Saints and winners: Why old rivals Southampton and Portsmouth are such bitter enemies

By Laura Williamson

'I was surprised how fierce the rivalry was when I first came down to Hampshire in the late 1970s. I’ve been involved in three other local rivalries - the Merseyside and north London derbies as a player and in Manchester as a manager - and the feeling is as high here as anywhere.'
              Alan Ball, 2004, foreword to ‘Saints v Pompey: A History of Unrelenting Rivalry’.

As you drive away from Portsmouth’s ground, Fratton Park, there are signs saying ‘Out of City’. Portsmouth is an island, after all, connected to the mainland by three road bridges and a railway bridge, but the signs are telling. ‘Out there’ lies a very different part of Hampshire.

‘Out there’ is Southampton, 20 miles away along the Solent. It is home to the people Pompey fans call ‘scum’, a Royal Navy term for someone who always rises to the top, regardless of ability, or an abbreviation for the South Coast Union Men of Southampton, who supposedly crossed the picket line when Portsmouth dockers went on strike in the 1950s. The latter appears anachronistic, but the label has stuck in this bitter local rivalry.

Portsmouth v Southampton

Battle of the Solent: Pompey's Kevin Dillon and Alan Biley come under siege from a swarm of Southampton players during a fierce FA Cup tie in 1984 (above), while Saints' Mark Dennis is treated after being hit by a coin (below left). A Pompey fan has a stomach for the fight (below right).

Mark Dennis
Portsmouth fan

‘It’s so deep-rooted,’ said Portsmouth fan Matt Rogers, 34. ‘My friend’s 80-year-old grandma used to say, “Oh, you’re playing scum”. It was just like a word in the dictionary, a perfectly reasonable way to talk about them. It’s everywhere, even with non-football fans.’

‘For a small minority, it is pure hatred, even in friendlies,’ said Matt Le Tissier in his autobiography, Taking Le Tiss. ‘I remember one game at Havant’s ground when our goalkeeper Alan Blayney hung his towel through the back of his net only to turn round a few minutes later and find someone had set fire to it. The team coach had bricks thrown at it on the way home and that was just a reserve game.’

Southampton versus Portsmouth may not immediately spring to mind when you think of a traditional football derby, but the rivalry between the two south coast clubs is as fierce as you’ll find in Liverpool, Manchester or north London.

They don’t share the same city, have rarely shared the same division and don’t meet that often - just 35 times in competitive matches since 1905 - but as Harry Redknapp, who has managed both clubs, put it: ‘The fans genuinely hate each other. It’s a strange hatred and I haven’t known another like it.’

It wasn’t always the way. After Portsmouth won the FA Cup in 1939, the trophy was paraded around The Dell and a cartoon in the Football Echo showed soldiers from Southampton, Bournemouth and Aldershot forming a guard of honour as the Cup was brought back to Hampshire.

Portsmouth fans

Portsmouth fans made their feelings known when Harry Redknapp returned to Fratton Park as Southampton manager

But by the time of Portsmouth’s 1-0 victory over Southampton on March 21 2004 at Fratton Park things were very different. Ninety-four people were arrested as violence broke out after the game, including a 14-year-old girl who became the youngest ever female to be banned from football matches, and a 10-year-old boy from Gosport, who received a three-year ban for violent conduct.

Dave Juson, 58, author of Saints v Pompey: A History of Unrelenting Rivalry, traces the clubs’ journey from friendly neighbours to fierce rivals back to the late 1950s.

He said: ‘In 1958-59 Portsmouth were relegated from the First Division and I think there was a little bit of resentment the following season when Saints went up as Third Division champions with a lot of promise ahead of them. Portsmouth then slipped down into the Third Division (in 1961) and Saints were promoted to the First Division (in 1966).

‘Then, in the 1960s, hooliganism became fashionable. It happened all over the country, but on the south coast it started a rivalry that really had no history.’

The oscillating fortunes of the two clubs, absence of any other viable rival and lack of regular meetings have also played key roles in stoking the resentment. Rogers said: ‘If you had two clubs down at the bottom and they played each other all the time, you win some, you lose some, but it’s fresh. But with Portsmouth and Southampton the times we’ve played each other are less frequent so, every year, that builds up. It’s like you’re stretching and stretching a rubber band and then it goes “ping!”.’

Kelvin Davis (left) and Rickie Lambert

Up for the Cup: Southampton's Kelvin Davis (left) and striker Rickie Lambert get ready for Saturday's clash

On January 28, 1984 the clubs met at Fratton Park in the fourth round of the FA Cup, their first clash in the competition for 78 years. Lawrie McMenemy’s Southampton, then in the First Division, won 1-0 as Steve Moran scored in time added on for an injury to Mark Dennis after the defender was struck by a coin. Danny Wallace and Reuben Agboola were subjected to racist abuse and had bananas thrown at them - prompting McMenemy to announce: ‘We’re in the fifth round, picked up £4.50 in loose change and two pounds of bananas.’

Some £20,000 of damage was caused after the match as 59 people were arrested and 18 taken to hospital. Yet Hampshire Police still thought relations between the two clubs were cordial enough to sanction a testimonial between Portsmouth and Southampton for goalkeeper Alan Knight in May 1994. Sadly, they were wrong.

Some 18,000 fans turned out at Fratton Park to watch Southampton’s 5-1 win, but Le Tissier remembered the atmosphere as ‘evil’ and Dave Beasant, the Southampton goalkeeper who went on to have two stints with Portsmouth, said: ‘The intensity of the fans was something else. It just wasn’t like a testimonial. All sorts of things were going on outside. It was like a mini-riot.’

Bar a 3-0 win for Southampton in the FA Cup in 1996, the sides did not meet again until December 2, 2003. They were due to meet in the Premier League for the first time, but the Carling Cup conjured up a precursor at St Mary’s.

Sportsmail columnist Graham Poll, the referee that evening, was forced to curtail a one-minute silence for ‘Mr Southampton’, Ted Bates, who spent 66 years at the club as player, coach, manager, director and president and had passed away five days earlier.


Poll said: ‘I was quite prepared for the Portsmouth fans’ reaction because the police had been very sceptical about it before the game, but I didn’t realise quite the level of intensity and hatred there was there. It was the one derby I hadn’t done - because they hadn’t played for so long - and I didn’t realise it was going to be right up there with all the others. It’s palpable. You understand how much it means to both sets of fans to win the match.’

The Premier League encounters that followed that season were tasty affairs, with both teams winning their home matches, but Saints’ trip to Fratton Park on April 24, 2005 was given some added spice. Former Portsmouth boss Harry Redknapp was by then in charge of Southampton.

Plenty of men have crossed the divide - Alan Ball, Mick Channon and Peter Crouch among them - but, as one fan pointed out, you have to ‘do it with class’. Redknapp, it seemed, did not fall into that category. ‘Harry and scum, welcome to hell’ was spray-painted on a wall. ‘You are now entering a scum-free zone’ read another banner. ‘Judas, Judas, what’s the score?’ sang Portsmouth fans as their team thrashed Southampton 4-1. ‘The atmosphere was so hostile that day the players almost froze,’ recalled Redknapp. ‘Portsmouth gave us a belting.’ Rogers added: ‘I like to think of that as the game that sent them down.’

Saturday’s FA Cup clash at St Mary’s is the first time the clubs have met since that day and, once again, they seem to be going in opposite directions. Alan Pardew’s League One side have just reached their first Wembley final since 1992 courtesy of a 4-1 aggregate win over MK Dons in the Johnstone’s Paint Trophy, but Avram Grant’s Portsmouth are bottom of the Premier League, with just three days left to sort out an £11.5million unpaid tax bill.

But Saints fans watching televised reports of Portsmouth’s battle at the High Court last week in the club’s superstore did not display the glee one might expect. ‘They need to be out of their misery,’ said one. ‘We know how they feel,’ added another. In fact, all parties who spoke to Sportsmail this week, whether sporting blue or red and white stripes, agreed the animosity stems more from Portsmouth than Southampton.

Former Saints striker Mick Channon noticed ‘a terrible hatred in a lot of Portsmouth people for folk from Southampton’ when he joined Pompey in 1985 and Rogers said: ‘We were the team that was low more recently, so we can all remember and have grown up with that.

‘Saints fans seem a little bit more indifferent to it. They call us “skates” (a derogatory term for a sailor who would use a skate fish to relieve his sexual frustration after months at sea) but some of them call us “scum” back, so it’s a bit of a mish-mash.’

The ‘skates’ and ‘scummers’ will renew their 111-year acquaintance at St Mary’s with Southampton having recorded 34 wins compared to Portsmouth’s 20 in 67 first-class matches. Will the ‘scum’ rise to the top once again?