Who do you see as our rivals?

Interested to hear opinions on here about this as a lot of the younger fans seem to single out wolves and West brom for me its always been vale and shrewsbury mainly never really got some fans obsession with Wolves in particular.

Given I got into a fight with a Dingle at 18 because he wouldn’t believe they’d never won the European Cup, it’s them.

P.S. 18 was half my life ago, so I ain’t young, as much as I believe I still am :rofl:

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Shrewsbury.

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younger than me mate :laughing:

Darlaston under 10s girl guides

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Shrewsbury. Couldn’t give a ■■■■ about the Wolves to be honest, and even have a slight soft spot for the team they’ve put together and watching them play at the moment. Gap is too big to hold any kind of malice towards them.

Shrewsbury though, never found a redeeming quality in them. ■■■■ fans, ■■■■ club, ■■■■ ground, ■■■■ atmosphere and ■■■■ banter. Even the pub before the game is ■■■■.

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Shrewsbury, closely followed by Vale.

Really not that bothered about Wolves or Villa, they’re a million miles away from where we are at the moment.

Got to be Vale. I’ve been going 50 years and along with the Shrewsbury they are the local team we’ve played most times I’d imagine. They are horrible, Burslem is quite ■■■■ and the walk to the ground can be dodgy.
Surely to be a rival you have to play each other in the League and we’ve rarely done that with nasty Wolves anyway??

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Vale were always our main rivals, followed by Shrewsbury. The Chesterfield one seems to have disappeared over they years and been replaced by Crewe as a milder rivalry.

I have a personal dislike for Villa, but I wouldn’t say they are rivals.

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Shrewsbury, Vale and Hereford when I started watching in the mid 70s. Rivalry with Wolves goes back to 40s/50s according to my dad who says they treated us as a nursery team, taking our best players such as Bert Williams. I’ve never really seen the ‘big’ clubs in West Midlands as rivals as we rarely play against them.

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I wouldn’t argue with what your Dad said, it is right that they used to sweep up our best players. The rivalry, if you can call it that with Wolves appeared to gain strength in the 90s though, when Wolves fans became especially painful, and appeared to forget they all disappeared not that long before.

When I started going in the early to mid 80s, when the half time results were read out, the biggest cheer was always if Villa were losing.

I would say shrews an vale although Northampton their is lot of hatred their as well trouble before the game at our train station before game few seasons ago an then at their place after the game as well .their fans try to bully us but never works out well for them

I agree that I see Salop has more of a rival than the Dingles.

However, and this pains me to admit, they are currently miles ahead of us in terms of forward thinking.

In their Gay Meadow days they were indeed a small club attended by, in the main, middle aged and middle class fans. They were an irrelevance, a small backwater club just happy to bob along.

How different that is to today. Bigger crowds than us, a buzzing atmosphere, safe standing, fans flags lining the back walls of the stands.

Unfortunately, while Bonser’s final years were filled with “we’re a well run club” propaganda the Sloppies were building a new outlook for themselves.

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The field of view has shrunk somewhat from Wolves, Bloose, Sjoke, Coventry (very traditional rivals of earlier times), who could be classed as genuine rival material since they hovered between the 2nd and 3rd tiers, with us between the 2nd of 4th (mostly 3rd level).

Now these have either absconded into a higher plain / we have sunk to a lower level, resulting in teams who have done equally badly - Fail, Shrews, Crwho and such like.

The rivalry with Vale was big in the 80s, much bigger than the Shrewsbury one, although it was there, seemed to advance with several incidents in the early 90s.

**** on the Vale was a song that was sung at every game in the 80s, regardless of who we were playing, and I’d say they hated us even more than we did them.

The story goes that when Vale employed John Rudge they told him they didn’t care what he did as long as he beat Walsall :smiley:

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I have never forgot getting off the special train as a young kid, to be greeted by a bunch of angry Vale fans with a flag with Kill Walsall on it

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Shrewsbury, Vale, Coventry.

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Whichever local(ish) team is playing in our division!
Back in the 90’s I did secretly hope that Hednesford Town would become a league club. Would’ve been nice to have a “Chase Line” rival.

Whatever happened to Kidderminster Harriers?