Burnley, beautiful Burnley. And that's not a description I ever imagined could trip lightly off the tongue.

But beautiful it was, if only for 90 minutes last Saturday. Even the goalless draw against Coventry on Tuesday hasn't totally burst the Burnley Bubble. It was a legendary sort of day, for reasons that go beyond the beating that their boys took on the field.

This time last year, walking cautiously through the field of cowpats that lead to Cambridge's Abbey Stadium, some of us were wondering how the Albion would cope with the Second Division.

Ironically, as it turned out, a lot better than Cambridge! At Burnley, Brighton were back again, facing a new season in a new division.

The immediate difference between the divisions was obvious before the players came out of the tunnel at Turf Moor. Because Turf Moor is not the sort of stadium we've seen much of recently. Especially 'Oop North' where there's plenty of grounds that exude 'flat cap and whippet' from every nook and cranny. Turf Moor is no Mansfield or York; apart from its size, it has all sorts of unusual extras, like enough pies to go round at half-time, presumably because they aren't catering for clubs who think that 3,500 is a record-breaking attendance, easily satisfied by laying into a value pack of bite-size custard creams.

Having taken a gander at Burnley and its surroundings on the way, it was impossible not to wonder (for the umpteenth time) why the Albion keep facing obstacles placed in the way of achieving something that is taken for granted by clubs in quite modest places like Burnley. Call me biased on this one but Burnley doesn't stand up to comparison with Brighton by any sort of criteria you could dream up. Which is why, not having anything even vaguely comparable in stadium terms, is downright iniquitous.

Another feature of the First Division was apparent at Tuesday's game against Coventry. The opposition now includes players that you've actually heard of. And not just because they're serving out their sunset years dribbling down the wing until they retire to run a dodgy pub in Dudley.

This season, it's impossible to think about opposition without that Theatre of Nightmares in Croydon springing to mind and, on Tuesday night, I nearly choked on my post-match lager when someone on the radio suggested that the Brighton and Palace rivalry was "silly". That it had gone on quite long enough. That this terrible sentiment was expressed at all was one thing, that it was said in the sort of tone your mother used to use when trying to stop you eating peas off your knife was another.

Because it was a Close Encounter of the Smellhurst Kind that topped off the whole Burnley experience. Having flown to Manchester with a Palace party bound for Preston North End and enjoyed a congenial debate about mutual hatred while waiting to take-off, we knew we'd all be catching the same flight home. However, none of us knew we'd be making the return journey with Hinsh's victorious Band.

Remember Boxing Day? Forget it! As the Palace fans straggled back into the departure lounge, it was as if all their Christmases had come at once. The flight home was superb and we parted company wishing each other bad luck for the rest of the season. But without the rivalry, this unique event wouldn't have meant anything. As a Palace lad said: "A decent team wouldn't travel with riff-raff like us!" Yet the plane also had a quota of red-shirted people who clearly think their Man United is a "decent" team. But their return home to London suburbia was barely noticed by the real football fans. Give me "silly" any day. Boca Juniors are nobody's rivals where it matters!

Roz South edits Brighton Rockz fanzine, email: roz@southspark.co.uk
Saturday August 17