AND SMITH MUST SCORE.....!

 

The 1982/3 season was a bit sad for Brighton and Hove Albion, who having reached the "top flight" (the old First Division) for the first time and been there for 4 seasons, the Sussex club ended "Brighton ROCK BOTTOM" of the division and were duly relegated. They had never been to an FA Cup Final either. But their consolation was that the Albion could have made history by becoming the first club to be relegated from the First Division (and any division) but which also won the FA Cup Final. Sadly it didn't end up well for the Seagulls.

At Wembley, with seconds of extra left, against Manchester United, the Albion's Gordon Smith looked destined to score the winner as Peter Jones on the BBC's radio commentary said "And Smith must score....and he hasn't scored....And Bailey (MUs gk) saved it!" The game ended 2-2, they returned to Wembley five days later, with Albion, clearly exhausted emotionally,  being thumped 4-0. The name Gordon Smith and Peter Jones' commentary was well known through the "Albion Fanzine", which is no longer published in this form, by the way. 

Possibly the most famous miss of all  st a Wembley Cup FA Final was Gordon Smith's big moment. He'd had a few before, he kept telling us, playing in six cup finals with Glasgow Rangers and so on, but we weren't really listening. Not after what he did from eight yards. Watch and wonder!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9q4S1t2oVcA

MAYBE he earned a few bob from this exposure.

Smith’s miss – or in reality, Bailey’s excellent save – has become one of football’s great “What if” moments. What if Smith HAD scored and Tony Grealish found himself climbing the 39 steps to Wembley’s Royal Box to collect the trophy? How different would Brighton’s history post-May 1983 look? After all, a pretty dramatic decline followed those two games under the Twin Towers – 14 years later, the Albion finished 91st out of 92 teams in the Football and were homeless.