It's a South Coast derby that throughout the years was a rarity up till fairly recently, can Saints continue to dominate.

So far Saints have met Brighton a grand total of 39 times in the League with the 40th due to be played on Saturday, Saints have won 18 of these games, 13 have been draws and Brighton have registered only 8 wins.

But 11 of these 39 games have taken place since 2005/06 when we met them in the Championship and prior to that apart from a couple of cup fixtures we had not faced them since 1982/83 season when they were relegated from the top flight in the same season they reached the FA Cup Final at Wembley, a double they will be hoping not to repeat this year.

Our rivalry with Brighton can be split into several distinct periods since we joined the league in 1920/21 season.

The first was the inaugral years in League football when we played them for three straight seasons, before not meeting them in league football for another 30 years in 1953/54, then followed the most congested period of meetings so far when we met them for 7 seasons out of the next 9 starting in the old Division 3 South and ending in Division 2.

It would be another 16 seasons before we met again in our promotion season of 1977/78 when we drew both games 1-1, although on the final day Brighton needed Spurs to lose at the Dell in order to have a chance of going up, that game ended 0-0 and Seagull's supporters of a certain age will still claim that the game was rigged and that Spurs needing only a point and Saints who could have technically blown promotion with a big defeat, had metaphorically speaking shook hands on a draw before the kick off.

Brighton would come up a year later though and we would meet them for their 4 season sojourn in the top flight.

But if the League results are fairly conclusive in favour of Saints then the cup games are emphatic, we have met them twice in the League cup, in 2001/02 when we won 3-0 at the Withdean with James Beattie and Anders Svensson (2) scoring the goals and then earlier this season when a last minute Charlie Austin header sent us back down the A27 happy.

IN the FA Cup we have met them 3 times, the first in 1909/10 when we travelled down to Brighton and won by a single goal, in 1924/25 when we won by the same margin and then perhaps the most famous of our trips down to Brighton when we drew them in the Quarter Finals of the competition in March 1986 winning 2-0 with goals from Steve Moran and Glenn Cockerill.

So overall its 44 games played so far and for us 23 wins, 13 draws and only 8 wins for Brighton.

Hopefully we will improve this further on Saturday.

Photo: Action Images

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