It was an honor to have my Nabisco Cup photo featured on the site earlier this month and I’ll definitely contact you about writing as J.League’s season gets started next year.

Here’s to another 1001 posts! And hopefully a few more invasions.

As for pitch invasions, like footysphere I too cut my teeth in eighties football. Such good days, the football at Ipswich might have been dire but the atmosphere was so much better. Our normal haunt was the West Stand Terrace, costing a mighty £2.50 for me as I was under 16, sometimes we’d go in the North Stand, £5 as it was ‘adults only’, but for one last game of the season we went in the Cobbold Lower, £10 and seats but excellent access to the pitch plus there was the whole 80′s casual thing of wanting to be ‘flash’ and as a 14 year old kid paying £10 for a ticket was flash! There was about 250-300 lads in what was normally a quiet section, and loads more who wanted in as the West Stand Terrace was dead! We scored twice, each time launching a mini pitch invasion and several lads seizing the opportunity to leg it from the West Stand terrace across the pitch to the directly opposite Cobbold Lower, each time chased by an overweight wheezing copper. Old school coppers were great, they couldn’t catch a cold! Every last home game of the season would end in a huge invasion, all four stands flooding onto the pitch and most heading for either the centre circle or the cage holding the away support. Those, my friends, were the days.

My son’s now 13, about the same age as me when I first started going to games with my mates, and it saddens me to know that in this age of sanitised McStadia football he’ll never have those same experiences, some good, some bad and some pretty frightening at the time but they helped make me a man. What I hope he does find is the camaraderie and friendship you find amongst your fellow supporters, and the endless enjoyment to be had once a year on the pre-season tour reliving the good old days!

Pitch Invasion has never failed to provide great football writing for all the world to read, and to do so over 1,001 posts is a tremendous achievement. Keep up the good work and here’s to the next 1,001!

I remember one back in the 84/85 season. It was the at the Goldstone Ground & Brighton were playing host to Sheff Utd, last day of the season. BHA had a very, very slim chance of promotion going into the match, needed three other clubs to lose heavily whilst winning by a cricket score themselves. Anyhow it was a fairly big crowd, lots had travelled down from Sheffield and were making a weekend of it. Pretty uninspiring game that the Seagulls won 1-0 but for the majority of the game it was played in a good-natured carnvial-like atmosphere.

Towards the end of the game the Utd fans in the away end spotted some Blades in the home stand. This prompted a chant of “Shoreham’s here, Shoreham’s there, Shoreham’s every effin’ where”. By way of explanation Utd’s home Kop is on Shoreham Street & is known to some as the Shoreham End. This chant however confused the Sussex plod no end, what with Shoreham being a small town not too far from Brighton. They thought the Utd end had been infiltrated by some local nutcases!! lol

The bobbies flooded the away end and started to get a little heavy handed. Due to the police intervention what had been a carnival atomsphere soon turned ugly. At the final whistle Utd fans poured onto the pitch fighting with the police. BHA fans saw what was happening they ran onto the pitch to get involved in the action and there was a huge three-way wild west style punch up in the middle of the pitch. Happy days (!!!)

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