like the Dalai Lama,’ says season-ticket holder Dave Cauvin. ‘We believe we’ll be restored to our rightful position eventually.’ Quizzed on the 2–0 and 3–0 defeats at St Mary’s, he shrugs and smiles. ‘We just might have a slightly longer wait than we expected.’ 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 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 after 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.
If this Premiership adventure lasts just a season, it won’t make any odds to Pompey season-ticket holder Mike Hall. ‘Southampton shouldn’t even be bothered about us, but they are. 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 really want to beat us. They’ve got an inferiority complex, which I love to poke. 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 can beat us as many times as they like, they’re not a bigger club and never will be. They’ve taken a tiny club and made a success of it. What they’ve had in their favour is superb and stable management – we had forty years where if there was a decision that could be taken for the worse, we took 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. People who get involved with Southampton are businessmen, because we’re a sleeping giant we attracted the vainglorious and self-aggrandising. Southampton could carry on as they are, but they’ll never be any bigger – we’re limitless,’ he adds, citing the potential catchment area to the north and east of Portsmouth of anything between 750,000 and a million people.
Perhaps the last word should lie with the late Marty ‘Docker’ Hughes, a Pompey obsessive who stood for Parliament in the General Election of June 1987. Hughes, the mascot of Pompey’s 6.57 Crew, polled 455 votes on a manifesto that, though mostly verging on the bizarre – the banning of ‘Robsons’ and ‘Waddles’ as acceptable haircuts – demanded that Portsmouth be removed from Hampshire. It was enough to split the vote in Portsmouth South, Liberal Mike Hancock losing his seat by 205 votes.
The M275, 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 thirty 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. ‘It is a doubt to me if there is such another collection of demons upon the whole earth,’ wrote General James Wolfe of Portsmouth in 1758, days before leaving to meet his death liberating Canada from the French.
For anyone wearing red and white, it will seem precious little has changed when that whistle blows on 21 March.
‘Getting on with the Neighbours?’ Millwall v West Ham, March 2004
It is billed as the ultimate hate match, but is the eternal feud between Millwall and West Ham really just a chirpy Cockney squabble?
‘DON’T do it, chums! DON’T throw soil, cinders, clinkers, stones, bricks, bottles, cups, fireworks or other kinds of explosives, apples, oranges, etc. on the playing pitch during or after the match. DON’T barrack, utter filthy abuse, or molest in any way the players of the visiting team.’
Millwall warning notice 1949–50
‘Oh, Wisey! Woah ah ah oh! Oh, Wisey! Woah ah ah oh! He’s only five-foot-four! He’ll break your fackin’ jaw!’ Flooding out of the New Den into glorious afternoon sunshine, you’ve never seen so many cheerful, rosy-cheeked and twinkly-eyed south Londoners. ‘From henceforth, Mother’s Day shall be known as Scummer’s Day,’ chortles a wit. Millwall have just beaten West Ham and dozens of delirious dirty (and not so dirty) denizens are on their mobile dogs, imparting this information to a woman apparently called Anne.
‘Four-one! ANNE it could have been seven! ANNE we missed two penalties! ANNE their keeper got fackin’ sent off!’
I’m trying to fit in. By not looking like a soft, middle-class, Northern homosexual who likes opera, real ale, and kittens. I’ve done me homework. I’ve got a copy of the Millwall fanzine The Lion Roars in me sky rocket. Inside is a savage attack on an Evening Standard article entitled ‘50 Things Every Londoner Should Do This Year’. Number 17 is ‘Go for pie and mash’. To which a disgusted reader replies: ‘Do not do this as a novelty, do this as part of everyday life.’
EIGHT GREAT HATE DATES
1903
West Ham 1 Millwall 7
After reaching the FA Cup semi-final for the first (but not the last) time, Millwall also reach the semi-final of the Professional Charity cup. Where they thrash the Hammers 7–1.
So there I am. Trying to blend in. Trying to look like the sort of tasty geezer who has lavverly-jabberly pie & mash (& ‘licker’) on a routine basis. And who hates West Ham, not because they’re Cockneys but – get this – because they’re not Cockney enough. Which they achieve by, er, being too Cockney (choke on THAT, surrealism fans).
Of course nobody in football really needs a reason to hate the scum from up the road. But Millwall make a pretty decent fist of it. The Lion Roars fanzine hates West Ham ‘because they won the World Cup and are the “Academy of Football” and are loveable, cheeky barrow boys and that lovely Alf Garnett, wasn’t he funny? Grrrrr!’
From the Millwall perspective, says Garry Robson, author of No One Likes Us We Don’t Care – The Myth And Reality Of Millwall Fandom, the rivalry with West Ham ‘is played out entirely in terms of toughness, virility, and cultural authenticity within Londonness.’
John, a Millwall fan quoted by Garry Robson, states this in plainer language: ‘They’re all fakers over there – the “East End”, all that “loveable Cockney” bollocks. And this thing with the Krays, and it’s gone on and on and on and on. Like they’re all loveable Cockney rogues. They all love the Queen Mum and it was bombed during the war. With us it’s, like, they’re all thieves and gangsters over there, but with them it’s, oh they might be thieves, but they’ve all got hearts of gold and they all have nice street parties and they’re not really bad lads. Like they keep saying about the Krays – you could always leave your door open. It’s all bollocks.’
West Ham, on the other hand, would ‘rarver fack a bucket/wiv a big hole innit/than be a Millwall fan/for just one minute’. And tend to look down on ‘Scumwall’ as ‘pikeys’. ‘They really are scum,’ explains Hammers fan Pete. ‘I mean, I was on the train once and there was this Millwall fan. He was asleep, he was about 60, really revolting looking. And he had “I Love Sex” tattooed
