Take the Black Country New Road north from West Bromwich to Wolverhampton and you witness the post-industrial struggle that was supposed to connect such places.
Instead of the foundries and blast furnaces that once covered everything here with fumes and black soot – hence the name – there are now anonymous offices or otherwise nothing at all.
These two places, 10 miles apart, have united in opposition to the idea of merging the Black Country with Birmingham into what some big city residents wanted to call ‘Greater Birmingham’. The Black Country flag – yes, there is one – is dominated by the image of a chain, because they forged it here, not because they are subservient to someone from Brum.
When it comes to football, communion obviously ends. West Brom fans call the other group ‘dog heads’ and ‘dingles’ – ‘because wolves look like dogs’ and resemble a scruffy family from Emmerdale, according to a fan in the know. And that’s his printable explanation. Wolves fans taunt Albion fans as ‘the carriers’ and compare their blue and white shirt to something cheap you’d sell from Tesco.
When the two clubs played Molineux in the fourth round of the FA Cup in 2007, West Brom fans distributed 3,500 Tesco carrier bags on the South Bank that had been given to them after their team won 3-0. The ultimate business card.
West Bromwich Albion are set to take on Wolves in the latest installment of a bitter rivalry
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It has never been different since time immemorial. ‘The fixture was like nothing else. Formidable. Simply fantastic. Those are fans for you!’ says George Berry, Wolf legend of the 1970s and 1980s, grinning at the memory. ‘And I enjoyed all those matches.’
Berry hung out with Cyrille Regis, Brendan Batson and Laurie Cunningham, but not a quarter was spared when he played against them. The images of Berry and Regis in a late 1970s derby hardly scream brotherhood.
It can’t all be romanticized either. Berry will never forget marking Regis on the nearest post on the ‘Brummie Road’ side of the Hawthorns in the late 1970s, when the racist abuse began to rain in. He confronted the perpetrator, because at that time you could virtually touch the crowd, although Regis, who was standing next to him, only shook his head. “Don’t let them think we can’t handle it,” Regis told him. “People who don’t know the Midlands seem to think Villa or Birmingham were the big derbies for us,” says Berry. ‘Not true. Never true. It was always Albion.’
Strictly speaking, parts of Wolverhampton do not fall within the boundaries of Black County, but none of the combatants will be divided over what has become an unvarnished form of resentment in modern times. Respected West Brom writer and presenter of the Albion Liquidator podcast Chris Lepkowski has recalled two Wolves fans urinating on the Albion pitch in 2011. Some Albion fans returned the compliment a few months later at Molineux.
But the roots of this rivalry lie in a subtler era – when both sides were among the best in the country and Albion found themselves on the receiving end of an alleged act of Machiavellian plunder inflicted on them by Wolves.
It was early April 1954 and both sides were battling for the First Division title when, ahead of their match at the Hawthorns, two of their best players – Ronnie Allen and Johnny Nicholls, who had scored 55 goals between them in March – were surprisingly called by England.
Deprived of their services, Albion lost 1-0 to Wolves, whose crucial win saw them clinch the title. The perhaps apocryphal story then emerged that Wolves’ influential England player Billy Wright had encouraged the FA brass to select the Hawthorns men. “The absence of those two players was significant,” Lepkowski said. ‘It has never been proven, but it was always believed that Billy Wright’s influence at the FA cost Albion the title.’
The fact that title runners-up Albion won the cup that year has never sweetened the pill. Nor the extraordinary Charity Shield that followed between the sides – a 4-4 draw which, for reasons known only to the FA, was played out at Molineux on Wednesday evening, six weeks into the season.
Wolves’ George Berry hung out with the likes of West Brom’s Cyrille Regis, but it was a different story when he played against them
West Brom’s Jordao (left) receives a yellow card during the 2001 match between the rivals
Fans didn’t urinate on rival territory back then, even though it was a rabid environment in the late ’80s. The two sides fell out of favor and clashed regularly, with Albion manager Ron Saunders’ decision to sell Steve Bull to Wolves for £64,000 – ‘he decided Steve hadn’t had a first touch’, laments Lepkowski – keeping the rivalry alive. .
Bull propelled Wolves from the fourth tier to the second. He was a pet peeve for Wolves to move with, scoring an 89th-minute winner in the first derby in five years, in 1989. Wolves always looked the richer club. There was Sir Jack Hayward’s money, which never produced top-flight football, and then that of current owners, Fosun, who looked at Albion before buying Wolves instead. Albion are fifth in the championship, despite the dismal absence of Chinese Lai Guochuan. “There’s a feeling that we have the wrong billionaire,” Lepkowski says.
But Albion have a knack for throwing a spanner in the works, with the climax of the 2001-02 season in the old second tier becoming a time to remember. Wolves squandered an 11-point lead at the top of the table and missed out on promotion, while West Brom won seven of their last nine games to secure their place in the top flight after a 16-year absence.
That fourth-round tie in 2007 certainly fueled a lasting hatred. Wolves attempted to appease their own season ticket holders for their decision to hand the South Stand to Albion by offering a cake and a pint in compensation. Manna from heaven for Baggie’s traveling contingent who sang: ‘You sold your seats for a pie and a pint.’
What encourages Albion fans is Wolves’ record on their ground. Their last win there was the 4-2 win in 1996 and when Nuno Espirito Santo’s strong side couldn’t even manage a win over a poor Albion in 2021, it confirmed that the Hawthorns were a real hex for Wolves. Many Albion fans want this fixture, but some don’t. “The fact that fans have been starved of the game for so long just makes it worse,” Lepkowski said. (The last match fans attended was Albion’s 5-1 win over Molineux in 2012.)
Alistair Jones, founder of the Action 4 Albion group, sees it as a hindrance to the push for a play-off position under shrewd manager Carlos Corberan. “The play-offs are of the utmost importance and this is an emotional match that will get the most out of the players,” said Jones.
Wolves fans seem more unanimous on this point. ‘We hate them. That’s it,” said fan Nigel Peterson. ‘We are a superior team and compete in the Premier League in a way that they don’t even come close to. Now it’s time to take them and their famous so-called home record down on us.’ Kick-off will be at 11.45am, on advice from West Midlands Police, and the Black Country is holding its breath.
After the 2007 FA Cup match, eleven police officers were injured and nine people were arrested. Last year, Albion fans responded to a smoke bomb hurled into their section by throwing rockets back. A Wolves fan was pictured with blood pouring from his head.
It took a legend like Regis to help fans rise above such animosity. When he returned to the Hawthorns as a Wolves player in 1993, nine years after leaving, he received a standing ovation. “He was that kind of person,” Berry says. ‘People were above arguing when he was around. But it usually isn’t like that. Cyrille was the exception to the rule.’
Diomansy Kamara celebrating for West Brom against Wolves in the FA Cup in 2007 – eleven police officers were injured after the match
