van Hecke scored first goal in front of personal fan club

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Charlie Hanson

2025-03-10T09:45+00:00

Jan Paul van Hecke has made 82 appearances for Albion. 📷 by Paul Hazlewood.

Jan Paul van Hecke has revealed that the celebrations his first goal for Albion in the 2-1 victory over Fulham were even more emotional because of the presence at the Amex of a coach load of friends and family who had travelled to Sussex from his home village of Arnemuiden in the Dutch province of Zeeland.

JP met Yasin Ayari’s free kick from the left with a thumping header before rushing over to celebrate in front of the East Lower, where his personal fan club was gathered. How many were there?

“Around 50, they came over on the bus this morning and go back tomorrow,” JP said shortly after Saturday’s final whistle. “Sometimes they come over a few times in a year. This is the third time this year and I think they are quite happy with this game.

Jan Paul van Hecke scored the first goal of his Albion career with a terrific header against Fulham. 📷 by Paul Hazlewood.

“To be fair they are almost coming every week, not on the bus, but a lot of people are coming. They always tell me: ‘If you score it will be really nice.’ I say ‘I’ll try’ and today was the day so I could see my neighbour, brother, friends so everyone from town was really happy, really proud for me.

“They’ve followed Brighton for the three years that I’m here and they love to come over and they love the city as well so that’s good.”

After 81 Albion appearances in all competitions without hitting the net, he would probably have been happy with a tap-in, but instead scored a goal described in the Sunday Times as “one of the most satisfying headers of the season”.

Joao Pedro congratulates his teammate for equalising against the Cottagers. 📷 by James Boardman.

“The ball was perfect, we trained on it, analysed them and it was the ideal situation, everyone was really happy,” he said. “I have a pain in my neck now because I headed it so hard! I felt 'This is going in,’ I was sure there was no offside.

“I was really happy I could score and we conceded a maybe bit too easily, we felt we wanted to do something back. It was a good header and good before half time and second half we had some big chances, two offside goals so we were trying to push for the goal and if you get it back late it’s even better.”

The goal cancelled out Raul Jimenez’s opener for Fulham and gave Albion the platform for a strong second half and that late, late winner.

“I was relieved that we could bring the three points home, a massive boost for the table and for ourselves. We keep our form going with wins and hopefully we can keep this going for a long time.

“Last time we met they won 3-1 and we felt like we should have had a result and we said to each other, ‘Boys, we need to keep on going, they’re one point behind us, we want to keep pushing.’ We were a bit lucky with the win in the end and everyone put all the effort in, it was deserved.”

The victory was the sixth in succession after that 7-0 defeat away to Nottingham Forest. “Everyone knows now we need to give everything in Premier League from first to 90 game because otherwise you get beat,” JP said.

“You can see a real togetherness, if you look around at teammates you can see people who really want to win and fight and I think we are really hard to beat, we can beat almost everyone in the league and we need to keep on going.”