Cheers, Hilary

I won't bore those of you not interested in the so far magnificent achievements of my three-points-clear-at-the-top team after last night's battling victory over Brentford, because something interesting in the programme caught my attention.

A local resident, a Mrs Hilary Ball (oddly appropriately), had taken the trouble of writing to the club to congratulate our fans on their behaviour during our ludicrously drawn-out tenure at Withdean. She wrote, "I had visions of beer bottles, cans and all sorts of rubbish dumped in the front garden, maybe windows smashed if a visiting team lost..." (No need to worry on that score most weeks...) "...and not being able to park outside my own house. I'm pleased to say none of this happened."

This is mainly due to the fact that, since a team of supporters volunteers to do a litter-pick in the area round the stadium after every home game, the area is actually cleaner after we play each match than before kick-off. It's one of the countless arrangements we had to come up with to get permission to play there in the first place. Her letter was in stark contrast to some of the other residents who must think we're no less than the spawn of Satan, as my own experience once showed.

I was walking the route from Preson Park station to the ground, an unpaved, muddy path through woods at the back of a line of private residences, on my way to a home game a couple of seasons ago, when a resident happened to come out of his garden to collect an empty cardboard beer crate that somebody had thoughtlessly dumped in the lane. Spotting my Brighton shirt, he gave me what can only be described as the skunk eye and muttered about 'hooligans dumping rubbish outside his house' in my direction. This could not go unchallenged, of course. I asked him why he was addressing his complaint at me, since I was clearly not the person who'd dumped the box. Again his eyes went to my shirt. That was all I needed to know.

The shirt had weighed, measured and found me wanting in his eyes. More than that, simply because I had the shirt of my football club on, he clearly viewed me as not only exactly the same as the dick who'd dumped the box outside his house, but somehow personally responsible for it. I told him, politely, that a shirt does not a boor make, that whoever dumped the box would be a dick whether they sported a football shirt or not. Whether they ever even watched football or not, in fact. But this clearly didn't fit with his preconception of the shaven-headed, drunken, inarticulate, snarling wretch that is doubtless his exemplar of fans everywhere, so back into his house he went, huffing and puffing.

So as we near the end of our tenure there, I hope that fans and local residents have learned something about each other. We're not all mindless hoolies, and they don't all hate us. Mrs Ball even complimented the new stadium blossoming on the hillside in Falmer, saying, "It will be a magnificent building when it is finished and a huge asset to the city. I might even be tempted to come and watch my first professional football match when you move."

Good on you, Mrs B. Glad we've been good tenants. Unfortunately though, should we leave Withdean this season with some silverware, Mr Beer Box will doubtless assume we've nicked it.