Toggle navigation Subscribe. The real story of the Saints v Pompey rivalry. By Carl Anka Sep 20, A good derby needs a number of ingredients. Proximity helps.
There has to be a rivalry between the people, as well as the football clubs, too. A shared culture or language adds to the flavour, but there also need to be one or two key differences, be it in social status, political stance, or simply who won the last major trophy, in order for things to get truly spicy.
For Southampton and Portsmouth, everything since the draw for the third round of the Carabao Cup has been a prelude to next Tuesday. The return of the South Coast Derby after seven and a half years. At Fratton Park. At night. Under the lights. The Hampshire derby was a fixture played in good faith for much of the first half of the 20th century. Save my name and email in this browser for the next time I comment. From the early post-WW2 years and until this very day, Formula One has been the epitome of motorsports all around the world, and especially in Europe.
The sounds of the engines, the glamour in Real Madrid is one of the biggest football clubs in the world, and it has the financial clout to back that up. However, with so many clubs affected by the worldwide pandemic in , debts are rising Skip to content. Facilities are best described as idiosyncratic.
Until the arrival of Mandaric, toilet paper was something of a luxury. Yet the switch in the clubs' fortunes, far from cowing Pompey fans, seems to have made them more grimly determined to hold on to a history they feel establishes them as the region's top dog. It's a touchingly unswerving loyalty, akin to watching a drunk clutch a bottle with just a dribble inside as if his life depended on it. Some fans are so keen to "stand up if you hate the Scum", it'd be a surprise to find a sofa in their lounge.
Talk in the pub following Pompey's defeat at Chelsea three days after Christmas wasn't about the game, or Abramovich's millions. It was all about Wayne Bridge. Having been "scummed" incessantly for an hour, the Southampton-born ex-Saint celebrated his goal by cavorting along the touchline in front of the visiting fans, face contorted with glee. Bridge was soon shopping for a new mobile phone. His number, apparently passed on by an old mate, had become rather busy. Their problem is not really the fans, it's what everyone else in the country thinks about the two clubs — that Pompey is the proper club, the bigger club, the working-class club with the passionate fans and the singing.
We're seen as a sleeping giant, they're a club that got lucky. They go out of their way to try and rub it in, while we're like the knight in Monty Python and the Holy Grail who fights on while his limbs are chopped off. They've taken a tiny club and made a success of it. We've been monumentally impotent and things had to get as bad as they got at Pompey before people came in who realised it would cost more than a fiver to turn things around.
It was enough to split the vote in Portsmouth South, Liberal Mike Hancock losing his seat by votes. The planet's greatest rivalries The M, arcing out of the city past the ferry terminal and the tower blocks of Stamshaw and Buckland, fast-tracks you to the M27 and Southampton in just 30 minutes. For many inhabitants of this fiercely-proud island, it might as well be Mars. Crumbling Fratton Park, with its Archibald Leitch stand and mock-Tudor entrance will groan with the weight of history in a couple of weeks.
For anyone wearing red and white, it will seem precious little has changed when that whistle blows on March This feature first appeared in the April issue of FourFourTwo magazine. While you're here, why not take advantage of our brilliant subscribers' offer?
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There was a problem. Please refresh the page and try again. The only thing that id disagree with in the article is putting the word Great before Pompey. Pompeys hatred of Southampton is purely based on little man syndrome SaintNick I am not going to get involved with silly petty insults but having worked in both Southampton and then Portsmouth docks at the time the ferries moved I am telling it as it was, if you don't want to believe me so be it.
There was no legitimate strike in Southampton against the ferries moving and there was no picketing, in fact the ferries and small cargo ships for that matter moved to Portsmouth over a period of years for the commercial reasons I've already mentioned.
No doubt the appalling labour relations, strikes and generally poor reputation of Southampton dock workers at the time also played its part in the decisions. Guess what matey there are lots of Tory voting Saints fans and a shed load of labour voting skates. Cheap shots like that just detract from the overall argument.
That said, all skates are of course coonts. SaintNick I don't know what legitimate strike you are talking about, the ferries and small cargo ships didn't all up and leave Southampton on the same day it was a gradual process over the years.
When Portsmouth ferry port opened it was a small 1 berth operation with only 1 ship operated by Brittany Ferries who to my knowledge never sailed from Southampton employing a handful of dockers who were hardly in a position to "crush the dock labour scheme", the other ferries moved over a period of time.
You seem to be trying to defend the dock labour scheme which was one of the worst examples of restrictive practices and needed to be abolished. I can't remember a strike in Portsmouth docks but I left the industry and the area some 20 years ago so can't be sure, but surely no strikes are a good thing. I still maintain the reason the ferries moved was purely commercial, if you want to believe otherwise that's your choice.
Not sure about the strike in the 80's, from memory, wasnt everybody on strike at that time! The only record of a picket line being broken was in the late 19th century at Southampton No 4 gate, Broken by The Royal Artillery who was based at Portsmouth Naval Dock yard. A great Article and about time the Portsmyth nonsense was exposed. Looking forward to the next installment. That myth was actually created as recently as the early s by a spoof story in a Pompey fanzine called Frattonize in which Southampton Corporation Union Men broke a strike by the Portsmouth Fish Corporation.
This quickly got elaborated upon by Pompey fans to portray themselves as working class heroes. Then their spokesmen, especially Colin Farmery, started pushing this myth to the media before recent derby games. London football fans, especially Millwall started calling rivals Scum in the s and Saints and Pompey fans, amongst others, copied this. Contrary to what people might say, you really never heard it before then. According to the Oxford Dictionary, Scummers is an old word for pirates or buccaneers, and its first recorded use was in
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