On this day: Promotion secured in Cardiff

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Today marks 21 years since Albion's promotion via the playoffs.

Spencer Vignes

2025-05-30T06:00+01:00

A day to remember for Albion fans. 📷 by Bennett Dean.

Spencer Vignes recalls our League One play-off final win over Bristol City inside Cardiff’s Millennium Stadium on 30 May 2004, courtesy of Leon Knight’s penalty kick.

Wembley. For 102 years it’s been the jewel in the crown of English football, the place where Bobby Moore lifted the World Cup in 1966, host of all domestic finals at club level. Except, that is, from 2000-07. During those seven years the stadium was rebuilt from the floorboards up, meaning all major showcase club games (such as the FA Cup final, the League Cup final, and the play-off finals) were shunted off to Cardiff’s Millennium Stadium, as it was then called.

At first we, the fans, weren’t sure about this. Cardiff, after all, meant rugby, not football. And yet, in time, perceptions changed. Unlike Wembley, the Millennium Stadium was surrounded by pubs, by bars, by nightclubs, by life. As much as we’d loved the Wembley of old, its surroundings were the dictionary definition of soulless (and they remain that way today). Cardiff felt like football’s Glastonbury, particularly during the play-offs when fans of all participating clubs often partied together over the course of the weekend. Such was the case in May 2004 when supporters of West Ham, Crystal Palace, Mansfield Town, Huddersfield Town, Bristol City and ourselves converged on the Welsh capital for our respective finals. To be in the City Arms pub across the road from the stadium the night before our League One showdown against Bristol City, dancing to Blur and Oasis with West Ham and Crystal Palace fans – yes, even Palace fans – has to go down as one of my favourite football memories ever.

Dick Knight applauds the Albion fans. 📷 by Bennett Dean.

Despite finishing fourth with a highly creditable 77 points, Albion had been steady rather than spectacular throughout most of the 2003/04 season, overachieving in many people’s eyes following our relegation from what is now the Championship the previous year. This relative success was down to two things – a tight defence and the form of striker Leon Knight. Bristol City, however, boasted an even meaner backline than us (only 37 goals conceded during the regular season, compared to our 43) yet had struggled to score at the other end, notching 58 compared to Albion’s 64. All the evidence pointed to the tight, low scoring game it ultimately proved to be.

While what panned out on the field wasn’t a classic, the scenes off it – before, during and after – will live long in the memory of all who witnessed them. “I will never, ever forget travelling on the bus to the stadium and, when we turned left on the final approaches, the sight that greeted us – the sheer number of Brighton fans, the flags, everybody with a beer in their hands on what was a boiling hot day,” recalls Albion utility player Adam Virgo, whose late goal at Withdean Stadium against Swindon Town in the second leg of the play-off semis had taken the game to penalties (which we won).

“We were quite a boisterous bunch back then and we all just kind of went quiet. It made the hairs on the back of your neck stand up. I don’t often do this but I couldn’t help but think ‘Bloody hell, it’s my goal against Swindon and the penalty in the shoot-out afterwards that’s created this’. It’s a team effort, don’t get me wrong, but the significance of that goal really hit home. I think there would have been an older generation of supporters at that (Cardiff) game who perhaps couldn’t be bothered going to the Withdean because it was an open stadium and they didn’t want to get wet. When I saw kids with their dads in their old Brighton shirts, you realised how it brought a lot of people together, some of who had supported the club from way back.”

Adam Virgo on promotion day in 2004. 📷 by Bennett Dean.

No doubt about it, Bristol City fancied their chances. A couple of ex-Robins players, plus their former manager Danny Wilson (himself an ex-Albion midfielder), have admitted as much to me since then. And yet for all their possession, City created almost nothing. Instead there was plenty of pretty passing, most of it sideways and with little end result. Albion simply kept them at arm’s length, aiming to make the most of any rare breakaways that came our way. One such moment arrived just before half-time, when Knight chipped a free-kick goalwards from around 20 yards, the ball cannoning back off the crossbar before being cleared.

It was the same story after the break. City just never looked like breaking through Albion’s defence expertly marshalled by goalkeeper Ben Roberts, the man who’d kept a remarkable ten clean sheets from the last 15 games of our regular season before shutting Swindon out for 171 minutes in the play-off semis. You could almost see City collectively thinking that no matter how hard they tried they weren’t going to score – not unless it went to penalties.

With six minutes remaining, Albion striker Chris Iwelumo collected the ball and set off towards City’s penalty area. Darren Coles brought him down and referee Richard Beeby immediately awarded Albion a spot kick. Knight took it, punctuating his approach with the slightest of pauses, before burying the ball low beyond the outstretched right hand of City goalkeeper Steve Phillips. With that, Albion had secured their third promotion within the space of four seasons, coming hot on the heels of our fourth and third tier titles in 2001 and 2002 respectively.

Leon Knight scored from the penalty spot for Albion. 📷 by Bennett Dean.

“We’d always had a bad record in finals – the 1983 FA Cup final, the 1991 play-off final versus Notts County – so to actually win, even though the game was pretty poor, means everybody looks back on that day as a pretty special one,” adds Virgo. “I remember standing for the national anthem, in front of all those fans and with everybody there who meant a lot to me, and saying to (defender) Dan Harding who was standing next to me, ‘You can’t get better than this’. I think there were seven or eight of us there that day who’d come through the youth system who probably felt exactly the same way.”

The events of that Sunday in Cardiff remain a high point for quite a few Albion fans, even ones old enough to remember our halcyon days of the seventies and early eighties. That’s because it was all so, well… different. To win promotion inside a world class stadium in front of more than 30,000 of your supporters in a foreign country – which is, after all, what Wales is – doesn’t exactly happen every week. If I’d had my way, the play-off finals would’ve stayed in Cardiff. At least you can easily get a post-match pint there.