Saturday 16th November

[Crewelad87]

Are Crewe going to bring more than 1,200 to us?

Club just said over 1500 sold so far. Got about 150 left of allocation. We have requested more though.

 

[valefan16]

Club just said over 1500 sold so far. Got about 150 left of allocation. We have requested more though.

Should be a decent atmosphere under the lights, two games at home in a row on Sky but where the away following is set to be over 1500 (Think Walsall have flogged about 2k so far).

 

[The_Viking_Magpie]

You definitely played like you wanted it more. Dobra seemed to have reverted back to how he was when he first came to us, chucking himself about and being a right mardarse. Disappointing as he’d calmed it down a lot.

That's the Dobra we all remember and love.

 

[Scum.]

Christ you use that gif nearly as much as i’ve used the Holloway one.

 

[GEORGE]

Cool. So by that definition, Liverpool v Man Utd, Sunderland v Newcastle, Rangers v Celtic, Cardiff v Swansea and many, many more, don't count as derbies? Nah, that's ridiculous.

1) First of all I think you'll find Glasgow Rangers & Glasgow Celtic come from / play in the same city -- Clue is in the name.
2) No the rest are not derbys -- I clasify them as rivalries. Big but still a rivalry.

 

[mozzavale]

It's ok for fans of one club to regard a match as a derby, where the other set of fans don't. At the end of the day, our closest club are Stoke, we share the same City, work with each other, have friends and family that support the other club etc. It's a derby like no other, regardless of how often it happens. If you've never experienced it, you won't understand.

On the flip side, we're the closest club to Crewe (I think that's right is it not?). So they dislike us a lot more than we do them. I'm from an era when if Crewe were winning at half time, a lot of our fans cheered (early to mid 90s, before they were promoted to the Championship).

Football fans crave rivalries though, so I'm more than happy to go along with that. It will never be a derby for me though.

 

[Conker]

Ours is of course Forest though Mansfield it's there big day out when they get let out of their caves, similar to crewe at vale

Heyup mate, how you doing down here?

Forest fans don’t give a fuck about Notts County in any capacity, in fact quite a few probably support you, so it’s all a bit silly really.

Unfortunately our rival spot is taken up by our Derbyshire friends across the M1, so as discussed on here before you are unfortunately just one of those clubs nobody cares about enough to have a proper rival.

No shame in it. Plenty of other examples.

 

[Mid-Cheshire-Alex]

Funny one the Potteries derby. Stoke in a similar position to Forest in that they share a city with a much smaller team, but Forest unlike Stoke could not give a toss about the smaller team. Yet for all the perceived hatred from the Vale fans towards Stoke the last few derbys at VP have barely scrapped 10k (according to 11v11), that would be with at least 4k Stoke in there, plus one match under 9k, which probably meant more Stoke than Vale in VP, and that’s not including the daft diddy cup match the other season. Very odd, I’m sure there must be a valid reason for the poor Vale turnouts?

 

[lordofthepies]

On the flip side, we're the closest club to Crewe (I think that's right is it not?). So they dislike us a lot more than we do them. I'm from an era when if Crewe were winning at half time, a lot of our fans cheered (early to mid 90s, before they were promoted to the Championship).

A load of Stoke and Vale fans came to Wembley to cheer for us in the 1997 playoff final

 

[spireite]

think there has to be some history of rivalry too. We’re pretty close to Derby but never had a rivalry with them, partly cos we were too busy hating Mansfield and partly cos they’ve always been higher up than us so we hardly ever play them.

We always used to have a bit of beef with the Sheffield clubs but it's hilariously one sided because they genuinely couldn't give 2 hoots about us. Although did really hate losing to us. It's kind of faded away a bit now because it's a long while since we've played them.

Heyup mate, how you doing down here?

Forest fans don’t give a fuck about Notts County in any capacity, in fact quite a few probably support you, so it’s all a bit silly really.

Unfortunately our rival spot is taken up by our Derbyshire friends across the M1, so as discussed on here before you are unfortunately just one of those clubs nobody cares about enough to have a proper rival.

No shame in it. Plenty of other examples.

I've always wondered about same city/town rivalries. Can they really exist, truly? These guys must work together, drink in the same boozers, even be brothers a lot of the time. Then for 2 hours every so often pretend to hate each others guts. Feels proper performative.

 

[Soz]

Funny one the Potteries derby. Stoke in a similar position to Forest in that they share a city with a much smaller team, but Forest unlike Stoke could not give a toss about the smaller team. Yet for all the perceived hatred from the Vale fans towards Stoke the last few derbys at VP have barely scrapped 10k (according to 11v11), that would be with at least 4k Stoke in there, plus one match under 9k, which probably meant more Stoke than Vale in VP, and that’s not including the daft diddy cup match the other season. Very odd, I’m sure there must be a valid reason for the poor Vale turnouts?

The difference in size stoke v vale isn't as big as forest v county. Stoke are naturally mid championship and historically we are probably mid league one. It's only the relatively recent investment into stoke giving them their prem run coinciding with some of the darkest days in our history that has made the gap look wider.

Stoke fans love to say how much they don't care about us but it is pathetic, if you go on their forum it never normally takes more than 2-3 clicks to find a thread wishing us out of existence. I suspect this explains a bit of the "we don't care about them" attitude towards Crewe from some vale. It's a dig that demonstrates the opposite compared to like a Burton who we genuinely don't care about either way.

The 90s attendances are weird though, I think if we ever got back to the champ we would blitz our previous attendances out of the water. The last few years we've regularly got 7k+ home fans and 5 figure crowds went from pie in the sky to a handful per season.

Even competing in upper league one I think we could get a 10k average based on the last few years. It seems similar with a few of the similar sized 90s clubs enjoying far higher crowds now than 20 years ago when we were champ/L1.

Final note...the last home game against the lards we were forced to close the paddock...the front half of the big stand down the side because of crowding issues blocking fire escapes earlier in the season. And the Lorne st was half built so we had a vastly reduced home capacity for that one.

Vale v stoke, the next time it happens, will be a warzone, I'm not sure the rest of the country realises.