Chester, Chester, Here We Come
By Kirkby
July 25 2010
Total Tranmere today brings to you a special article from message website reader Kirkby. Though an in infrequent message board poster, Kirkby is a well known face amongst Tranmere fans, having followed the club for many years, and has brought this special article on the history of the Tranmere - Chester rivalry during his Tranmere supporting days.
Tranmere face Chester this Tuesday for the first time in 12 years, when a Rovers side managed by John Aldridge won 4-2 at the Deva Stadium, but from a personal point of view it’s been much longer.
Chester, from my perspective, has always been our traditional rivals.
Yes it was feisty with Wrexham, probably more so than Chester off the pitch, and in recent times the likes of Blackpool and Oldham have been rivals, but not for me.
Bolton is another thing. Our path's have crossed in some epic battle's in big games (including my very first Rovers game), and the animosity of some of the protagonists have always made the meeting "different" from many other fixtures. However, from a geographical and historical (footballing) point of view, we have far more in common with Chester than we will ever do with our Lancashire friends. Sadly this renewal of old rivalries has been too long in coming as the last 20 years have seen the clubs head in completely different directions.
Whilst we enjoyed our meteoric rise from the dregs of the Fourth Division to the edge of the Premier League, with some notable Wembley trips and Cup exploits thrown in for good measure, Chester have gone from one crisis to another.
It hasn't all been downhill for our Cheshire neighbours though. In the three year spell when we suffered the emotional rollercoaster of Premier League play off heartbreak, Chester had similar ups and downs with one promotion and two relegations during the same period.
2000 was a year that saw the two most extreme ends of the spectrum. On the weekend when we were watching our boys at Wembley in front of 75,000 fans with a chance of European football, Chester suffered a 7-1 home defeat in a season which eventually led to relegation to the Conference.
I'll admit it, I had a wee chuckle at their demise, it’s only natural for many football fans to take glee from their rivals shortcomings. The Conference isn't all bad though. Since that season when we nearly joined their ranks, that league has got stronger and is now predominantly full time, with plenty of former Football League sides amongst the ranks.
My glee at their relegation changed as I soon realized that as the gap widened, the opportunity to play them again became rarer.
A decade had passed since our last meeting and I found myself hoping they would regain their League status in the hope our paths would cross again and after four seasons, including one play off, Chester finally topped the Conference, pipping Hereford for the title by one point in 2004 and were promoted back into the Football League.
Some Rovers fans might moan about the last decade at Prenton Park, but if you want to feel better about our club, just look toward the River Dee.
I always thought Sealand Road was quite similar to Prenton Park. A decent enough main stand, one covered side and terrace, and a dilapidated open ended terrace.
But back to the football…My memory is hazy of previous encounters and I have no video footage of Chester v Tranmere games, but I remember my second ever Rovers away game was at Sealand Road. It was New Year, 1984, it was blowing a gale and I recall many of Dai Davies' kicks going straight to Chester's keeper. It finished goalless. Later the same season Mark Hilditch scored what was possibly his only hat trick in a 4-1 win in the inaugural Associate Members Cup
The following season we did the double over our local rivals, 4-2 at home and 1-0 away.
It was the season of arguably the greatest double act ever to grace Prenton Park. Colin Clarke and John Clayton shared 65 goals in a season that would have seen us make the play offs - if they had been invented then! They both scored in the home victory, but the goal of the game went to John Williams with a fine lob to put Rovers 3-0 before the break.
I took great pleasure in disliking players like John Kelly (who had links with Rovers), Stuart Rimmer, a former Everton trainee, and the man we loved to hate, Harry McNally, but watched in dismay as Owen Brown, a favourite of mine, donned the Chester shirt.
So far so good. I hadn't seen us lose to Chester in my formative years as a Rovers fan.
Then came the 1985/86 season. We played Chester three times in a week in the early part of the season, two of them in the League Cup. The home League game was featured in the Northern Echoes documentary and I’ve posted the highlights from the match on my website: http://tranmerekev.webs.com/apps/videos/videos/show/5242427-northern-echoes
Chester came to our manor and beat us twice in four days, Rimmer getting a hat trick in the League Cup tie. However the game was surrounded in controversy, as Chester had successfully appealed for the game to be called off a week earlier due to an injury crisis.
It was in that week we lost the previous season's top scorer, John Clayton who departed for Plymouth, a huge loss to the squad.
The mercurial Frank Worthington, then player manager, netted in both home games, including a trade mark free kick.
I think it was that same season when I did another "first" in my footballing journey. Two games in one day.
Back in the 80's our crowds were low, but off the pitch we matched most clubs, rightly or wrongly, and games in the North West saw higher than usual numbers travel. Of course the Police were not soft. Some games had early kick offs to avoid trouble. Wolves were a big club for the 4th Division, so we tended to kick off early when they came to town.It was the same when we visited Chester, so it was an early start for lunchtime kick off.
With the game over before 2pm it gave me anple time to catch a game at Goodison Park on my way home.
Chester completed the double over us that season, on their way to promotion.
Our rivalry was put on hold for a while.
If anyone remembers our promotion game v Crewe in 1989 they will recall the song ringing around Prenton Park on that sunny afternoon. "Chester, Chester here we come". There's a generation of fans who probably won't believe it, but Chester were (probably) better than us and we genuinely looked forward to renewing old acquaintances, so the first fixture of the 1989/90 season we looked for was our trip to Chester.
Though the Football League made us wait until Christmas for our first League meeting for more than three years, we had the bizarre scenario of 10,000 people turning up for a Leyland Daf Cup preliminary group game against Chester.
I'd like to think "absence makes the heart grow fonder" but I think it had more to do with vouchers being handed out for the forthcoming League Cup tie v Spurs, with players like Paul “Gazza” Gascoigne and Gary Lineker on show.
I'm not sure if this was ever confirmed, but I recall that Chester fans were also given vouchers, which seemed strange, but typical of Tranmere.
Ian Muir scored the only goal that night, but because of the way that competition was set up we went on to meet Chester again, this time in the Quarter Finals of the Northern section.
Muir, McNab & John “Moggsy” Morrissey scoring in a 3-0, though this time in front of less than 5,000 fans, with Tranmere going on to win the trophy that season.
I can't recall anything about the Christmas fixture, and I'm not even sure I was there, having moved down south in 1987. I can tell you however that it finished goalless.
However, I was there for the penultimate game ever played Sealand Road before Chester City moved to the Deva Stadium. A good friend of mine, who is a Chelsea fan, tagged along for the Friday night match as his team was playing at Anfield the following day. We had tickets in the main stand for a game we needed to win to push for promotion.
There was Rovers fans everywhere. The old open terrace was condemned, and I think the side terrace was empty too. I'm not sure if figures have ever been confirmed, but I reckon there were more of us than them that night. We were everywhere, including their end. The Police ended up putting orange tape to segregate us in their covered end.
Meanwhile in the stand there were more fans than seats. Some enterprising “Birkenheader” had forged some tickets and there were ructions between our own that night, much to the amusement of my Chelsea mate.
As for the game, my memory is sketchy. I think we were 2-0 down, but a late Ian Muir penalty at "their" end salvaged a point. Billy Stewart was possibly their keeper that night. The records show Malkin got our other goal, Dale & Pugh netted for Chester.
The team that night was:
Nixon
Higgins
Mungall
McNab
Hughes
Vickers
Malkin
Harvey
Steel
Muir
Thomas
A pretty impressive lineup, and one I was sure would get us promoted, but sadly we just never performed in the most important game of the season five weeks later, at Wembley, against Notts County, when we lost the play-off final.
Sadly that was probably the beginning of the end for Chester. Sealand Road closed and they were forced into exile at local non league Macclesfield whilst they built the Deva.
Despite the disappointment of Wembley we still had a local derby to look forward to in the 1990/91 season, and at a new venue.
We played them at home first, in October, and though the record book say's they only beat us five times at Prenton Park, I seemed to be there for most of them. This was one of them.
Goals by David Pugh and a Graham Abel penalty were enough to give the points to Chester. Mark Hughes scoring for Rovers.
The last competitive fixture took place on 23 March 1991, the season we gained promotion to the second tier after an absence of over half a century.
Despite a comfortable 2-0 win, in front of more Rovers fans than "home" fans, with goals from Morrissey and Malkin, this game will always be remembered for the horrific injury to Rovers record goal scorer, and some would say (me included) the greatest player ever to don the Tranmere jersey, Ian Muir.
The sports science we have today may have helped Muir recover quicker, but he was never really the same. He came back ten months later, but only started 51 games in three years after that Moss Rose injury.
A few weeks later we beat Bolton at Wembley to gain promotion, and that was that in regards to facing Chester.This will be my first visit to The Deva for a Tranmere game. I did tick the ground off my list for the last game of the 1997/98 season. With Tranmere due to play on the Sunday, I travelled up a day earlier to see Chester take on play off chasing Scarborough.Despite being neutral, I still couldn’t bring myself to stand with the Chester fans, so stood with the Yorkshire throng, and witnessed a 1-1 draw.
Last season, as the final nails were being hammered in to the Chester City coffin I went to see them play just a couple of miles from where I live. This time I stood amongst the 50 hardy souls who made the long journey on a cold Tuesday night to Cambridge United. The players, manager, Jim Harvey, as well as the fans showed Great Spirit that night, only losing to an injury time set piece.
I realized, just like fans of other small clubs, that they're no different than us. They may speak with a different accent, but the same gallows humour that prevails amongst all lower league fans is just the same.
After several years of struggle, on and off the pitch, and without completing their fixtures, Chester City was finally put of their misery in March 2010.
Now it's a new Chester and it would appear the fans have got “their” club back, I wish them all the best on their long road back....... but for 90 minutes on Tuesday it won’t stop me wanting to get one over our old foes.
Total Tranmere would like to stress their thanks to Kirkby for this brilliant article.
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Chester may be a local-ish derby but their number 1 rivals were wrexham by a country mile. Any rvalry with us totally overshadowed by that one.
Over the years it because a huge grudge fixture. Words were said by people on both sides, most notably Phil Neal, Phil Brown and Fat Sam from Bolton, and Aldo from us. There was no love lost when we played and it was definitely a big footballing rivalry.
I can remember relishing playing Bolton and from what I've read on the message boards, their fans felt the same way about playing us...they still call us "Trashmere", just like our fans refer to them as "Noblot".
To call it cringeworthy is well off the mark because only a few years ago, we were two teams in the same position with very similar aims. They hated us and we hated them.
Quote:Matthew the rover
I wouldn't call the Bolton rivalry "cringeworthy". They might not care much for us now, but that's due to our league positions. Back in the day there were some right tussles between us, definitely on the pitch and most probably off it too...some absolutely massive games - League Cup semi-final, play-off final, we stopped them being the first team to 100 points in a league season, F.A. Cup matches...
Over the years it because a huge grudge fixture. Words were said by people on both sides, most notably Phil Neal, Phil Brown and Fat Sam from Bolton, and Aldo from us. There was no love lost when we played and it was definitely a big footballing rivalry.
I can remember relishing playing Bolton and from what I've read on the message boards, their fans felt the same way about playing us...they still call us "Trashmere", just like our fans refer to them as "Noblot".
To call it cringeworthy is well off the mark because only a few years ago, we were two teams in the same position with very similar aims. They hated us and we hated them.
Yeah sure back in the day it was a rivalry but it was one of those period-based ones not a real one.
To hear fans singing we hate bolton now just sounds ridiculous as if they are desperately hoping the feeling is reciprocated.
but i hope we can get that rivalry back one day. I am in no doubt Bolton will be in the champ within the next couple of years... the hard parts us gettin up there tho