There’s a circus in the
town
08/04/04 |
by Alan Fisher
It’s true that there will never be a rivalry for us to displace that which we have nurtured with the sheep over the years – but they haven’t always been our traditional rivals, and these constructs are open to challenge or complete change. I certainly would never want to consider Leicester as a main rival, much as they’d like us to, because frankly – as Alex noted succinctly – “… what a useless excuse for rivals those mindless morons with ideas above their station would make.” Wise words, and in all likelihood, barring some terrible run of results for us, or – even more unlikely – a good run of results for them, we’ll be sharing a league with them again next season.
The team I would turn my attentions to should the sheep take the plunge would be a little way up the M1. Think of how a local rivalry is constructed: reasonable proximity obviously comes into the equation, but there’s also a necessity for some recent history, be it in terms of matches played, players exchanged, etc. Who better in this league than Sheffield United? We have the Notts/Yorkshire rhetoric to put up with from the more mindless of their fans, sure, but the soap-opera of fixtures between us over the past few years has been a real roller-coaster. They sport ex-players of ours in their squad and we’ve got Gareth Taylor and Paul Gerrard at the moment in our ranks who’ve once toiled under the main villain of the piece – Neil Warnock.
Of course, he has his own credentials – as well as being a disagreeable wind-up merchant he has anti-Forest pedigree by taking our local neighbours County up to some very heady heights indeed. If an average trip to ‘the Lane’ is anything to go by, it wouldn’t be surprising if the embittered and strong-felt distaste of the mighty Reds wasn’t a bit infectious. In Neil Warnock we have the classic villain leading his band of vagabond players and bitter fans in a single-handed crusade to cheat and swindle his way to the Premiership – at our expense. Okay, I’ve glammed-up the soap-opera element a little here to be illustrative, but surely here we have a far better candidate to be a rival than the pathetic, bleating sheep-botherers down the A52.
The dictionary definition of ‘rival’ is: “One that equals or almost equals another in a particular respect.” Well okay, this season aside, has this happened with D*rby? Not especially, whereas Sheffield United always maintain a similar kind of profile compared to us, so in the truest sense they are our rivals. Now of course that doesn’t take out the feelings and history of the matter – and that fact is, if the Sheep do escape relegation (which I still expect them to do), then that once again will be the first fixture I search for come fixture-list release next season. The idea I’m trying to demonstrate is that, okay, if they get relegated they may never recover, then it wouldn’t be by any means the end of the world. There are other candidates for our rivalry who, in many ways – at least in more recent times – are a better fit as rivals, and thankfully it doesn’t have to be Leicester. Plus we’d get to laugh at the Sheep languishing in Division Two with ever-more diminishing crowds from their so-called loyal supporters.
So sing it once, then sing it again: “When D*rby go down again, again, we’ll sing, we’ll sing!” [repeat ad infinitum]
Related article:
When Derby go down again, will we sing?
18/03/04 | by Alex Walker