepare to leave I briefly mention Paul Hayward’s summation in his book ‘More Than Ninety Minutes’.
Brighton and Hove Albion, writes Hayward, survived because the supporters wanted it to, and never stopped fighting, and because Steve Gritt and Dick Knight walked into the most blighted club in the land and made it a better, more civilised place to be.
“Really?” says Steve, sliding the book across the table to take a closer look “…that’s nice that is. Very nice indeed.”
Thanks to Steve Gritt for giving up his time to talk to the fanzine.
See you at Withdean in February Steve.
Hereford United vs Brighton & Hove Albion 3 May 1997.
Brighton: Ormerod, Humphrey, Tuck, Minton, Johnson, Morris, Storer (Hobson),
Mayo, Baird, Maskell, McDonald (Reinelt). Subs: Hobson, Rust, Reinelt
Manager: Mr S Gritt
Attendance: Police estimate 8’532 all-ticket capacity crowd; half of the fans are from Brighton. Largest attendance in Division 3 and only exceeded by the crowd at Preston in the bottom two divisions.
It is a transcript of an interview I did with Steve Gritt in 2002. Essential reading for anybody who:
(i) wants to know the Steve Gritt / BHA story
(ii) wishes to re-live an amazing period in our club's history
(iii) is having trouble getting to sleep.
Bry.
A More Civilised Place To Be
When Brighton and Millwall emerge from the dressing rooms at 2.55pm on 22nd February 2003 they will be greeted by what will probably be the biggest ovation of the season. But for once the cheers from the home support ringing out across the wooded slopes of Withdean won’t be reserved exclusively for the Albion. Because making his way across the pitch to the visitor’s dugout will be a wiry, track-suited figure who’ll always command a special place in the history of this club: Millwall’s Assistant Manager, Albion Legend and all round top bloke Steve Gritt will be back in town.
$$$$$$$$ $$$$$ asks him if he’s relishing his day at the seaside.
“Yeah - it’s going be a strange experience,” says Steve, chuckling quietly to himself. “Even though we’ve played Brighton recently in cup competitions I wasn’t directly involved myself. But now I’m working with the first team, and I’m really looking forward to it.”
Steve pauses for a half a second. “All the vociferous people…” he asks with a smile, “…they’re in that big stand on the far side aren’t they?”
It’s late on a Friday afternoon in early July, and a thin veil of soft, grey drizzle is wafting across Millwall's south London training complex. Pre-season sprints have finished for the day and angry looking storm clouds loom menacingly over Bromley, completely blotting out the view of Crystal Palace on the horizon; maybe the weather’s not so bad after all…
Steve and I sit in his first floor office overlooking the deserted practice pitches. A cardboard box stuffed full of brand new Mitre footballs props open the door and one of those magnetic tactic planner thingies is screwed to the far wall – all in all it’s definitely a proper football coach’s room. In the corner of the office a television is tuned into coverage of the Wimbledon men’s semi final, and every so often my questions are punctuated by brief bursts of polite applause from SW19. This is my first attempt at interviewing, and I’m grateful for the support.
Anyway – back to business: I’ve come to talk to the man who saved the Seagulls. In December 1996 Steve Gritt accepted what the press were dubbing the worst job in football and to be honest it wasn’t difficult to see why. Brighton & Hove Albion were holed below the waterline and sinking fast. The club had been anchored to the foot of the Third Division since early October and hadn’t won at home since beating Scarborough 3-2 at the beginning of September. A few short weeks prior to Gritt’s arrival the last ever FA Cup tie to be staged at the Goldstone ended in numbing humiliation as mighty Sudbury Town became the second non-league outfit in three years to dump Brighton out of the competition in the first round. And that was just the good news: with the ground sold to property developers and no credible alternative in the pipeline the club was homeless and broke. A stench of decay pervaded everything about the Goldstone and with the board and the supporters locked in a bitter war, the FA were seemingly unwilling or unable to intervene.
Yet today, somehow, just five short seasons on, Archer and Belloti are gone, the club is applying for planning permission for an extension to the trophy cabinet and we’re back in Brighton, playing in Division One. Okay, so we still don’t have a permanent home, but when Steve Gritt walked into the club simply preserving our league status would have seemed like a gift from the Gods.
“What’s happened over the last four years is nothing to do with me,” points out Gritt, reluctant to take any of the credit. “That’s all down to Mickey and Peter.” And that maybe so, but the days when clubs dropped out of the league and then bounced straight back are long gone; anyone in any doubt about that just need look at the forthcoming attractions at Hereford United, Doncaster Rovers, Scarborough and Chester City. Had it not been for Steve Gritt and his never say die spirit, the chances are we’d be contemplating a trip to Leigh RMI on October 26 instead of savouring the prospect of an away day at Selhurst Park. But did Steve really believe he could save us from the ultimate ignominy of sliding into the Conference?
“Absolutely,” he replies, without a moment’s hesitation. “I did. I seriously believed that we could do it. I had that amount of faith in my ability that I felt we had a genuine chance. I felt that if we could pick up two or three early results, then you never know where you can go from there. And obviously that first game,” he laughs, “…given the errr, reception I got before the match, I couldn’t have asked for a better start.”
Mmm - nothing personal, I mumble apologetically as we recall the volley of boos, whistles and catcalls that pierced the air as he was introduced to the 3’762 supporters who’d turned up that day.
”Yeah I realise that,” he replies, “but I thought, God if we don’t score soon who knows what sort of reception I’ll get at the end of the match. I look back now and have a good laugh about it all, but what I said at the time and what I still maintain to this day is that I was there simply to deal with the football and to give the fans some hope and a team that was having a go. Still – it was a very strange introduction, I must say.”
As it turned out Steve needn’t have worried. Miraculously the Albion went one up inside a matter of minutes and went on to run out comfortable winners against a benign Hull City side who obviously felt that it would have been impolite to intrude on the private tragedy being played out on the south coast. It finally ended 3-0, so what had Steve done differently?
“I don’t know really. I’d come in on the Thursday and let John Jackson take training. Then I came in on the Friday and took the players through my routine. Obviously it was quite a long session as it was my first game in charge. I needed to guide the squad; I needed to let them know what shape I wanted to play, how I wanted them to deal with free kicks and set pieces – that sort of thing. And you know - just walking off the training ground I could tell the players were up for it. It was a good sign.”
Another good sign was the rapport that Gritt was steadily developing with the supporters. Fans find it easy to warm to Gritt. He gives the impression that he cares about it as much as we do. It’s no coincidence that the largest contingent of non-Brighton supporters at Fans United were from Gritt’s previous club, Charlton Athletic.
“Yeah – I’d had feedback that they were going to bring a few,” smiles Gritt.
“My philosophy has always been to give everything my best shot and I think fans appreciate that. They see me put my lot in. They see me working as hard as I can. In fact I’ve probably calmed down a bit these days compared to how I was,” he laughs. “It’s just pure enjoyment. We go through the same emotions together. It’s always been the same.”
Over eight and a half thousand supporters of football packed the Goldstone for Fans United and a shell shocked Hartlepool were dispatched 5-0. The gap to the clubs above shrank a tad further and with the last ever game at the Goldstone rapidly approaching it seemed as if Brighton & Hove Albion FC - the team everybody had written off - might just have a chance. Suddenly the national media could sense the makings of a remarkable story beginning to unfold down on the Sussex coast. And the man at the centre of it had a name that was a gift for the headline writers.
“I had more exposure in those few months than at any other point in my entire career,” says Gritt. “But it was important that I kept the squad focused – that what we did as a team was no different to what we had been doing.”
He rifles around in the top draw of his desk and amazingly pulls out a wad of hand written papers entitled 1996 - 1997.
“Hmm … Cambridge away on the Saturday” says Steve, flicking through the pages. “One all. We should have won that: Maskell had a chance to seal it at the end. Look at this!” he suddenly exclaims, pointing at the pad. “I can’t believe it. I gave them two days off after that game.”
We were nearly there. The point at Cambridge had brought us within touching distance. With just two games to go Gritt had closed a yawning chasm of 11 points in mid-December to just 3 by the end of April. If the Albion beat Doncaster at home and Hereford lost away at Orient, it would be all square going into the final game of the season – away to Hereford.
“The players knew that there would be a huge crowd at the Goldstone that day, but they were very calm and relaxed – all I could do was just kept telling them that they still had nothing to lose.”
As Brighton tried to find a way past Doncaster Rovers news started to filter through from east London; Leyton Orient had taken the lead against Hereford. Suddenly, sixty eight minutes in, Stuart Storer reacted quickest to a rebound off the crossbar in front of the South Stand: one nil - the last and most important ever goal at the Goldstone.
By virtue of goal difference, the Albion had finally hauled themselves out of the basement. A draw next Saturday would guarantee safety and throughout the crowd of 11’341 the sense of overwhelming relief was mixed with an unwillingness to believe that this was really Goodbye Goldstone. As supporters surged onto the turf from every corner of the ground to stage one last pitch invasion Steve Gritt talked to the press in a cramped room below the West Stand.
“I had no idea about the Hereford score – not until we got back into changing room after the game. It was the strangest feeling in the world. I was doing the press conference and all I could hear was this constant bang bang banging. I had a bath, had a drink with the staff, and then I went back out onto the pitch at about six thirty, and there was nothing left. I’ve never seen a place ravaged like that place was that day. Everybody had taken their own seat and there were these huge holes in the pitch; but the biggest thing that surprised me was that the clocks had gone. Those huge clocks in the corners of the ground had just gone. They were massive. Jesus – I thought to myself, someone’s taken them too. I could imagine them walking down the Old Shoreham Road with these huge clocks on their backs – just amazing.”
So, did the Manager manage to bag a souvenir of his own to take away from the Goldstone?
“No. I felt it all belonged to the supporters. It was their day – it was their stadium. But I’ll tell you - it was the strangest feeling in the world. The thing is the following week I knew that occasionally we might want use the pitch – and I thought that’s scuppered that,” smiles Gritt. “Even during the week I’d be doing media interviews on the pitch about the final game and they’d be people coming through the gates with wheelbarrows and spades, digging up a couple of square metres of turf for their gardens.”
So for the first time since October 5th Brighton were off the bottom. The last game of the season would be a straight shoot out to decide who’d stay up and who’d go down. The Albion had never won at Hereford, but hey – not to worry; a draw would do. But the trouble was away draws had become collector’s items too – we’d only managed three all season. Yet in spite of that the spirit amongst the squad was buoyant.
“We felt optimistic going into that game - we had an idea that the crowd would work in our favour. We knew that we would be taking quite a few down there, but as it turned out I don’t think any of us envisaged that the support would be quite so tremendous. On the coach going to the ground there were cars full of Albion supporters absolutely everywhere. The driver stuck that song Things Can Only Get Better on the stereo and at that point I sensed that we all really believed we were going to do it.”
Things Can Only Get Better might not have been a bad choice for the half time music too; forty five minutes gone, one nil down and Brighton were creating nothing. Hereford had been bombing long balls into the Albion box and an attempted block by Kerry Mayo had cruelly looped over Mark Ormerod and nestled in the back of the Brighton net.
“Yeah - it wasn’t a great half time,” recalls Steve. “The first thing to do was to get to Kerry and tell him not to worry about the own goal. It happens in football. After that it was a question of asking them if they really wanted to play in the Conference, because at that point that’s exactly where we were headed. Then I put my calm head back on, tried to gee each of them up and sent them back out there.”
Half an hour to go and it was still Hereford to stay up and Brighton to go down and out. Gritt leant across, whispered something to his assistant Jeff Wood and 23 year old striker Robbie Reinelt is given the signal to start warming up. With fresh legs up front Brighton started to get more of the game and on 65 minutes a Craig Maskell shot smacked off the post and rebounded diagonally across the penalty area. Robbie Reinelt, (on for Paul McDonald), beat Ian Baird to the ball and stroked it into the far corner. One all, twenty-five agonizing minutes to go, and suddenly The Great Escape looked to be back on track.
“They didn’t have that board where the forth official shows how much time the ref has added in those days,” says Gritt. “I just kept on looking at my watch. It seemed to go on forever. I think it must have been about five to five by the time it finally finished. “
With official estimates that half of the crowd of eight and half thousand had come from Brighton (well exceeding the official allocation of 3’268), and the inevitable tension surrounding the fixture, dozens of riot police and dog handlers appeared from behind the stands and encircled the pitch. As Neil Barry blew for full time, the riot police were the first onto the pitch, quickly followed by the Hereford fans. The police stepped up in formation and formed a solid fluorescent yellow wall that Alan Hansen would be proud of across the half way line. On one side Brighton players and fans celebrated as if they had just won the league, whilst on the other side inconsolable Hereford players sank to their knees.
“I looked straight across to Graham Turner” (Hereford’s Director of Football), says Gritt “and their whole bench was in tears. There’s nothing you can say at a moment like that. But to be fair, Graham had a drink with me after the game and their Chairman Peter Hill came in and said some nice things too. For everything that had happened that day you have to remember that this was just a game of football.”
In six mad months between December ‘96 and May ‘97 Steve Gritt had achieved what everybody had been saying was impossible, yet he dismisses out of hand any notion that he should have been awarded the Manager of the Season title.
“I never wanted anything like that,” he says. “I just wanted to achieve my objectives for the club and for the supporters; that’s all I ever wanted.”
As the Seagulls headed back to Brighton, escorted by hordes of horn-tooting cars with scarves flapping from the windows, Steve was finally able to find a quiet moment to reflect. But can you learn from an experience like that, or is it just too intense?
“You learn to never give up,” says Gritt immediately. “No matter what. No matter how bad it looks - just never, ever give up.”
As I prepare to leave I briefly mention Paul Hayward’s summation in his book ‘More Than Ninety Minutes’.
Brighton and Hove Albion, writes Hayward, survived because the supporters wanted it to, and never stopped fighting, and because Steve Gritt and Dick Knight walked into the most blighted club in the land and made it a better, more civilised place to be.
“Really?” says Steve, sliding the book across the table to take a closer look “…that’s nice that is. Very nice indeed.”
Thanks to Steve Gritt for giving up his time to talk to the fanzine.
See you at Withdean in February Steve.
Hereford United vs Brighton & Hove Albion 3 May 1997.
Brighton: Ormerod, Humphrey, Tuck, Minton, Johnson, Morris, Storer (Hobson),
Mayo, Baird, Maskell, McDonald (Reinelt). Subs: Hobson, Rust, Reinelt
Manager: Mr S Gritt
Attendance: Police estimate 8’532 all-ticket capacity crowd; half of the fans are from Brighton. Largest attendance in Division 3 and only exceeded by the crowd at Preston in the bottom two divisions.
Thunder Bolt
Silly old bat
I'm not sure where you are but the North Stand did sing it and applaud him loudly before and after the interview.
Barrel of Fun
Abort, retry, fail
I feel a little tearful after reading that. Lovely work, Bry.
34064 Fighter Command
New member
You'll be telling us you bought it from Focus DIY next............
Gritt23
New member
I really don't know whether to laugh or cry at this thread.
Maybe I should start a poll, to see how many people think my avatar is actually a picture of me.
Btw, excellent piece [MENTION=600]Bry Nylon[/MENTION], and as I know you've noticed previously, it was from that piece that I lifted my signature. I used to carry a link to that report in my signature as well, but I think the link expired a few years back, so I removed it. Superb stuff though.
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Westdene Wonder
New member
I was so pleased to hear the applause given to Steve Gritt but very surprised that he came anywhere near the stadium after the way he was treated by Knight,he was forced to sell players and then sacked for poor results,which took the limelight away from the Chairman who when he could no longer provide the necessary cash instead of standing down continued in his post which almost resulted in us being relegated to Division 2.