I'm pbal

I have been to many games where all the away fans sang is

"Stand up if you hate [team we have hardly played for decades, but is geographically close].

Decades might be a slight exaggeration, but its illustrative.

Silly yank question but does kit refer to simply the shirt itself or the entire ensemble of shirt, shorts, socks? Also top sounds like a woman's bathing suit article of clothing, not something a footballer would wear

Oh boy. Lot to tackle here.

wtf is a Pommie?

If the Yankees got kicked out of the majors & started playing minor league baseball I wouldn't GAF about them.

I would care about the actual teams that matter. The teams last played when they were both in the 2nd best league. Last year Portsmouth was in the 4th best league (although they won so they move up to 3rd league).

Like how do you maintain a rivalry? For Southampton fans is it vindicating if you see Portsmouth struggling in League 1? Seems like bully behavior, if you want to get Trumpian.

& what can you say as a Portsmouth fan? We may have been 3 divisions below you, but we finished higher in our division & in 10 years if we ever regain relevance you better watch out?

You can defend arcane rivalries on the basis that they were a thing in 1910, but I don't see how it could be particularly satisfying for either side & do anything beyond make people grumpy. You seem grumpy. Great success?

If Pompey never came back to the top flight and Southampton and Bournemouth stayed there for the next 25 years I have a hard time believing that Pompey would still be the most hated rival of Soton fans. As is, it's not been that long and in contrast to yank sports, clubs don't just completely disappear when they go belly up.

(This is my best guess)

I guess for me it's hard to hate a team that sucks, even if they're still playing against my team regularly. Like if the Yankees went 62-100 for 5 straight years, I would lol @ them heartily, but I would not be able to muster hate in my heart until they were actually good again.

I'm sure it's a cultural thing, & I'm sure tons of people still feel like this is a huge rivalry (just like ManU/Leeds who haven't played in even longer & have played like 2 times in 13 years), but I was just expessing that it's not something I personally can relate to.

It does not have to be some huge rivalry in an actual sporting sense to be part of the tradition and culture of supporting a team. Hating on another team for traditional reasons is part of the fabric and flavour of being a supporter.

The moment you become heavily emotionally invested over whether a 11 men can kick a ball in a net is not the moment to start asking if other associated behaviours and perspectives are rational or not.

If you cant relate to it, its because you dont really support a team.

JMurder and Stu.

A good way to become viscerally acquainted with the Southampton and Portsmouth rivalry would be to watch a Southampton game, standing with the home support wearing a " I lover Harry Redknapp" T Shirt.

You live across the road from them, go to work or school with them. See them in the pub etc etc

Years of;

'how'd your team get on this week?'
'at least we won this week'
'yeh but youre playing **** every week, come back when youre good enough to play us every year'

'oh youre not good enough to play us anymore'
'be good if you got back up so we can get a derby match going again'

etc etc

The banter/wind up doesn't stop just because you aren't in the same league.
It's not a case of your mates/family/work colleagues simply disappear because they went down or you went up or vice versa so the rivalry disappears as soon as it happens. Might happen the day after they go down but sure as the sun raises they'll be at school or work on Monday!

City won **** all for 34 years, didn't stop this:-







Or mani saying, they'd only reform if City win the European cup.

Kit = strip:-




Shirt = Top (jersey gtf )

right yea that's what I figured kw but thought that post was alluding to kit as an acceptable name for a shirt/jersey/top

I like these posts

Portsmouth are ****s - literally no one would regret their disbanding.

But you may be on to something more generally

We haven't played the pigs since 11/12 and it's the most anticipated fixture for either of us since then

Burnley went 17 years without playing the Bastards and the rivalry never waned a bit. Now they're on the way down and it's as strong as ever.

Question - who would BvB hate more if you were to get relegated next season, spend the next couple of decades drakking around in the second/third tier, meanwhile Bochum promoted and performed like Augsburg for that time?

blimey, page 3 already

In for another captivating season of Everton attempting the delicate balance of finishing within 10pts of the top 6 whilst never being within 10pts of the bottom 3, thus denying fans any excitement whatsoever at any point in the season.

Im in for this year edition. I expect us to dissapoint in the league and do better than expected in the CL.

Once the points spreads are up and running I'll set up a season-long predictions comp. I don't have the free time to manage a weekly 12X or IKTS type thing but I like the idea of monetising the annual "predict the finishing order of all 20 teams" tradition.

Also there will obv be another £10 thread FPL league

Ah, the good old East Lancashire Derby.

I intend on running a "Price is Right" comp whereby you predict each team's points total, and if they get that many (or more) you get however many you predicted, but if they don't, you get zero, but I wouldn't want to oversaturate the gambool market

your idea seems better thought out than mine! As long as a season-long finishing order betting comp exists, I'm happy to step aside and let you run it.

in for both ^

Good question. I actually thought about bringing this up originally, so here we go...

It seems inconceivable now that they'd eventually hate Bochum more, especially if they'd never compete for titles, but I do think it might eventually happen. You know, it wasn't always that Schalke-Dortmund was *the* rivalry, the whole "mother of all derbies" stuff is a pretty recent phenomenon. Schalke's biggest rivals used to be Rot-Weiß Essen, which makes much more sense geographically- for Ruhrpott standards, the 30 kilometers between us and Dortmund are half a trip around the world. But since RWE have been stuck in the lower tiers for half a century, our focus switched to the other big player in the area. Essen fans meanwhile still hate us with a passion and frankly I feel like they hate us more than they like their own club.

I'm not sure this totally works as a blueprint for your hypothetical since the fronts are now more entrenched than they were when the Schalke-Essen rivalry was at its peak. But I do think if we're talking decades, the young guard that would've never seen us as much of a rival would take over and just not care about us a lot. It has kind of happened a bit recently with some fans regarding their matches vs Buyern as the biggest of the season. Those typically aren't the ones living in the actual area, but still.