Don't Call It A Derby: Crystal Palace vs Brighton & Hove Albion

Words: Tom Reed

Images: Sam Wainwright

There’s still some talk on whether Crystal Palace vs Brighton & Hove Albion is a derby or a rivalry?

Of course, it doesn’t matter, as all derbies are football’s most keenly felt of trivial pursuits.

Being on different rivers and punching a horse, death threats about dockers’ to-dos in industries people don’t work in anymore, burning flags for religious dogma of a bygone age.

It don’t matter at all but somehow it matters all the same. It’s not worth five minutes of writing but you could scribble down pages on it.

Writers have wasted their time in trying to unpick why South London’s Crystal Palace and East Sussex’s Brighton dislike each other, via the minutiae of Terry Venables and Alan Mullery, seventies bosses of the respective sides, and competition that goes back to the Tottenham dressing room.

©Sam Wainwright/ Terrace Edition. Crystal Palace FC.

There’s the obligatory mention of Algeria international Rachid Harkouk and also the time Brighton boss Mullery had a cup of coffee thrown at him by a Palace fan, which has nestled or should that be Nestlé’d itself into folklore of this unlikely grudge match.

We have no clarity in whether milk was added to the coffee hurled by the Palace fan to bring down the heat or maybe some powdered Coffee Mate which would have an inconclusive affect on Mullery’s core facial temperature.

“A load of boiling hot coffee was thrown over me by a Crystal Palace supporter. So I pulled a handful of change out of my pocket, threw it on the floor and shouted, 'That's all you're worth, Crystal Palace!” said Mullery on the exchange.

Of course you did Alan, making a complete tit of yourself and forwarding this inane antagonism while losing the spare change to buy yourself a flannel to wipe yourself down.

For what it’s worth, Crystal Palace and Brighton have reasonable road and train links meaning it was pretty easy to go on jollies to Selhurst Park and the Goldstone and create the usual tit for tat crap that follows. Palace fans live in Brighton and Brighton fans in South London, adding to the incestuous nature of all good feuds.

It can be said that both clubs need the head to heads without “proper rivals” in the same league but what is a proper rivalry anyway? Millwall’s New Den is closer to Crystal Palace yet Millwall only really have eyes for West Ham but then again, if the two played regularly, the Lions would be happy to take over a 500 strong mob to Selhurst because someone lobbed a hot-dog that nearly hit someone’s nan or something.