Closure and Sale
The last game at The Goldstone was held on 26 April 1997, in which Brighton beat Doncaster Rovers 1-0. The result lifted Brighton off the bottom of Division Three and meant that a draw or win in their visit to Hereford United the following weekend would prevent relegation to the Conference and preserve their Football League status. Brighton went on to draw the game 1-1 and secure survival - thus avoiding becoming the first former members of the top flight or the first major cup finalists to be relegated to the Conference.
Between 1902 and 1997 the ground had admitted 22.9 million supporters to 2,174 games. The largest attendance at the Goldstone was 36,747 when the Albion played Fulham on 27 December 1958.
The ground was sold by the board, who were trying to clear the club's mounting debts in an attempt to avoid bankruptcy, although no alternative football ground had been lined up, and without consulting the fans. The then chairman, Bill Archer, aimed to profit from the sale of the lucrative development land on which the Goldstone stood. A ground share with Portsmouth never materialised and the club eventually arranged a ground-share with Gillingham at their Priestfield Stadium over 70 miles from Brighton.
The sale of the club's stadium provoked two pitch invasions by angry fans in protest against it. A pitch invasion late in the 1995-96 season, when the Seagulls were relegated to Division Three, resulted in a suspended sentence of three points deducted and a game played behind closed doors for the club. A similar protest on 1 October 1996 in a league game against Lincoln City meant that a Football League hearing on 9 December that year saw them deducted two league points. The club later appealed against the points deduction but their appeal was rejected, although ultimately they still managed to avoid relegation from the Football League by a narrow margin that year.
The Goldstone Ground was sold to property developers and it has since been redeveloped as a retail park.
Read more about this topic: Goldstone Ground
Famous quotes containing the word sale:
“[T]he dignity of parliament it seems can brook no opposition to it’s power. Strange that a set of men who have made sale of their virtue to the minister should yet talk of retaining dignity!”
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)