As you haven’t specified it as being limited to local clubs, I think I’m right that Gillingham are the team we’ve played most often over the years and there is a bit of rivalry between us.
Locally though it has to be Port Fail. Until Tommy Coakley insisted we played with an illness weakened side, we went more than 20 years (30 at our place) without losing to them - a number of times coming from behind very late on to snatch a draw or even the win. It’s been a little bit more even since then, but we still have the edge on them overall (42 wins to their 25 and 26 draws) which was why their fans used to say they hated us more than Stoke.
I went to that game when Coakley was manager, lost 4-1 if I remember rightly, Kelly stabbed in a late goal. It definitely was Gillingham we had played the most, not sure if it is still the case, probably is.
Some rivalries come and go. We definitely had a bit going on with Chesterfield at some point, and Derby was another, when they were down with us for a while in the 80s. The Vale rivalry from a Walsall perspective appears to have been overtaken by Shrewsbury, but I believe Vale still sing that song now.
With Vale is was proper two way dislike in the 70’s and 80’s. They were often a division beneath us but when we played the animosity seemed heartfelt and deep. “We hate Walsall more than Stoke” was a chant that sticks in my mind. As does the mass brawling following our 2-2 there during our 79/80 promotion season. Hereford didn’t much care for us back then either!
With Shrewsbury it all felt a bit gentler until one of theirs died during scuffles with our fans in the late 80’s. Think it was an epileptic episode that killed him but it has felt cranked up since then. The infamous scrap in 2012 adds to that as it seems to be a YouTube favourite (with a cracking sound track to be fair).
The thing with our local clubs is that there is very little comes the other way. It is hard to have a one way rivalry. They all have bigger fish to fry. Many will actually say that we are their second team - which to be fair, is probably less so now than thirty or forty years ago when we seemed to be patronisingly everybody’s second favourite side.
The best we can do with Wolves is occasionally irritate them. Which I must admit is fun. As they were falling through the league’s in the 80’s chanting “can you hear the NorthBank sing?” when the North bank was one of two of their stands closed was good. “Bhattis must stay” another. And they’ve hated us turning them over on their own patch twice in the last twenty years. But on the whole, they see us as an irrelevance or at best an irritation they’d like to disappear. My experience and what I’ve been told is that when England travel Walsall fans tend to travel with Albion and Blues with Villa and Wolves sticking together. Which kind of makes sense. Remember us lot starting a “stand up if you hate the Wolves” at St Andrews and the whole ground stood up!
We’ve had spells of temporary rivalries. Stoke, Wrexham, Peterborough come to mind.
Probably due to the fact that one of their fans died while in an altercation with Walsall fans, i think he had an asthma attack while either chasing or being chased?
Then there was the famous setting fire to the town hall by a Walsall fan.
Shrewsbury and Port Vale,but we had a real rivalry with Hereford in the 70’s Dixie Mcneil v Alan Buckley.As you can see,I’ve avoided the obvious comparison with Man Utd.
Well John Rudge was certainly hyped up enough during one game back in the 80s to offer me out from by the dugouts at FP !! Think it was a cup game and they were in the 4th division but they kicked us off the park
Burton had a potential to be a new rivarly in the making after 15/16 but it’s fizzled out a fair bit probably due to them not been seen as a traditional club due to being non league for vast majority of their history.
Up until recently, the most played teams was pretty much neck and neck between AFC Bournemouth and Gillingham.
With the cherries recent years in the top flights, we’ve now played the Gills eight more times at 116 v 108.
Shrewsbury, Vale and Crewe.
These are teams we’ve played frequently over the last 20 years or so.
But I think many of us still dislike the arrogance of Villa and Wolves because we encounter a lot of their fans in the Walsall area. There’s nothing worse than someone coming from Walsall and choosing to support another local team!
You may well be right. The 11v11.com website only lists football league and cup fixtures between teams.
Earliest recorded Walsall v Sloppies game was in 1945 and we’ve played them 97 times since that date.
