ICF (I Chuck Fruit)

The West ham v Millwall match was mainly trouble free with just two arrests. One man was arrested for afray before the match and one for assaulting a police officer by throwing a missle after the match. There were no arrests inside the ground.

More people have been arrested over Tottenham's spy gate probe on the Olympic stadium bid.

All local pubs were shut and remained closed until 4pm in the afternoon.

Met Police Chief Supt Vickers said: “I would like to thank fans for their behaviour for what has been a largely succcesful operation

Police are investigating a large bang heard just after the final whistle when a Millwall fan is believed to have let off or fired a firework at West ham fans.

Since 2009 when Westham last played Millwall, West Ham has seen very, very little disorder. It has the lowest arrest rates of any London football club and the lowest ejection rates as well.

However there was one small almost comical stand off as the police escorted Millwall fans to Upton Park Underground station along Green St. Police forced West Ham fans into the fruit market.

This was captured by ESPN Brazil which can be seen below on Youtube.

You can see fruit being launched into the air which resulted in someone on twitter saying ICF should now stand for I Chuck Fruit ;-)

Anyway the video is quite humerous, Enjoy !

My Millwall v West Ham Preview

Medium Sam with Tash in Millwall Playing Days

It might be strange for Big Fast Sam to return to the club where he played 60 league appearances as a central defender for Millwall (1981-1982)  with that great tash. Bet he was a ladies man in those days ;-)


West Ham have won nine, lost six and drawn 10 of the 25 competitive matches against Millwall.

West Ham's second and most recent league victory on Millwall turf was 1-0 in December 1988 

Millwall have kept one clean sheet in the last 14 league matches with West Ham.

West Ham are unbeaten in five league games (13 points out of 15).

West Ham are looking to match the four successive away league wins attained between April and September 2007. They last achieved such a feat in the same season in December 1985, when a club record five straight away top-flight wins were registered.

I am sure BFS will continue to play 4-5-1 away. Lansbury is sure to get a start but it remains to be seen whether Bentley starts or comes off the bench as he did against Portsmouth.

My Team,  Greeno,   Linda, Tomkins, O'Brien, Faye   Taylor, Nolan, Lansbury, Bentley  Cole

Subs: Stech  Demel,  Faubert, Diop, Carew, Baldock

I think it will be a tight London derby but I will stick to my 3-0 win I predicted on episode 4 of Monday's podcast.

Come on you Irons.  

West Ham v Millwall Rivalry History

It is difficult to imagine two sets of football fans predisposed to go at each other with a more elemental fury than West Ham and Millwall.Most West Ham home games have at least one round of "If you hate Millwall, stand up." despite not playing them since on that infamous night in 2009.

West Ham and Millwall are not especially close geographically, and on opposite sides of the Thames. 


Surely if Millwall are to loathe anyone, they would be better off picking on Crystal Palace, their only South London adversaries of note?


But no, such are the quirks of English tribalism that Palace resort to an age-old feud with Brighton, while Millwall store up all their hostile energies for a trip across the river.

The feeling is mutual: West Ham fans regard Millwall's territory of south Bermondsey as a wasteland; Indian country, if you like. Seldom can Tower Bridge have formed so stark a demarcation.

The roots of such sentiment reside in events of 85 years ago, when an antipathy developed between two shipyards on either side of the Thames.

To the north you had the workforce of the Royal docks (drenched in the claret-and-blue of West Ham) and to the south, the Millwall, London and Surrey docks (Millwall 'til they died). When the Millwall shipyard broke the 1926 dockers' strike, the outrage over the water raised tensions to tipping point.

The significance of the strike, while often invoked, can be overstated. The decline of the docks, coupled with the divergence in league positions of West Ham and Millwall, meant that the two clubs hardly bothered one another in the Thirties and Forties.

Of more recent relevance was the glorification in London of gang warfare, between the Krays in the East End and the Richardsons in the south-east.

Lurid tales abounded of what Reggie Kray did with a carving knife, or what Charlie Richardson was capable of with a bolt cutter.

Inevitably, one offshoot of this was a Sixties culture of bragadoccio on the terraces of the Den and Upton Park, a competition to see who was the better fighter.

Fighting proved to be the order of the day. At the 1972 testimonial in honour of Harry Cripps - renowned Millwall hard man, with a name straight out of a crime novel - there were police horses on the pitch.

An even bleaker turn came in 1976, when Millwall fan Ian Pratt died in a skirmish with West Ham fans at New Cross station that led to his fall under a train.

Leaflets were later handed out in the Den's Cold Blow Lane end with a grainy picture of Pratt and a declaration in capital letters: "A West Ham fan must die next week to avenge him."

And yet to establish a historical rationale for this rivalry seems to confer a dignity upon it that it does not deserve.