The FA Cup fourth-round tie between Leeds United and Millwall has been scheduled for a brunchtime 12.15pm kick-off on Saturday because of police concerns. The worry is that the simmering rivalry between the two sets of supporters would be exacerbated by lengthy drinking time in the pubs adjacent to Elland Road.
Historic tension, it is felt, will be lessened if this were a sober encounter. Yet while we might understand such restrictions being in force when Celtic meet Rangers or Spurs take on Arsenal, Leeds against Millwall has none of the standard engines of football enmity. There is no geographical reason for the mutual dislike, no sectarian undercurrent, and the two clubs have rarely if ever been in simultaneous contention for silverware. This is an antagonism born of something else. And it is by no means the only unlikely feud in English football.
Leeds v Millwall
If Leeds’s mutual loathing of Chelsea was born on the pitch after two sets of players kicked lumps out of each other in the 1970 FA Cup final, this rivalry festered in the stands. The two clubs had barely encountered each other before they found themselves simultaneously in League One in 2007. Both clubs wear their widespread dislike by other sides as a badge of honour: no one likes them and they don’t care. In a sense this was a race to the bottom, a scrap to determine who is most loathed. And that season, the two league encounters were scarred with the violence of one-upmanship.
It carried on into the following season, when Millwall beat Leeds in the League One play-off semi-final thanks to Jimmy Abdou’s goal at Elland Road. Every meeting since has had a gritty edge, soundtracked by tragedy chanting. Millwall’s supporters antagonise their opponents by singing about Gary Speed, Jimmy Savile and the Istanbul murders. The Leeds response latterly has been to chant about the death of Millwall’s chairman in a car crash in 2023. Such is the fear of trouble by the police, they have previously forced Millwall to hand out match tickets at a service station in Yorkshire to deter hooligans from attending.
The toxic atmosphere, however, seems to stir the players. This is a rivalry littered with dramatic matches, like when Millwall won 4-3 at Elland Road in 2018, or when Leeds won 3-2 a year later and again in 2020. And the moment they were drawn together in the FA Cup, police insisted on as early a kick-off as possible.
Coventry v Sunderland
This most unexpected footballing fissure was entirely the responsibility of one man: Jimmy Hill. The bold campaigner who fought against the maximum wage and invented football punditry was not above bending the rules to his advantage. Not least on the final day of the 1976-77 season, an occasion Sky TV would have loved.
Three teams were in danger of filling the last relegation place out of the top flight. To make matters more dramatic, two of them, Coventry and Bristol City, were playing each other at Highfield Road. Meanwhile Sunderland were away at Everton. Whatever the result at Goodison, Sunderland knew they would stay up should either of the two teams fighting it out in the west Midlands lose.
Hill, then the managing director of Coventry, appreciated that the mathematical permutations would be made significantly simpler for his team if they knew the result of the Everton game in advance. So he contrived to delay kick-off by 15 minutes, claiming spurious traffic congestion. Then, with the two City clubs locked in a tense draw, the moment he became aware of it he ordered the result from Merseyside to be displayed on the stadium big screen.
Both sets of players could see Sunderland had lost and understood a draw would serve both their purposes by relegating the Sunderland in their stead. They spent the next 15 minutes playing out a mutually advantageous stalemate. And Sunderland were duly dispatched downwards.
Incandescent, the Wearsiders insisted on an inquiry. They reckoned Hill had simply cheated. Though he was cleared of wrongdoing, he was subsequently reprimanded by the Football League.
Memories of Hill’s gamesmanship may have faded, but the antagonism between the two clubs still remains, albeit largely one way. And still, 47 years on, visiting Sunderland fans make a point of ritually abusing the statue of Hill that stands proudly outside the Coventry Building Society Arena.
Gillingham v Swindon
The main source of Swindon Town fans’ dislike can be found 30 miles along the A420 in the shape of Oxford United. But they have sufficient loathing left over to make clashes with Gillingham particularly spicy. It all began during a 1979 meeting in the old Third Division at the Priestfield Stadium, when, with the home side leading 2-0, Gills forward Danny Westwood reacted angrily to what he felt was a dangerous tackle by a Swindon defender. He was sent off for foul and abusive language while, much to his and the Kent crowd’s fury, the perpetrator went unpunished. So angry were the locals, a Gills fan invaded the pitch and attacked the referee. The local mood was hardly softened after Swindon fought back to draw 2-2.
The return fixture two months later was even more feisty, culminating in a scrap in the tunnel which led to two Gillingham players being charged with assault. This time it was the Swindon fans’ turn to be infuriated by official response, when the pair were subsequently acquitted in the town’s magistrates’ court.
The two clubs met in the third tier, two-leg play-off in 1987. After two full-on scraps left the sides still inseparable, Swindon won the replay at Selhurst Park. A result neither set of supporters have been inclined to forget ever since.
Colchester v Wycombe
Colchester United and Wycombe Wanderers met for the first time in their history in an FA Cup tie in 1985. And, after a match marred by significant crowd trouble, it did not take long for them to get under each other’s skin, particularly in the early Nineties, when the pair found themselves vying for promotion to the Football League from the Conference.
In 1992, a relentless tit-for-tat season-long scrap, where both clubs were 20 points ahead of the third-placed side, ended with Colchester just outflanking Wanderers to the title (and back then, then only promotion spot) on goal difference. Wycombe fury was exacerbated by the fact the winning goal in the match at their rivals’ stadium was scored directly from a goal-kick.
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They were still fuming a year later when they joined their hated rivals in the fourth tier. From then on, their meetings were often marred with acrimony. Not least the Second Division fixture at Layer Road in November 2000. A mass brawl involving every player and both benches resulted in the two clubs being heavily fined. And all that over a dull goalless draw.
Bolton v Tranmere
This one is all about celebration. A little too much of it. After they had lost the Third Division play-off final to Tranmere in 1991, Bolton fans at Wembley were infuriated when the opposition players cavorted wildly in delight directly in front of them. It was clearly something that stuck in the collective mind, because when, on the last day of the 1997 season, Tranmere drew at Burnden Park, thus preventing the home side from reaching an historic 100 points, their manager John Aldridge’s over-enthusiastic cavorting on the pitch was regarded as beyond the pale.
He was at it again three seasons later, when, in the 2000 League Cup semi-final second leg, he marked Tranmere’s triumph by dancing in front of the Bolton bench. Never one to miss the opportunity to harrumph, the Bolton boss Sam Allardyce was incandescent.
“Every dog has his day, but you don’t ever forget. John Aldridge was way, way out of order jumping around like he did in front of us.” Allardyce said of his rival manager’s choreographed reaction. “If I’d been younger I probably would have reacted differently – but not on the pitch, maybe in closed quarters after.”
Instead, in the league meeting at Prenton Park the following season, Allardyce sought more symbolic revenge. He refused to allow his players to change in the stadium dressing room, arriving at the ground with everyone in their kit, then hustling the team back on the bus within seconds of the final whistle, still muddied.
“We didn’t want to spend too long in there,” Big Sam said of what became known as Bolton’s “Dirty Protest”.
Sheffield United v West Ham
In truth, this is less a rivalry, more a one-sided beef. It came about after West Ham avoided Premier League relegation at the Sheffield United’s expense on the final day of the 2006-07 season. Which would have been just one of those things in South Yorkshire, had West Ham not counted among their number Javier Mascherano and Carlos Tevez.
The latter’s goals were ultimately responsible for gleaning the points that kept his side up. But it transpired that the signing of both players ran contrary to the League’s rules on third-party ownership. Sheffield pressed for a points deduction which, if granted, would have kept them up at West Ham’s expense. But such punishment was not forthcoming. So the aggrieved complainants took their opponents to the commercial court. And won themselves a £20 million out-of-court settlement.
Chelsea v Leicester
Like many of these unlikely rivalries, this one came about when the two clubs were in direct competition. Back in 1980, Chelsea were leading the charge for promotion to the top flight. With Leicester in second place, 10,000 Chelsea fans made their way to the vital game at Filbert Street. Chelsea missed a number of penalties and contrived to lose 1-0, which prompted a significant bundle in the stands. So violent was it, that as the season progressed, as Leicester emerged as champions and Chelsea managed to slip out of the promotion positions altogether, the rival firms would meet up for confrontations even when the two sides were not playing each other.
These days the friction is less marked, though there is a hint of historic friction in the songs that echo back and forth across the stands. Leicester’s ‘Hark Now Hear’ chant is all about a meeting with Chelsea while their opponents song about following the Blues over land and sea includes the shouted refrain “and Leicester”.
Huddersfield v Peterborough
This is a reminder that there are few things in life as magnificently small-minded as a football rivalry. This one began at the second leg of a Division Three play-off semi-final in 1992. Huddersfield, having been held to a 2-2 draw at London Road courtesy of an 88th-minute equaliser, were beaten by a late, late winner in front of their own supporters.
There had been a problem in the stands after a group of Town fans got into the away end. Trouble flared throughout the game, then exploded at the final whistle when hugely disappointed home followers invaded the pitch to confront their celebrating rivals. It got very ugly: a dozen people were taken to hospital and more than 30 arrests were made as mounted police struggled to restore order.
Peterborough got the better of Huddersfield again in the 2011 League One play-off final, with their rivals joining them the following season. Which was when the most unlikely set of circumstances saw Peterborough needing to better the result of the other relegation candidates Barnsley. And, as Peterborough headed to Crystal Palace, guess who Barnsley were playing? That’s right: Huddersfield. Once news filtered through at the John Smith’s Stadium that Peterborough were losing, all Yorkshire rivalry was put aside as both sets of players and supporters jubilantly celebrated before the final whistle had even sounded.
Enraged Peterborough fans, meanwhile, remain convinced that Huddersfield had done a Coventry and let the players know what was going on, allowing them to play out a tame draw that ensured their rivals’ demise. As has been proven by subsequent encounters in the Championship and this season in League One, there are still legs in this one.
