Tudgay strike shows Derby strength through adversity

Brighton & Hove Albion 2 - Derby County 3

There is something remorseless about Derby away from home these days. Despite twice conceding equalisers and having their captain, Ian Taylor, controversially sent off, they held on for a fifth successive away victory that pulled them level on points with fourth-placed Reading.

In the end, though, it was holding on, as Lee Camp twice saved well from Mark McCammon and Leon Knight hooked wide from five yards. Derby, though, probably just about deserved it, even after going down to 10 men.

Mark McGhee, the Brighton manager, had called on his side to show a "backbone of steel", an odd anatomical concept that would presumably explain just why his side seemed so static at times in the first half. Certainly there didn't seem much capacity for movement when Kerry Mayo's misplaced pass was collected by Morten Bisgaard after 13 minutes. The Danish midfielder exchanged the simplest of passes with Grzegorz Rasiak and slid his finish calmly past David Yelldell.

Brighton equalised almost immediately as McCammon muscled on to Mayo's cross, but Derby regained the lead four minutes before half-time. There was nothing especially taxing about Jeff Kenna's ball into the box, but Yelldell fumbled, and Marcus Tudgay jabbed into an untended net. The keeper may have survived his ordeal by pink shirt at Elland Road last week, but this was far worse humiliation.

He was forced then to change by a referee concerned his yellow top would clash with his own, and the fashion police were out again yesterday, Fred Graham, the referee, deciding that Derby's white shirts were too similar to Brighton's blue-and-white stripes, forcing the Rams into their black training tops.

The Derby manager, George Burley, described Graham's performance as "very questionable". If the fuss he made over the shirts was an irritant, the sending-off of Taylor was something else. McCammon had by then added his second, Gary Hart's inadvertent flick cannoning in off his shins, and when the red card was produced for a shove on Knight, Brighton must have thought the game was there for the taking.

But Derby retained their composure and took the lead again, Tudgay running on to Kenna's long pass to score. Older Derby fans may recall another run of five away wins and an enforced change of shorts at an away game at Millwall; that was April 1969, and the Rams were on their way to the Second Division championship under Brian Clough. That may be beyond this side, but the play-offs are certainly within their grasp.