Dick Knight today dedicated Deputy Primer Minister John Prescott's Yes decision on Falmer to the club's brilliant fans.
The Albion chairman said, "This is triumph for our fans. Everyone works together for this football club, and it's a great demonstration of what can happen when supporters get together, get behind their club and lift it up by its boot straps - which is what has happened here.
"I'm really delighted for the thousands and thousands of Albion fans - as well as those fans all around the country who helped us and wrote to John Prescott. This is a triumph for football throughout the whole country today, because we've fought this battle and won it.
"There is real potential here. We took over 30,000 people to the Millennium Stadium 18 months ago, and yet we only play in front 7,000 people at Withdean. At least it's in Brighton, but there are a huge number of people who can't come to see us play."
Meanwhile Ken Bodfish revealed at the club's lunchtime press conference that Prescott acknowledged to him that the fans' Falmer For All Campaign - led by Paul Samrah and Tim Carder - as "the best campaign" he has ever encountered.
Falmer For All kicked off with the Yes, Yes campaign in 1998 and has since seen supporters writing a whole host of letters to different bodies, petition Number 10 Downing Street, send flowers, valentines cards and postcards to Prescott, plus a number of other activities too numerous to mention.
Knight also paid tribute to the efforts, saying, "We're pretty determined down here. We fought hard. Not many years ago this football club was bottom of the whole Football League.
"We've all come through a lot together: the fans, the board and the players. We've been through a lot and that makes today's news all the more sweeter.
"This is the day we've been working towards. We've had a hard slog and the longest-ever Public Inquiry for a football stadium, but at last justice has prevailed.
"We've now got to move forward and genuinely unleash the potential of this football club. We managed to get ourselves into the Championship without a stadium, so who knows what it possible after that?
"A city the size of Brighton & Hove clearly deserves a stadium. It's crazy that it didn't have a stadium, and I guess that's the responsibility of my predecessor all those years ago.
"Before we get to this stadium it will have been 11 years since we left the old Goldstone Ground, so we've worked through difficult seasons and managed to keep the club more than afloat."
