Stand Up If You Hate the Wolves

By Neil Ravenscroft
September 24 2002

The tribal rivalries involved in football always mean that there is a certain amount of “feeling” between neighbours, but it doesn’t explain the ill feeling towards Wolves amongst Walsall fans. Why?

Two things sparked off this train of thought. One was a fan who was sitting close to me in the Sharp Stand (thank God I’ll be back in the GA next Saturday), who waited only ten minutes in to the first home game against Ipswich before trying to get a chant going of “sack the Dingle”. The second was Geoff Whiting’s post last week saying that he would quite like to see them go up.

Last season, it was quite obvious that most Saddlers fans were happy that the Bag Ladies finally made it back into the top flight and also seemed relatively indifferent to Blues’ success, although most seemed pleased when a preference was expressed. It was an almost universal feeling, however, that Wolves not making it was a “good thing”.

We have rivalries with other clubs, such as Crewe and Bradford, but there are some logical reasons for this. The Crewe thing is about comments Dario Gradi has made about our style of football in the past and Bradford because of their obnoxious ex Chairman.

Wolves fans would probably put this down to jealousy, but Villa don’t provoke the same reaction and they, at least, have won the League in the modern era and the European Cup.

With the Wolves, I can only put it down to one thing – the fans. When they lost out to Albion last season, one fan at work was heard to exclaim “it’s not fair”. When asked why, he said “because we’re the Wolves”. They seem to think that they have a god given right to play in the top flight and the arrogance shown by some of the postings on other message boards in unbelievable at times. It is the same attitude that makes Stoke City and Sheffield Wednesday so disliked at Bescot (and Bristol City, in the old days) and why, when the chant goes up of “stand up if you hate the Wolves”, every away team at Bescot joins in.

I, for one, would love to see them in the top flight, as I would all West Midland teams (us included, of course), if only for the effect on the pro London bias of the national press. However, the attitude of the fans mentioned above is probably the biggest factor why it’s unlikely to happen. They turn on their own players and Managers in an instant (and, in the case of Graham Taylor, regret it afterwards) and it must be hell to play at Molineux. Let’s face it, if it wasn’t for they’re poor home form last season, they would now be in the Premiership and would really have something to be proud of!