Think i'm right in saying that West Ham are the closest professional club to us, just closer than Millwall, so why has there never been much of a rivalry between the two teams?
I've spent my whole life in West Ham land, all my best mates are Hammers, i'll do the occasional away day with them and even had a season ticket there when i was younger, and none of their fans have ever spoken about Charlton as rivals.
At half-time at Upton Park for instance, i remember the announcer would say the latest scores for all the premier league clubs + Orient, Dagenham, Millwall etc, but never Charlton.
Is it simply a matter of the Thames being the border between two different communities?
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I know thats a 2 team city so their is obviously going to be a massive rivalry, but even so, West Ham and Charlton are close.
If you go back far enough there is a big football rivallry for both us and Milwall against them because of the scabbing that took place by West Ham-based dock workers during the dockers strikes.
My take on this is that up until the late 70's we hardly played the Hammers , they emerged in the late 50's when we had been relegated and we only played them for one season . In the 60's surplanted us as the biggest club in the East of London I think also because we never had a 'firm' a rivalry never really took off.
The millsmall rival is based on dockers and we were not in that category of employment ,
On a hoolie front regardless of what anyone says they were the real deal in their heyday, and although we have always had an element who go to cafc for that it was never on the scale that in their pomf the hamsters had , so we never challenged them that way
And imo they treated us superbly when we shared their ground and I was always respectful of that period in our history , after being raped by the scum ,west ham treated us properly
I've got a lot of time for West Ham since the groundshare at UP. It always felt a lot more like home over there than Selhurst which felt like a different city. Add to that the fact that their staff and fans always treated us well (despite the odd turnstile operator skimming gate receipts) and I can't really dislike them despite some of the divvy young the only way is essex wannabees who follow them now.
Generally a decent local derby but never a rivalry.
Think NLA pretty much sums it up for me.
Now you're saying Charlton are very similar to West Ham...so must make us all the same.
Yuk, I feel really dirty now (and not in a good way).
a poster above says that west ham see charlton as an annoying little brother, i spose we see millwall like the spotty annoying little cousin who you just want to clump
;-)
we had a history of giving managers time in the role,
we have over the last 15 -20 years had similar success on and off the pitch and have both fallen on harder times of late,
the list could go on,
plus like the barrow boys of east londarn tawn we are the salt of the earth types until you reach deptford where you herberts start to appear