Making Martin Perry vice president is recognition of an unsung hero
When people talk about the men who saved Brighton & Hove Albion, they tend to focus on two names. Dick Knight and Tony Bloom.
Without Knight, the club would have gone out of business in 1997. It might have gone under in 1998 at Gillingham, 1999 at Withdean or in any of the following 10 years before Bloom officially took over as chairman.
Without Bloom and his many millions, the Amex would never have been built. There would be no state-of-the-art training ground and no Premier League football.
Yet there is a third man who has been there for it all, alongside both Knight and Bloom. Martin Perry has had 23 years of service at the Albion, in which time he masterminded the move to Withdean, the Amex and the new training ground.
Knight had the passion and the drive to keep the Albion alive, Bloom the vision and the deep pockets. But it’s Perry’s brain and dedication that has given the club the world class facilities that have been crucial to its success.
According to the official Albion website, Perry has submitted 77 different planning applications. By the time he retires next September, he will have spent nearly £200m on infrastructure projects, transforming Brighton from a club playing home games 71 miles away in Gillingham to a club with one of the finest stadiums in the land.
Perry had experience of large infrastructure projects having worked as Alfred McAlpine’s special projects manager before Knight invited him to join his consortium trying to wrest the club out of the hands of Archer.
That is why the Amex and its arches bear a resemblance to Huddersfield Town‘s stadium formely known as the McApline, which Perry worked on before his Brighton days.
He became an acting director when Knight finally seized control the day before the final game at the Goldstone in April 1997, was named a fully fledged director six months later and was appointed chief executive in 1999, a role he held until Paul Barber’s arrival in 2012.
In that time, Perry eventually won an eight year battle for planning permission for a new stadium at Falmer. While some may have admitted defeat as public inquiries were closed and reopened, permission was won and then quashed and there were days on end at planning meetings dedicated to talking about endangered bats in the Woodingdean area, Perry never gave up. The Amex is a legacy to his perseverance.
After delivering the stadium – and then the expansion that followed at the end of the first season – attention turned to providing the club with a training facility everything as impressive as their new home.
Perry was tasked with delivering that. Getting the development at New Monks Farm built proved to be much easier than the stadium and within two years of submitting their planning application, the American Express Elite Performance Centre opened at a cost of £32m.
Perry’s final job before retiring was to oversee a £25m expansion of the facility, improving further on the already world class facilities the Albion possess.
It says much about Perry’s expertise and professionalism that while Knight and Bloom are barely on speaking terms, he has served under both chairman with such distinction.
They both knew they could trust Perry to deliver complex projects and that he would never give up until the job was done. It is those qualities that have put the Albion in such a strong position today.
Perry’s retirement will leave a gaping hole at the club, and it’s only right that Bloom has decided to honour him with the title of honorary vice president. It’s the least he deserves for 22 years as the Albion’s unsung hero.
It should also guarantee that we continue seeing Perry around the Amex. One of the most extraordinary things about him is that whenever we see him, he always seems to have some outrageously fit woman hanging off his arm.
This reached its nadir when we managed to gatecrash the player’s League One promotion party in Vodka Revs after the 4-3 Tuesday night victory over Dagenham and Redbridge.
Being invited in by Charlie Oatway, doing shots with Casper Ankergren and having Adam El-Abd pour vodka into our mouths straight from a two litre bottle were fantastic moments.
But nothing will beat seeing a delighted Perry on the dance floor with two blondes on either arm. An absolute Albion legend, just in case you were still in any doubt.
