YOU MAY have missed Luton Town’s dramatic penalty shootout victory over Brighton in the Johnstone’s Paint Trophy in midweek; the papers, the following morning, were full of such fabulously interesting stuff from the Premier League that there was little space left for a tie between two beleaguered and bereft clubs from the nether regions of the football league. Page after page of “Hiddink - I think Chelsea are quite good” and “Ferguson - I really hope we win the league” were the startling stories that may have diverted away your attention from this football match in a competition that doesn’t, if we’re honest, matter very much.

My attention was focused on the game for reasons not entirely noble. I was hoping that several of Brighton’s key players might be badly maimed so that they would miss yesterday’s game against Millwall.

Brighton are one of our bogey teams; it does not matter how much obscene and homophobic abuse we rain down upon them, they always seem to beat us. In point of fact, Millwall have somewhere in the region of 72 bogey teams, sides that, uncannily, stuff us at home and away.

The only team we always beat is West Ham United and that is good enough for me. Brighton also get us into trouble, indirectly. A few years ago the Sun sent a black reporter to see if there was racist abuse being doled out at The Den in a game against Brighton. Shocked to the core, he reported that Millwall fans had been singing “Sieg Heil” through the game - big headlines, then, about Britain’s horrible, infamous neo-Nazi football club. Only later did the idiot ’fess up and admit that, upon reflection, what he had actually heard was Brighton fans singing “Sea-gulls, sea-gulls!” I’m not sure what I’d be more embarrassed to sing.

Morally I suppose I’d prefer to sing “sea-gullllls”, as nobody has ever accused a herring gull of being anti-Semitic, although I’ve always thought those raucous, stumpy little blackheaded gulls were well to the right of centre politically, potential National Socialists in the making. The reporter either ignored, or missed, the homophobic abuse, of which the mildest was “we can see you holding hands”.

But anyway, Luton eventually overcame Brighton in the penalty shootout by four goals to three and booked their place at Wembley for the final against the excellent Scunthorpe United. They deserved their victory, having dominated for the majority of the match. Most remarkable was the reaction of the players at the final whistle, the Brighton side almost in tears, bereft, and Luton’s players suffused with what was real, rather than faux, ecstasy. They both wanted that match badly. And so too did the fans, nearly 9,000 of whom turned out to support their teams.

Few clubs have had it harder than Luton these past five years, although Brighton run them close. The final will almost certainly be Luton’s last hurrah as a league club, having been saddled at the start of the season with a 30-point deduction that they never remotely looked like making up, despite the ineptitude of some of the League Two teams around them.

Luton have, indeed, been horribly mismanaged at executive level, but the punishment was doled out primarily to the fans and the players who, you might argue, were quite blameless. Precisely the reverse decision was taken in the case of West Ham United. I have no historic affection for Luton and for a while, back in the 1980s, cultivated a sort of loathing for them on account of their pig-headed, bull-necked Thatcherite chairman, the Conservative MP David Evans. But Luton is a big town; it deserves to have a league club, no matter how the authorities may attempt to ensure the contrary.

Brighton are now managerless and hovering uncomfortably above the trapdoor to League Two, their problems having been exacerbated by not having a stadium in which to play their home games. For what seems an eternity they have been forced to play their home matches in the local park with jumpers for goalposts and having to stop games halfway through when the local cub scouts turn up to play rounders. Well, I exaggerate, but not by very much. You can see, in these twin versions of football bleakness, why the players and fans invested so much in that game last week.

Luton’s victory will have been genuinely affecting for the fans, every bit as thrilling as a Champions League encounter, and mattering just as much. I wish them luck against Scunny, although without much conviction, because their opponents are a well-run club with a sharp team of players. They’re another of Millwall’s bogey teams.

You hope the supporters of the big Premier League clubs look downwards at the likes of Brighton and Luton with the realisation that there but for the grace of God, etc. Though I doubt that they do. Football has ridden out the credit crunch, suffering only apparently minimal impact. That, surely, cannot be the case for much longer. Luton and Brighton may be the future some of our top clubs have to look forward to.