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Mike Rowbottom: There is nothing like beating your neighbour to cheer you up

Saturday 21 September 2002 00:00 BST
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The scene in Birmingham City's reception area after Monday night's 3-0 defeat of local rivals Aston Villa was not a happy one. A man in Villa colours stood between three others, shaking his head. "How am I going to go back in tomorrow?'' he asked his companions. "I can't believe how much stick I'm going to get.''

There was no response. But then, what could they say? "Never mind, mate, it will only last for a few months." "Had to happen some time, didn't it? At least you know how it feels now." "It's only a game. Grow up."

No. none of these responses would have helped, I fear.

The Villa fan's mortification was replicated by the members of his team. As they strode grimly from the dressing room to their coach, the visiting players, suited and booted according to the custom of old-school manager Graham Taylor, resembled mourners at a funeral. Olof Mellberg, who had seen his routine throw-in bypass hapless keeper Peter Enckelman and roll horrendously onwards to give City a 2-0 lead, looked as if he was at his own funeral.

"Birmingham City extend a warm welcome to our visitors for today's match at St Andrew's," said the official message with unwitting irony. There was no mistaking the intensity of the first City-Villa derby for nine years, or if you're talking League, 14 years, or if you're talking top division of League, 16 years.

The noise within the stadium before the match had a edgy, volatile quality. You found yourself thinking: "If City lose this, there's going to be trouble here.''

As it turned out, there was trouble even in victory for City as some of their supporters, despite being clearly warned that anyone encroaching on the pitch would be banned from the ground sine die, were unable to keep their exuberance in check after the first and second goals went in.

Something about local derby matches affects supporters as if they are kids on the last day of term. They behave as if normal rules don't fully apply, as if the whole occasion forms one extenuating circumstance.

It is possible that the City fan who taunted Villa's keeper for his second-half blunder by making obscene gestures in front of him and then patting him on the cheek, believed he was being no more than playful. But such befuddled initiatives can often engender ugly consequences.

A day earlier, Ipswich fans had staged their own pitch invasion after a 93rd-minute penalty had earned their side a point in the local derby with Norwich City, and the visiting defender Darren Kenton was taunted in a similar fashion to Enckelman.

Now Ipswich don't do pitch invasions. A long-standing season ticket holder and friend of mine who watched the match could not recall another occasion when the Portman Road faithful had overstepped the mark in such a fashion.

Why are derby matches so important to supporters? The idea of territorial supremacy or local bragging rights may be at the heart of it for many. For those who support rival teams in the same town or city, losing to a neighbour prefigures a more enduring torment of the kind for which the Villa fan was preparing himself.

But it is more than that. Like Ipswich, Watford are a club who traditionally provide one of the game's peaceable havens. Trouble flared there earlier this month, however, during a match against Luton Town. Watford is in Hertfordshire; Luton in Bedfordshire. This, though, is the closest thing either club has to a derby match. And so it has to do. If the only football teams in Britain were Land's End Rovers and John O' Groats Athletic, they would be local rivals.

I remember watching Luton play at Vicarage Road as a schoolboy in the days when Bruce Rioch was a promising young midfielder for them. It was one of the ugliest matches I can recall and the atmosphere around the ground was evil.

The same flexible geographic principle operates in East Anglia with Ipswich and Norwich. After the latter team had been excruciatingly beaten by Birmingham City in last season's First Division play-off final at the Millennium Stadium, missing out on penalties after extra time, their fans were left to queue in desolation at Cardiff station for specially chartered trains home.

Conversation was, as you might expect, subdued. But then, one of the green and yellow horde found a comforting form of words as he looked ahead to a fixture list that would now include their relegated rivals. "We'll bloody smash Ipswich next season, anyway," he said. "Smash 'em."

The mood brightened. The long, impending journey east was becoming something that could be borne with equanimity. "On the ball, City! Five Stella Artois and three packets of salt and vinegar crisps please mate...'' everybody needs somebody to hate. We're all happier that way.

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