There are days when everything changes, and then there are days when everything changes and you get to watch Lewis Dunk try to escape from Albion fans, on the Amex pitch, in just his pants.
Monday, April 17th, 2017. Wigan Athletic at home. A team fighting for survival, us fighting to finally arrive. One team clawing at the trapdoor, the other climbing to the promised land. Only one got what they came for.
What unfolded that day wasn’t just a result. It was a release.
Years of slog. Years of nearly. Years of clutching playoff heartbreak like an annual trauma. And then, finally, this. Promotion. Not via Wembley, not on goal difference, not through the side door. But by winning — comfortably-ish — at home. The kind of thing we’d watched other clubs do for years. The sort of clean, satisfying full stop we never got.
We scored twice, didn’t concede for a while, and everyone in the ground had that strange, quiet fear that something would go wrong. Some technicality. A VAR review from the future. Derby winning 11-0. But no — Huddersfield drew. And even though they pulled one back, it didn’t matter. The floodgates opened.
This club, our club, was going up. To the Premier League. For real.
It didn’t feel like a new chapter. It felt like a different book entirely. One that should have started years ago if we’re honest, if we hadn’t been stitched up by officials, cursed by a Palace voodoo, and stuck at Withdean asking Matty Sparrow to play inverted winger.
But we were there. Falmer bathed in sunlight, people in tears, people smiling — and not that “we gave it a good go” grimace-smile. Real ones. Big “we made it” grins.
Anthony Knockaert in tears. Bruno smiling like a dad at a barbecue. Hughton looking like a man who’d quietly unlocked something biblical and didn’t want to make a fuss. Everyone played their part. Even Jiri Skalak. Probably.
Outside, it was carnage in the best possible way – a full-on carnival – like someone had turned the volume up on the whole city. Strangers hugged like old friends. The club shop got raided like it was Black Friday. Grown men wept into plastic pints of Harvey’s.
And if you’re lucky, you caught Tony Bloom in the middle of it. Just a man in a suit, blinking in the sunlight, like he couldn’t quite believe he’d done it. Or maybe he knew, and this was just the plan finally landing.
Because that was the moment the “best-run club” tag started. It was born there. Before the spreadsheets, before the Smart Recruitment discourse and the “how Brighton did it” explainer videos with stock music on YouTube. It was just us. Doing it our way.
But you know what? Looking back, it wasn’t just the win. It was the relief. This wasn’t about gunning for glory. It was about escaping. Escaping the Championship. Escaping what had become an annual emotional breakdown. Escaping the fear that we’d never quite get there.
And of course, there were people who never got to see it. That’s part of the story too. The ones who came to Gillingham, the ones who froze at Withdean, who couldn’t quite believe we’d ever play top flight football again. That day was for them more than it was for anyone else.
And maybe we didn’t know it then, but that day set the tone. The culture. No panic, no flukes. Build slowly. Back the right people. Do things properly. Ten years ago we’d been scrapping for survival. That day, we stood on the edge of something huge. And jumped.
So yeah, we beat Wigan. We got promoted. And it changed everything.
But if you were there — properly there — you’ll know it felt like more than just a match. It was the last page of the hard part. And the first line of whatever this is now.
And say what you like about where we’re going next — we’ll always have that day. Falmer. Sunshine. Knockaert crying. Lewis Dunk in his pants.
Up. At. Last.
