As a seagulls supporter and season ticket holder for nearly ten years, I would like to thank you for your excellent coverage of the Falmer Stadium inquiry.

However, after reading the article "A village saved for now" (July 28), I would like to respond to two comments which have left me incensed.

Pete Lenihan, a tenant farmer in Falmer, says: "People were worried the village would be flooded with by football hooligans."

Please, Mr Lenihan, don't stereotype all football supporters as hooligans. Brighton and Hove Albion have an excellent record of crowd control at Withdean and I am sure that if you ask residents of Withdean, they will echo these views. Large parts of the Withdean crowds are families, pensioners and women who simply enjoy football and the passion which surrounds it.

Albion fans were voted the best in the country by the football fans federation, which is a body of supporters clubs across the UK. Before calling us hooligans, please get your facts right.

Michele Nocentini says the Falmer Stadium "would change the character of the village and the whole aura would be destroyed. The people who come and sit around the pond will lose a place they can take a quiet moment in which to take a step back".

Firstly, the stadium would be a good few hundred yards from the pond, thus leaving that area intact. Secondly, football is played for nine months of the year, usually once a fortnight for two hours.

This leaves you 13 other days before another match to enjoy the pond. Are you really telling me that the Falmer residents sit around the pond from October to April?

The nature of football fixtures means that the number of days the village would have any inconvenience is very few.

I am sure that after the second planning inquiry the Falmer site will emerge once again as the only site to fit into the tight planning guidelines issued by John Prescott.

It will be clear for all to see that Falmer is the best site and then the club can move to a thoroughly deserved and fantastic new arena to enable them to fulfil their potential.

-Keith Brown (season ticket holder), Hassocks