Former Soccer Saturday host Jeff Stelling admits that his lifelong love of Hartlepool United isn’t shared by his son.
On the Official Brighton & Hove Albion podcast, Jeff revealed that his middle son supports Albion!
“He’s the black sheep of the Stelling family!” Jeff joked. “My eldest son is a loyal Hartlepool fan, but my middle son is a Brighton fan. He went to the University of Sussex by the Amex and he started to go to games.
“He used to support Arsenal and I never liked that. I don’t have anything against Arsenal, but you can never get a ticket for love nor money. But he fell in love with Brighton and now he goes home and away, you can’t stop him. He’s got a collection of Brighton shirts framed on the wall at home. He is a fanatic.
“I keep trying to remind him that it’s not so long ago, in fact it’s 30 years exactly, since Hartlepool beat Brighton 2-0 in the league and at that stage I thought ‘there’s only one team going places here!’ How wrong was I?”
Jeff is very impressed with Albion’s progress.
“You can’t believe what’s happened at this football club in recent seasons. From being on the brink of extinction to playing the sort of sides they are in Europe, it’s astonishing. Not just playing them but playing them off the park.
“Then there’s going to Old Trafford and not just winning, but winning comprehensively and this is a team I remember going to watch against Hartlepool and always feeling we had a chance against Brighton.
“What the owner has done and everything about the club is the model that so many clubs must base themselves on.”