It is hard for Millwall fans not to cringe at West Ham counterparts (From News Shopper)

It is hard for Millwall fans not to cringe at West Ham counterparts

1:53pm Wednesday 1st February 2012 in Millwall

Gawd I 'ope there isn't a pwopah tear up on Saturday

NEWS Shopper online's Millwall columnist MATT LITTLE this week takes a tongue-in-cheek look at the rivalry between the Lions and West Ham ahead of this weekend's derby trip to Upton Park

WELL, that was a pretty tame surrender to Watford last night and is really not acceptable at The Den, a place which has been our fortress in other difficult times.

Luckily for the players we face the auld enemy West Ham United on Saturday, a game that provides the perfect opportunity for redemption.

I often think of this fixture as the good, the bad and the ugly derby.

While tabloid journalists have demanding editors and blank pages to fill with the ugly side, the good invariably gets overlooked.

Which is a shame, as this fixture deserves a bit more dignity than that.

It is one of the oldest derby fixtures in the country, starting in 1897 when Millwall Athletic beat Thames Ironworks 2-0, and was born out of a genuine rivalry between two sets of workers in the beating heart of the British Empire – the London docks.

However, it didn’t intensify because of the supposed breaking of the General Strike in 1926 by Millwall supporting dockers, which is almost certainly an urban myth.

Instead it had its own organic momentum based on sporting rivalry between two close-knit communities.

The clubs competed against each other in various local leagues eagerly and sometimes bitterly if match reports from the time are to be believed.

And it should be remembered Millwall were the opponents who graced the first ever fixture at West Ham United’s Boleyn Ground in September 1904.

This is the 99th meeting between the two and Millwall have the advantage with 38 wins, with the 1960s still the only decade the clubs haven’t met since that first ever meeting.

Yet, what of the bad side?

I am referring to the hideous parody West Ham have become of themselves.

The scriptwriters of Eastenders and the cockney mafia in the tabloid press and their mantra of ‘it’s us wot won the World Cup’ should take a fair amount of the blame for this.

I don’t know about you but it’s hard not to cringe when some mockney plasterer from Essex starts waxing lyrical about East End boys, pwopa geezers and how the ’Ammers won it in 1966.

Yep, I said Hammers, or the 'Appy 'Ammers as they like to be known.

We expect that kind of post Euro96 nonsense from the likes of Palace and Arsenal, but not them lot.

But then again they do attract a strange and eclectic fan base these days.

Mixed in with the plasterers from Basildon and the fake tanned posers from Billericay are the middle-class kids from the home counties.

Funny enough, though, every single one of them takes fashion tips from Alfie Moon and whether they are in the supermarket, in the pub or at a christening, they are bedecked in West Ham merchandise from head to toe.

They must think it evokes an image as a salt of the earth, sugar borrowing, mum-loving cockney, rather than of a badly dressed chav from Essex.

Still, at least they are passionate about their team, so passionate that they have poured all of their efforts into having just one song and once took 10,000 fans to Wigan – according to one Hammer talking to Sky Sports, and clearly missing from his village.

They are a big club, though, and the four relegations to this level in under 25 years in no way distracts from this fact, nor does last night’s 5-1 walloping at Ipswich.

And most big clubs sell their promising youth products to divisional rivals at the first opportunity, that’s just sensible planning.

West Ham are also a club which attracts headlines, be it for cheating their way out of relegation or trying to bully Leyton Orient out of existence, they are box office.

Hopefully all of the headlines on Saturday will be about a coupon busting win for the Lions, though.

God knows we need it.

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