Rivals in this league

[kieran_vale]

For any of our Walsall friends on here DC has made his contribution on this topic tonight at our supporters club meeting.

Q to DC: Are there any fixtures you're looking forward to this year?

A: Walsall.#PVFC

— Port Vale Supporters Club (@ValeSupporters) September 2, 2021

 

[BarraMatt]

For any of our Walsall friends on here DC has made his contribution on this topic tonight at our supporters club meeting.

Q to DC: Are there any fixtures you're looking forward to this year?

A: Walsall.#PVFC

— Port Vale Supporters Club (@ValeSupporters) September 2, 2021

*Sets reminder to buy Vale v Walsall iFollow pass*

 

[saddler78]

For any of our Walsall friends on here DC has made his contribution on this topic tonight at our supporters club meeting.

Q to DC: Are there any fixtures you're looking forward to this year?

A: Walsall.#PVFC

— Port Vale Supporters Club (@ValeSupporters) September 2, 2021

Fair play he knows he is going to get dogs abuse when we play each other anyway whatever he says so he might as well stoke the fire a bit more lol.I didnt dislike him as much as some of our fans we plummeted when he left a lot of that was down to not replacing Adebayo though he can come across as arrogant sometimes but people i know who have met him say he isnt like that when the cameras are off and is a decent bloke.

 

[kieran_vale]

Fair play he knows he is going to get dogs abuse when we play each other anyway whatever he says so he might as well stoke the fire a bit more lol.I didnt dislike him as much as some of our fans we plummeted when he left a lot of that was down to not replacing Adebayo though he can come across as arrogant sometimes but people i know who have met him say he isnt like that when the cameras are off and is a decent bloke.

Aye to be honest in DC’s case he might as well embrace it, all good fun I say. He knows full well that will have got back to Walsall fans in seconds especially these days. Should all make for a great atmosphere when we do play, shame the game at VP is a midweek one but will still be one to circle on the calendar.

I can understand some not liking how he comes across, a small minority of Vale fans haven’t liked it either. Personally I do like his shoot from the hip style. It is refreshing from John Askeys platitudes he just came out with.

 

[Salvador]

Surely that’s more your fuck up? (obviously i know you’re being ironic in the post)

We were about 10 points clear of 4th place under flitcroft in february and fucked it up meaning we had a last game showdown with MK dons, which we lost.

I don’t hate MK because of that, we fucked it up ourselves

100% our crap form the cause. We obviously went up anyway, but some fans still dislike Notts

A link in the 2 stories given Flitcroft was No.2 at the time.

 

[Uncle Pastuzo]

I strongly agree on reciprocity. A lot of our supporters say Cardiff, but it's more than 30 years since we were in the same division, and then only briefly. Frankly I find abuse of Cardiff it a bit cringeworthy these days especially after we borrowed their training facilities before our first playoff final and then used their ground a couple of times last season when our pitch died. That said, I never worked locally so never got the piss taken by colleagues.

When we were non-league there was some gloating when we beat them once or twice in the now defunct FAW Premier Cup - a concoction for TV which channelled huge sums in licence money to mostly League of Wales clubs - but it was their reserves.

These days there's animosity towards Wrexham, who we played for three seasons in the Conference. Some of it stems from a fear that if they ever regain league status BBC Wales will upgrade coverage of them as representing North Wales, with Swansea for the south-west, Cardiff for the south-east and Newport losing out.

 

[MadJohn]

I don't understand feeling animosity towards a non-local team that pips you to a title unless there's more to the story than that (e.g. Dagenham v Boston). Our own hard luck story came in 2002/03 when we were promotion favourites under Chris Turner after three consecutive playoff defeats. We led the table for almost the whole season, but lost Turner to Sheff Wed in early November. Mike Newell replaced him, his first management job, but the bandwagon kept rolling. After briefly losing the lead at Christmas, Newell's Pools steamrollered their way through Jan and Feb, and entered March with 70 points already on the board, and a 14 point lead.

We blew it. 3 wins in the next 12 saw us two points behind the leaders (Rushden) going into the last game (at Rushden). One more chance. We blew that too, a 1-1 draw condemning us to second place. There was no ill will towards R&D beyond the usual sniffing at a new club with new fans. All anger was aimed at Newell, who lost his job despite a 13-9-6 league record. There was no gloating a year later when we made the L1 playoffs and Rushden were relegated. My only personal gripe is that I wish we'd been caught by a club whose fans knew what it meant (had the season been a few weeks longer, we would've been; Wrexham finished the season like an avalanche). Rushden's celebrations were so polite and restrained, a fanbase used to winning. Had it been us, that away end would have got messy!

 

[BigDaveCUFC]

I have never drastically ever felt Carlisle have a rival as such and never will it would be Workington but the gap between both is massive and doubtful moving.

We have big games though more by games we take more fans to or have some good history behind. I’d say of any of the clubs Darlington would have been closest as they would bring good numbers here and vice versa, Blackpool was another one. They had other main rivals but at least treated it as a good heated game.

bizarrely I usually looked forward to Orient, not a rival game but it was always southern Carlisle fans no.1 game so led to good away numbers and we had so much history behind it, you could discuss the good games, bad games, controversial games.

we have no rivals but I don’t mind it Carlisle way, others wait like mad for their one big game assuming they get the odd season in same league………our way gives us 3-4 good games every season as we adapt afew games to attract more home and away support and make the game more interesting than the norm

 

[shoddycollins]

Only Plymouth for us. Others don’t come anywhere near. Torquay seem to consider us a big rival but not really reciprocated by most of our support. Like most clubs we develop short lived ones from unlikely places which always fall away in the medium term. Aldershot in our conference days seemed to be a tad more tasty than other games, but only a tad !

For those of a certain age, Helen Chamberlain definitely built up the Torquay/Exeter thing as being THE Devon rivalry. I'm sure at one point (to be fair I think this was a spell during which Plymouth were in the second flight and the other two in the basement) she said neither Exeter nor Torquay fans care about Plymouth.

Maybe though she was being tongue in cheek and I was just too young to get the nuance of it, but either way until relatively recently, when Exeter and Plymouth have ended up in the same division, I thought Torquay were considered the main rivals by Exeter.

 

[shoddycollins]

Records show that FGR have never played Hartlepool, so unlikely you've ever seen FGR play live.
Sorry but your opinions are therefore 2nd hand and must be dismissed.

Most FGR fans are looking forward to our visit up North to play proud historic Hartlepool [distance excepted].
Be sure most of us will be buying a burger from the snack store.
It is our Chairman who insists of Vegan policy for club but by golly it is working. FGR probably have better sponsorship deals than any other EFL2 club, partly because of that policy.
So call us Vegans and watch the cash roll in.

I'm not aware he expressed an opinion, he just agreed with Salvador and then made a pun on the word 'beef'.

Our chairman is bessie mates with Dale Vince now after initially failing to understand the concept of veganism (wondering if the menu at FGR shouldn't contain a non-vegan option).

 

[shoddycollins]

Our rival is Graham Westley

 

[valefan16]

The Swindon v Hartlepool was always a draw and we’d have done the same, issue was we’d blown the 3-0 lead against Swindon not to mention countless leads to lose away from home that season (Wycombe, Plymouth, QPR, Blackpool off top of head)

Had we made it I fancied us to go up, we’d double Bristol City that season (think we battered them at home but might have been season after).

Hartlepool is always a quirky one, they seem to beat us every time in the league but we always absolutely smash them in cup games! 6-0, 6-2 and 4-0 in the last three cup ties!

 

[shoddycollins]

I remember us playing alfreton for a few seasons in the conference and it was like massive to them.

I’m sure that the carlisle barrow “derby” is only 1 way, surely the carlisle fans with respect wouldn’t give the slightest fuck about barrow?

There's always local bragging rights, and even though we've never been seriously challenged up til now for the mantle of 'Cumbria's #1 team' when you make the region you're based in also your official nickname then you best make sure that you're the top team in that region. Not sure how we'd react if (god-forbid) Barrow ended up in a higher division than us... change our nickname back to the foxes or something like that?

Imagine the mocking they'd get if Grimsby decided their nickname should be 'the Humbersiders', or the sheer perplexment if Orient tried to lay claim to 'the Londonders'.

I think a lot of Barrow fans would also claim that we aren't a rivalry, but would also really love it if our match commentaries got relegated to the AM frequency; so fans of both teams end up being of the attitude that 'they aren't a rival, I'm actually offended that you think we care that much about them... that said we really reeeeally want to beat them'. The fans of the rugby league teams in West Cumbria hate us just as much for the same reason and now probably also hate Barrow since their promotion has left even less time in BBCRC's schedule to discuss eggchasing.

And the younger fans of all teams will develop rivalries of their own if there isn't a ready made one because they're more into the banter, if this leads to games between those teams becoming noisy affairs with big crowds (such as with ourselves and Hartlepool) then that does kind of rub off on the older fans. I'm sure for all that Darlo are their one true rival, Hartlepool fans of all ages aren't that into us since we damaged their away end twice in recent memory.

 

[shoddycollins]

I strongly agree on reciprocity. A lot of our supporters say Cardiff, but it's more than 30 years since we were in the same division, and then only briefly. Frankly I find abuse of Cardiff it a bit cringeworthy these days especially after we borrowed their training facilities before our first playoff final and then used their ground a couple of times last season when our pitch died. That said, I never worked locally so never got the piss taken by colleagues.

Similar with us and Preston, there was a period (before my time) when we had a good long spell as a second flight team and some older fans have a lingering sense of rivalry with Preston, then this was taken up by younger fans when we were most recently in League One with them, and we took over 5,000 to Deepdale.

Bit embarrasing now though when you hear the odd 'we hate Preston' tacked on the end of Carlisle songs by odd little clusters of folks here and there... given that they let us play a home game at Deepdale when Brunton Park was flooded. A decent contingent of North End fans actually came to that game, just for something different and to show a bit of support, and we then got a lot of sympathy from them (unsurprisingly) when a minority of Blackpool fans decided that our acceptance of Karl Oyston's offer to also play a game at Bloomfield Road implied support for him and his regime and must be punished accordingly.

 

[MadJohn]

The Swindon v Hartlepool was always a draw and we’d have done the same, issue was we’d blown the 3-0 lead against Swindon not to mention countless leads to lose away from home that season (Wycombe, Plymouth, QPR, Blackpool off top of head)

Had we made it I fancied us to go up, we’d double Bristol City that season (think we battered them at home but might have been season after).

Hartlepool is always a quirky one, they seem to beat us every time in the league but we always absolutely smash them in cup games! 6-0, 6-2 and 4-0 in the last three cup ties!

Yeah, our recent record against Vale is a bit weird. We've won seven of the last eight league games including each of our last four visits to VP. This is after winning on just one of our first 19 visits.

But yes, our last three FA Cup encounters have been laughably one-sided. In fairness, one of those ties (the one in 94/5) was understandable. We were struggling in this division; Vale were second tier, and in most other seasons wouldn't have been playing in the first round. It was as hard a tie as we could have been given.

Less excuse for the other two thumpings though!

 

[shoddycollins]

bizarrely I usually looked forward to Orient, not a rival game but it was always southern Carlisle fans no.1 game so led to good away numbers and we had so much history behind it, you could discuss the good games, bad games, controversial games.

For a while it seemed like you were guaranteed five goals minimum in games between ourselves and Orient... that was in L1 though.

Maybe it's the Wyvern thing.

 

[Trapdoor]

For those of a certain age, Helen Chamberlain definitely built up the Torquay/Exeter thing as being THE Devon rivalry. I'm sure at one point (to be fair I think this was a spell during which Plymouth were in the second flight and the other two in the basement) she said neither Exeter nor Torquay fans care about Plymouth.

Maybe though she was being tongue in cheek and I was just too young to get the nuance of it, but either way until relatively recently, when Exeter and Plymouth have ended up in the same division, I thought Torquay were considered the main rivals by Exeter.

Chamberpot was and still is clueless.

We have never given a shit about Torquay. I don't know where she got that idea from unless she was just trolling. We only have one rival and that's the gaws (Arg*le).

In fact a lot of our fans want Torquay to do well because it's sad to see a league club with history languishing in non-league. Contrast to the dirty gargs who I hope go bust and never return to league football.

 

[shoddycollins]

We have never given a shit about Torquay. I don't know where she got that idea from unless she was just trolling.

That is something that I consider in retrospect was possible as I'm sure she said it on numerous occasions and now it seems like she must have known that Torquay were the third Devon team that nobody really hates. She was working in the field of light entertainment after all and might just have been early Soccer-AM 'bantz'.

 

[Si Robin]

Did anyone have ITV Digital when they had the Football League rights? ITV Sport was actually quite good with the emphasis they put on all the different leagues and they would have shows discussing the histories of rivalries, or talked about clubs in different regions, and they had one about the Devon clubs. Both Plymouth and Exeter fans referred to Torquay as like the little brother who they hoped got one over the other Devon club in their matches.

 

[saddler78]

For any of our Walsall friends on here DC has made his contribution on this topic tonight at our supporters club meeting.

Q to DC: Are there any fixtures you're looking forward to this year?

A: Walsall.#PVFC

— Port Vale Supporters Club (@ValeSupporters) September 2, 2021

 

[saddler78]

View attachment 15301

The response I came across this morning ffs lol

 

[shoddycollins]

Did anyone have ITV Digital when they had the Football League rights? ITV Sport was actually quite good with the emphasis they put on all the different leagues and they would have shows discussing the histories of rivalries, or talked about clubs in different regions, and they had one about the Devon clubs. Both Plymouth and Exeter fans referred to Torquay as like the little brother who they hoped got one over the other Devon club in their matches.

No, sadly I had a dental appointment on the day that ITV digital was a thing

 

[kieran_vale]

The response I came across this morning ffs lol

I’d seen a few quote tweets to that effect or at the very least “so are we you twat” among other things. Gone down well then I take it

I actually think if he had any real issue it’s with Pomlett and maybe Dutton rather than Walsall in general.

 

[MadJohn]

The whole Devon triangle thing is fascinating to an outsider. As the only three clubs in the area the 3-way rivalry should be pretty strong. I understand that there is a human impulse to claim the larger of your two neighbours as your rival unless that would be objectively ridiculous (neither ourselves or Darlington would claim Middlesbrough as a rival). So Exeter might claim Plymouth as the bigger deal, and Plymouth might just about reciprocate. But it's not as if Torquay are some upstart minnow. From a 300+ mile viewpoint, Exeter and Torquay are very much of a pair to me. We've played Torquay 83 times in league games, and Exeter 82 times. But we've only had 28 league meetings with Plymouth, who have generally been a fair bit better than the other two, and a fair bit better than us.

As the two geographically closest clubs, and comfortably the most regular fixture, with the closest head-to-head, Torquay vs Exeter should be the biggest rivalry. Yet it clearly isn't, I understand that. Is there some long lost incident that galvanised the bad feeling between Plymouth and Exeter?

 

[Si Robin]

I always put it down to them both being the two Devon cities.

I suppose it's similar to Cheltenham-Gloucester-FGR. Cheltenham and Gloucester are easily the largest conurbations in the county, and the rivalry is traditionally more than football (see my numerous other posts on this subject). Originally FGR were just another local club to us - The little club on the hill - then in the late 90s they bypassed Gloucester in one season and have spent the next 24 years at least a division above them. Other than being in the same League in 98/99 there was no animosity at all between Cheltenham and FGR until 2015. In fact some Cheltenham fans, including yours truly, would go to FGR games if they couldn't get to the Cheltenham away game, or we had no game at all. I even own an FGR shirt from the 06/07 season.

I believe Gloucester was similar, no animosity whatsoever, until the "El Glosico" match between the two in the FA Cup in around 2011 or so, then FGR started putting themselves around in traditionally Gloucester areas with free shirts and whatnot, so the animosity grew.

Cheltenham haven't played Gloucester in first team competitive match since 1997, so it's hard to talk about that rivalry, but Cheltenham and Gloucester will always be the big one, and FGR will always be the upstarts.

 

[MadJohn]

I always put it down to them both being the two Devon cities.

I suppose it's similar to Cheltenham-Gloucester-FGR. Cheltenham and Gloucester are easily the largest conurbations in the county, and the rivalry is traditionally more than football (see my numerous other posts on this subject). Originally FGR were just another local club to us - The little club on the hill - then in the late 90s they bypassed Gloucester in one season and have spent the next 24 years at least a division above them. Other than being in the same League in 98/99 there was no animosity at all between Cheltenham and FGR until 2015. In fact some Cheltenham fans, including yours truly, would go to FGR games if they couldn't get to the Cheltenham away game, or we had no game at all. I even own an FGR shirt from the 06/07 season.

I believe Gloucester was similar, no animosity whatsoever, until the "El Glosico" match between the two in the FA Cup in around 2011 or so, then FGR started putting themselves around in traditionally Gloucester areas with free shirts and whatnot, so the animosity grew.

Cheltenham haven't played Gloucester in first team competitive match since 1997, so it's hard to talk about that rivalry, but Cheltenham and Gloucester will always be the big one, and FGR will always be the upstarts.

Yes, that makes a lot of sense. A city rivalry larger than football would be a credible explanation.

 

[shoddycollins]

Yes, that makes a lot of sense. A city rivalry larger than football would be a credible explanation.

The Whitehaven/Workington thing is similar, the two towns are of a similar size and comfortably the main centres of West Cumbria. Huge rivalry in Rugby League and support of one club or the other is generally drawn along the border between Copeland and Allerdale.

But Workington also have a football club, Reds, and they are fairly popular in the town, nowhere near the RL club but they are a semi-professional outfit and former league club and most Workington folk, even if they support a Premier League team, or the Rugby, would say they feel an affinity for them and want them to do well as the local team.

Whitehaven doesn't have a football club in any real capacity the only club based in the town is a glorified Sunday league outfit who were only founded in 1994, they play their home games on an open park with no spectator facities, have switched from playing in North Eastern local divisions to Lancashire ones and play against teams with names such as 'Slyne with Hest' and 'Tempest United'.

You'd think that Whitehaven would be within the catchement area for Workington Reds, and outsiders often remark, given the popularity of Carlisle United in the town whether if they want to support a local team they should really be supporting Reds. But it's just not an option... people from Whitehaven won't support a Workington based sports team regardless of whether there is a team in Whitehaven.

Speedway likewise, Workington used to have a speedway team and it's one of those funny sports that is relatively popular in the handful of towns where a team exists, and totally unheard of everywhere else. The popularity of speedway never extended into Whitehaven though, despite the fact that Whitehaven residents probably live in closer proximity to a speedway stadium than residents of some large cities who have a speedway team.

 

[BarraMatt]

I don't class Carlisle as a rival, especially since we have hardly played them competitively, just a localish game. It is in the end just as quick to get to Greater Manchester from Barrow as it is to get to Carlisle.

I do enjoy the rage from some of the Carlisle contingent though when they believe we get too much radio coverage and in the case of this season where a few players left to join us.

 

[Trapdoor]

Plymouth isn't a city though. It's a town.

But that's essentially the gist of it, they are the two biggest urban areas.

 

[Si Robin]

It's been a city since 1928 has it not?