Crystal Palace 2-1 Brighton: Why are Eagles & Seagulls rivals?

It’s a rivalry that might not leap to mind first for every football fan.

But a rivalry is exactly what Palace and Brighton have.

It all started when the two teams played each other five times in 1976.

Crystal Palace were managed by Terry Venables and Brighton were led by Alan Mullery. The two had been team-mates at Tottenham Hotspur but were never close.

It was an FA Cup first-round tie, rather than a league game, that caused the original controversy.

This was in the days before penalty shootouts were an option to decide FA Cup ties. If a match was drawn, there was a replay. And the teams involved kept on replaying until there was a winner.

After two draws, Crystal Palace beat Brighton 1-0 in the third game.

Afterwards, Brighton boss Mullery says he had a pot of boiling hot coffee poured on him by Palace fans.

“So I pulled a handful of change out of my pocket, threw it on the floor and shouted, ‘That’s all you’re worth, Crystal Palace,'” he told the Guardian – and since then the two clubs have never got on.

Brighton used to be known as the Dolphins but changed their nickname to the Seagulls and Palace fans argue it was done to be similar to their nickname, the Eagles.

Palace have been in the Premier League since 2013 – thanks to goals from club icon Wilfried Zaha, they beat Brighton in the Championship play-off semi-final on their way to sealing promotion at Wembley.

That game also had its own issues, though, as on entering their dressing room before the match, the Palace team found excrement on the floor.

Now both in the Premier League, the teams meet more regularly – with a number of tight recent encounters. Before Saturday’s incident-packed game, the five previous matches at Selhurst Park had ended 1-1.

This time, Palace won a game that will live long in the memory – completing their first league double over Brighton since the 1932-33 season, when both were in the third division.