Brighton

Ground: AmEx Community Stadium

Visits: 1

Date: 29th December 2012

Match: Brighton - Watford 1-3 (League Championship)

Attendance: 26 727

In mid-November a friend told me he wanted a 'bang' and then Christmas. If you live in Sweden, and are interested in football, November and December can be long dark months. After Christmas I have travelled to England for football the last six seasons. This year was not to be an exception and after managing two months without live football I could leave for England the last Friday of 2012. For this trip I had made plans for four matches. Two in England, one in Wales and finally a match in Scotland. It has been raining a lot in southern England in recent weeks and that was concerning me a bit. My first match on the trip was supposed to be Wimbledon vs Oxford at Kingsmeadow Stadium. The match at Kingsmeadow on Boxing Day (26 Dec) was postponed because of a water-logged pitch and with a foreast of heavy rain for Saturday afternoon I was fearing in having yet another (late) postponement. In recent years this has happened twice to me in England this time of the year so I decided to play it safe. On Friday afternoon I bought a ticket for Brighton vs Watford. The match was sold-out but the club opened a ticket-exchange service meaning I could get a really good seat for this match. I decided to go to Brighton quite early and at 11.42 my train left London Bridge station. One hour later I was in Brighton. Brighton is one of England's most premier summer destinations. This windy and rainy day in December the famous Brighton Pier was not as busy as it is in the summer but there was still a fair amount of people. Feeling a bit hungry I found a pub on the pier where I had something to eat and drink. Around 2.30 I then left for the train station but since the match was live on TV with a 5.20 kick-off so I was not exactly in a hurry.

AmEx Community Stadium was opened in July 2011 and had a capacity of 22 000. With the ground being full for most matches Brighton decided to expand the ground and the capacity for my match was 27 000. During the 2012/13 winter more seats will be added making this a ground with 30 000 seats. The stadium is situated in Falmer which is a 10-minute train journey from Brighton station. My train was in Falmer two hours before kick-off and there were already plenty of fans outside the ground. After picking up my ticket I walked around the ground for some pictures before entering. My (padded!) seat was in the lower tier of the West Stand. It turned out to be a really good one and without the ticket exchange I would not be able to have this kind of seat. As kick-off approached there was a heavy rain shower but the pitch seemd to take care of the water without any problems. The first half of this match was quite boring with few chances but the second half was much better. Watford were backed by 1 600 fans for this match and they had reasons to celebrate as the visitors went 1 up. Brighton then had a penalty and it was 1-1. The atmosphere inside the AmEx was by now quite good. A couple of minutes after the Brighton equaliser Watford made it 2-1 and they then scored from yet another counter attack, 3-1 to the visitors. All three Watford goals were scored in front of their own fans and for a neutral it is always nice to hear a packed away section explode in celebrations. The match ended 3-1 to Watford and even if the Wimbledon match actually was on I didn't regret going to Brighton instead. This my first match on this trip and hopefully the other matches will have plenty of goals as well.

brighton pier