It is fantastic from a neutral point of view to see Brighton and Hove Albion securing the first automatic spot for promotion to the Premier League next season.
The Championship run in hands out more than its fair share of heartbreak, Brighton have been part of that in spades in the past few years, so dodging the playoffs at long last must be such a relief for their supporters.
For me the Seagulls will always be 1983, Steve Foster’s headband, another great United team that never quite won a Championship, and but for Gary Bailey’s legs at the death Brighton would have had the bittersweet mix of an epic Cup final victory and relegation in the same season.
That day at Wembley no one would have foreseen where that relegation would eventually take Brighton, staring into the abyss that would have marked relegation from the entire Football League.
That day in 1997 crystallises so much, in these days of the Premier League, of the importance of the FA Cup competition.
Strange thing to say when the playoff was ultimately for survival in the League, Brighton doing enough to send Hereford United to the uncertainty of conference football.
But a large part of the folklore that has sustained both those clubs, albeit Hereford now ‘Phoenix’ed’ into Hereford FC, comes from the Cup.
Brighton easily could have held that 1983 trophy aloft, and who knows what difference that may have made to the subsequent seasons.
And Hereford were made an indelible part of the fabric of football in the UK as soon as Supermac and the rest of a great Newcastle team were held at St James and beaten in frantic extra time at Edgar Road in 1972.
So much had happened before then, and since. But a large part of the movement that meant that Hereford could not die was built on that day in the early ’70s.
Lincoln this year was just the latest in such a long line that maintains the romance of football. And who did they beat to make the fifth round? Brighton, leaders of the Championship no less.
I hope Brighton’s supporters are rewarded with a Premier League season to remember.
Maybe even an FA Cup run that brings back memories of 1983, and if that run is to be cut short I hope that it is in a replay away to a Football League struggler, whose supporters get to invade the pitch and remember that night forever.
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