The Dawn after Defeat

Your heart knows before you head remembers.  As you wake you already know there is something from yesterday. Then recollection plunges through like a rock hitting water. For a split second there is a hope, before waking memory kicks in. This is the dawn after your defeat.

You were on TV last night. You won’t ever see yourself; you will never watch the TV coverage. It will be deleted. But your face was in the crowd. We saw you as your team lost. That programme in front of you face did not shield you. We could see you weeping. All the hope and belief, that rising confidence now gone. You so much wanted Brighton to win. To beat Palace as a stepping stone to the Premiership. For 25 years you had to gaze upwards at your rival, sometimes near sometimes so far out of sight they could barely see you. But it seemed the shift had come, that finally it was your turn. So close. You should have won, you had the better team. Maybe.  But their 20 year old waste of money proved he may be not such a waste of money.

And now you have woken up and have to get on with it. You will close your eyes and ears for a few days. Normally defeat means the club want a new manager.  You will choose not hear Guy Poyet suggest that your team is too small for his ambition.

Yes, you will live to fight another day. But you have to get through this one first Seagull.