I'm not a football fan. But I am an Albion fan.

Although if they go on playing like they did last Saturday against Cheltenham (a bunch of ungentlemanly elbowing, shirt pulling, bad tackling so-and- so's if I might say) then perhaps it will be possible to be both with equal passion.

The game delivered a three-nil win and the kind of picture of Bobby Zamora in the Argus pink, that will drive local girls and certain boys in town to worship him as our own Becks-like pin-up.

All we have to do is to get him to move from where he lives in Ilford and buy a house here and everyone will be happy.

But the city bid, you ask, what has Bobby got to do with the city bid?

Well it's to do with being an Albion fan. Last week I was privileged to open an exhibition, along with the Hove MP Ivor Caplin, Albion chairman Dick Knight and the man who was really responsible for pulling it all together with Carrie Wilshire from the museum, Tim Carder, who runs the Albion Collectors and Historians Society.

It's called 'Brighton and Hove Albion - 99 Years of Entertainment and Passion'. And it's open at the Hove Museum until November 12.

That's the vicar's notices about it. But looking at it illuminates part of the soul of the town.

It is one of five enormously diverse projects the Place To Be has initiated where people curate their own display guided by the museum.

The groups, apart from the Albion, are the Big Issue, Care Co-ops who did a sculpture trail, the Gay and Lesbian Arts and Media Group and a number of children with sensory impairments.

The results of all five will be in Churchill Square on October 2 when the 100 Faces returns.

The Albion exhibition seems to me to be very much about continuity. The football team is one of the things that has always been Brighton and Hove.

It symbolises the way the Albion has, in the past and will always be able in the future, to unite the town in a common pride or even, when the team does badly, a kind of shared misery.

Often it feels like supporting the Albion is like being a Catholic. It's just one huge leap of faith. But even if, like me, you only really get in the least bit passionate about rugby or tennis and not football, the idea of a team that can lead the fortunes of the town means something.

The exhibition on charts the umbilical historical connection between the people and their team.

Naturally it is full of sentimentality. Half of soccer's appeal must surely be that it allows men to cry in public and show openly that they care about something in the world. And there were many fans there at the opening dewy eyed about the great moments at Wembley - 1983 against Manchester United and 1991 against Notts County - which were endlessly repeated on a video loop as they must have been in pub discussions and daydreams over the last 20 years.

On display there are trophies, programmes, a turnstile, many photos and the wonderful 1953 painting by Fred Yates of the Goldstone, "Saturday Afternoon".

Most moving of all at the opening there were the old stars of the Albion. Roy Jennings, once the captain, who played between 52 and 64, Eric Gill, the goalie in the Fifties, Mel Hopkins, who played for Wales, Denis Foreman, who was a double blue, playing football in the winter and county cricket for Sussex in the summer, and Stan Williams, who was transferred to Chelsea in the fifties for £6,000.

These guys are the living history of the club. And the town.

In the speeches, accompanied by our own mad eccentric fan club poet and leader, brilliantly Brighton and Hove-ly named Atilla the Stockbroker, many people said they didn't want just to look back at the glory days. Quite right. We should look forward to new glory days. And when people say to me, 'Doesn't a city need a cathedral?' (which it doesn't). I always say. No. A modern city needs a stadium, that's our cathedral now.