The Cross-Border Derby – (quite a name, you have to admit) – is the nickname for matches between Chester FC (formerly Chester City FC) and Wrexham, and it's one of the most gripping, heated derbies in England today. The two clubs are 12 miles apart as the crow flies, and believe it or not, although both currently play in the Conference Premier (level 5), they are among the leading football clubs in the whole region.
On 8 December 1888, two football clubs met for the first time, in the fourth qualifying round of the FA Cup. One, Chester, represented England, and the other, Wrexham, represented Wales. The match ended in a 3-2 win for the latter, but no less importantly, it heralded the start of a wonderful rivalry between the two clubs. There's no getting away from it: although the two countries are supposedly part of the British nation, a lot of historical baggage lies among both sets of fans, who have emblazoned their national flags on the banner of sporting rivalry, and the match is often called Wales vs England. The English have always seen the Welsh as far inferior. In the eyes of the average Englishman, the Welsh were always perceived as shepherds, ignorant and stupid. The taunts from Chester fans have always been based on the shepherding profession widespread in Wales in ancient times, and on the twisted relationship between the shepherd and his sheep (if you know, you know).
The pictures below show a range of graphic products based on hatred and bad taste, sold by each club's supporters' shop about the other. We mainly collected the Chester side, because it's more interesting, elaborate and funny. In Wrexham they were apparently more focused on stone-throwing practice. Note Wrexham's comeback about the location of Chester's ground, the Deva Stadium – which actually lies across the border, in Wales (!!!).
Here's a cool video about the vast differences between the English and the Welsh:
So what's the great rivalry actually about?
The sixties and seventies
First, the two towns are the largest settlements in the region known as North East Wales or West Cheshire (depending on which side of the border you're looking from). Geographical proximity put the two sets of fans side by side during gruelling working days in factories, quarries and the queue at the corner shop. The bitter rivalry between the two sets of fans began in the sixties – believe it or not – on the dance floors, with flared trousers and Crombie coats. The class gaps (Chester were considered rich and well-off, and Wrexham, how shall we put it… a little less so) and the historic nationalist rivalry gathered momentum. Over the years, the last bus home from Chester to Wrexham on a Saturday night became an extremely dangerous business. Fights started breaking out on the terraces too whenever the two clubs met. In the seventies the rivalry remained, only the fashion changed: skinheads entered the blood game, and violence surged. With the rise of hooliganism across England, hooligan firms began to form. In Wrexham: The Frontline, and in Chester: the Goat Busters. The hallmarks of both firms back then were smart Burberry suits and dark sunglasses – the height of fashion.
The eighties
Disorder at football matches, injuries, mass brawls and rising violence were the lot of the whole of Britain at that time, both in league matches and in internationals at home and away. The great football disasters of Heysel and Bradford were the catalyst for building all-seater stadiums, but even so, the elders of Chester and Wrexham can't remember a single Monday without the faces of arrested hooligans adorning the pages of the morning papers. The eighties were without doubt the dark age of the Cross-Border Derby: in the 1982/83 season Wrexham were relegated from the third tier to the fourth and joined Chester. The two enemies were now locked in a small room without a key, in the dark, damp cellars of the league. Now armed with yellow jumpers (yes, that's what was trendy back then), Wrexham's troublemakers and their Chester rivals tore into each other at every meeting.
Many eyebrows were raised when the two clubs tried to project business as usual and hold a 'friendly' towards the end of the 80s. Even the police did their bit to calm things down, sending just six officers to police the match, described by both clubs as 'a builder of friendship between us'. We won't go into too much detail about what happened here, but you should know that towards the end of the match every police officer in the county was scrambled to secure an event that left Chester city centre completely wrecked, with especially violent brawls, arson, many injured and dozens arrested. Since then, nobody there dares talk about 'friendship' any more.
The nineties
In the nineties, British police decided that derby matches would from now on be played at 12:00 noon, with entry allowed only to ticket holders who had bought tickets in person at the stadium ticket office in advance – all to reduce the potential for violence and the level of alcohol in the stands. The fact that the clubs played in different divisions during this decade didn't calm things down. The 1997 derby in the FA Cup last 16 put the match high on the priority list of Sky, which asked to move it to the evening for live TV coverage. Chester police vetoed the request, arguing there was no chance its officers would police a match involving Wrexham fans after dark. And the police's fears proved justified: hours after the match, which Wrexham won 2-0, both camps filled Chester city centre with mass brawls, leaving a trail of destruction. More than 20 people arrested were brought before Chester magistrates that evening.
The 2000s
Chester police, fed up with the regular ritual of disorder, set out to make the derby more humane and sane. The 2004/05 meeting was already policed by a huge number of officers, with the whole area prepared for a state of alert. For example, all pub landlords within a 5 km radius of the Deva Stadium in Chester were explicitly instructed by the police not to open that day. The police even went as far as ceremoniously ferrying Wrexham's handful of potential hooligans on a luxury double-decker bus right up to the turnstiles.
The first decade of the 2000s was relatively quiet because Wrexham dropped to the fourth tier for administrative offences. At the start of the second decade they were back in Chester's league, meeting a reborn rival club, now run by its supporters' trust. Anyway, that's a subject for another article.
Head-to-head history
Between 1888 and the time of writing, the clubs have met 149 times in all competitions. Chester won 51, 32 ended in draws, and the Welsh won the rest (66).
Our personal connection
On a spring Saturday, 19.4.14, we Cinderellas were also present at the Cross-Border Derby. Read You can read here the post written about a week before the flight, when we didn't know whether we'd be able to get into the ground because of the strict police restrictions. We had serious doubts about whether to include the possibly pointless trip in our tight schedule, but in the end we decided to go to the ground even without buying tickets in advance, and to beg the many police officers, stewards and security staff to let us into the volcano at the Deva. I'm still not sure how we did it – maybe the repeated claim that we'd come all the way from the Holy Land to be there, or the blue eyes none of us have – but we got into the derby. Read You can read here for the full account of the experience. Needless to describe here the huge excitement and sense of satisfaction at being at this match… What's lovely is that even today, the repertoire of insults and abuse aimed at Wrexham is studded with gems such as 'Sheep Shaggers', and sometimes just 'Sheep Sheep Sheep' in a rising rhythm – just like back in the sixties, when all the trouble began – on the dance floor…
