Every fortnight we cover the best and worst football songs from every club in the UK from our book ‘The Sound Of Football: Every Club, Every Song’. You can buy it here

Crystal Palace

Nickname: The Eagles

Ground: Selhurst Park

Stadium Capacity: 26,309

Song: Glad All Over

In 1851, George Jennings invented the public toilet. Unfortunately, the toilets were found in the Crystal Palace exhibition hall. It was called Crystal Palace because it was made out of glass. And, you would think, it would be the last place you would have a toilet as it had clear walls and ceilings. This led to the short-lived proverb: ‘folk in glass houses should not throw stones… or go to the toilet’. More accurately, it also led to the phrase ‘spend a penny’ as George Jennings charged a penny to use the facilities.

Although the hall was originally built in Hyde Park to house the Great Exhibition of 1851, it was moved to Sydenham in south London after the exhibition finished, an area which then became known as Crystal Palace. In 1905 workers at the hall formed a football team and named it Crystal Palace.

The exhibition hall, the area and the football club share more than just a name. Both club and hall suffered from financial difficulties.

In 2010, Crystal Palace went into administration. In the 1850s, the company that built the original hall also failed to pay its debts. It had made a fundamental mistake. Most people worked six days a week with only Sundays off. The hall was only open six days a week, and it closed on a Sunday. Even a candidate on The Apprentice can spot the flaw in this business model. Most people could not visit without taking time off work, and when they did, it was pounds, not pennies the builders needed.

Unusually, Palace’s great rival is not a London side but one that is over 40 miles away – Brighton.

The rivalry with Brighton had simmered for several years but ‘officially’ started in 1974 when Palace was in the third division. Both sides had many away supporters, regularly taking 12,000 to each other’s grounds.

An FA Cup match saw the rivalry boil over after Brighton was awarded a penalty. Brighton scored, but the referee ordered it retaken as a Palace player had crept into the box. The second penalty was missed, and Palace went on to win 1 – 0.

Alan Mullery, the Brighton manager, was enraged and, as he marched off the pitch, he encountered trouble in the tunnel.

“As I was walking up the tunnel,” he told The Guardian, “a load of boiling hot coffee was thrown over me by a Crystal Palace supporter. So I pulled a handful of change out of my pocket, threw it on the floor and shouted, ‘That’s all you’re worth, Crystal Palace.’” 

Mullery added further insults, and gestures involving his fingers, before storming into the Palace dressing room to confront his old Tottenham Hotspur teammate and then Crystal Palace manager, Terry Venables. It was reported that Mullery threw a fiver on the floor and told El Tel he wouldn’t pay that much for the entire Palace team, which was true if 36 years too early. In 2010, following administration, he could have picked the whole team up for nothing.

Crystal Palace adopted the Dave Clark Five song ‘Glad All Over’ as its anthem in the 1960s. It was released in November of 1963, and it got the group their first-ever number one in January the following year.

Unlike other football songs, the transition from chart to terraces was instant. Usually, it can take several years before a song is widely accepted as tradition, but in the case of ‘Glad All Over’, it had easily caught on within the year and was a matchday tradition by the end of the decade. Since then, the song has been sung before, during and after matches (providing Palace win). 

Perhaps part of its success in crossing over was how the Dave Clark Five wrote and recorded their songs. Their live shows were famous for audience participation, usually led by Dave Clark ‘conducting’ the crowd and getting them to stomp their feet in time to his drumming. Dave Clark has said: “I’d pay somebody 5 Pounds to go switch all the lights on and off in the ballroom, in time with the stomps. That’s what gave [us] the idea for ‘Glad All Over,'” whose chorus featured a “boom boom… Glad all over!” chorus. 

The song’s link to the club was reinforced in 1990 when it was recorded by the squad and released for the club, reaching the FA Cup final. Unfortunately, Palace lost the final after the match was replayed following a 3 – 3 draw at the first attempt.

The song has been adopted by Blackpool and other English Football League teams such as Rotherham United, Port Vale and Swindon Town.

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Every fortnight we cover the best and worst football songs from every club in the UK from our book ‘The Sound Of Football: Every Club, Every Song’. You can buy it here

Crewe Alexandra

Nickname: The Railway Men

Ground: The Alexandra Stadium

Stadium Capacity: 10,066

Song: Standing Together

Crewe Alexandra has released two songs. One a cover of ‘Blue Moon’, more famously known as the anthem of Manchester City. And, the other, a song called ‘Standing Together’. A soft rock classic with an obligatory guitar solo.

‘Standing Together’ is an appropriate title for a song about Crewe Alexandra as the town of Crewe is best known for its railway junction. The junction also gives rise to Crewe’s nickname – the Railway Men.

What’s less known is the town’s link to the most famous cartoon character in history: Mickey Mouse. The town was the birthplace of Jimmy MacDonald, who, for thirty years, was the voice of Mickey.

Both Mickey and Crewe have helped produce young talent. In America, The Mickey Mouse Club was a TV variety show that launched the career of several artists such as Justin Timberlake, Brittney Spears and Christina Aguilera. At Crewe Alexandra, the focus on youth development has produced notable players such as Neil Lennon, David Platt and Robbie Savage. Though describing Robbie Savage as talent may be stretching the definition of ‘talent’ too far.

It’s unclear where the Alexandra in Crewe Alexandra originated. One tale states that it took the name ‘Alexandra’ from a local hotel used by the club. Another tale states it was after Princess Alexandra of Denmark, who married Queen Victoria’s eldest son.An unusual feature of Crewe’s stadium is the absence of dugouts. However, they don’t stand together; instead, teams sit in a section of seating at the front of the main stand. The most famous part of the ground is known as the ‘Popular Side’; this is a single-tier stand where the away supporters are housed. We suspect it’s called the ‘Popular Side’ because other name is the ‘Ice Cream Van Stand’. 

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Every fortnight we cover the best and worst football songs from every club in the UK from our book ‘The Sound Of Football: Every Club, Every Song’. You can buy it here

Crawley Town

Nickname: The Red Devils

Ground: Broadfield Stadium

Stadium Capacity: 5,973

Song: A Message To You Rooney

Club songs are generally upbeat; they instil a sense of pride and should bring fans and clubs closer together. Unfortunately, for one Crawley Town fan, Mike Dobie, his song saw him banned by his club.

In 2011, Crawley Town was a non-league side. The club was drawn to play fellow Red Devils, Manchester United, at Old Trafford during a FA Cup run. To celebrate, Mike Dobie wrote a song called ‘A Message To You Rooney’, a re-working of ‘A Message To You Rudy’ by The Specials.

Mike’s celebration didn’t last long. A Manchester United fan complained to Crawley that Mike had made airplane gestures in the video to mock the Munich air crash victims, the 1958 tragedy that had cost the lives of many of United’s players. Crawley was appalled and promptly banned the song and the man behind it.

After playing and losing to United, the club has had success. It was promoted to the Football League, and then, at the first attempt, it was promoted on the last day of the 2012/13 season from League 2 to League 1.

The only other time the club has featured in a song was when portly manager Steve Evans left the club. Although Steve brought on-field success, his methods were not popular with players or fans. When news broke that he had accepted an offer to manage Rotherham, the players were filmed singing a rendition of ‘We’re Singing A Song ‘Cos The Fat Man’s Gone’ and Chubby Checker’s ‘Twist Again,’ to celebrate his exit.

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Every fortnight we cover the best and worst football songs from every club in the UK from our book ‘The Sound Of Football: Every Club, Every Song’. You can buy it here

Cowdenbeath

Nickname: The Blue Brazil

Ground: Central Park

Stadium Capacity: 4,309

Song: The Coo (Cow) Song

Cowdenbeath’s nickname is the Blue Brazil. It’s an unusual name, and its origin can be traced back to a Scottish Cup tie against Stranraer.

Usually, Cowdenbeath plays in blue strips. Typically, it’s known more for hitting and hoofing than step-overs and intricate passing. However, according to fans at the match, the team that day was playing some “silky stuff“. One fan was so impressed he shouted out, “C’mon the silky blues“. Another shouted out “C’mon the super blues” before a third added “C’MON THE BLUE BRAZIL!” A stunned silence followed – earth-shattering hyperbole can do that to a stadium – along with a 3 – 1 victory, and the nickname’s stuck ever since.

Cowdenbeath was formed in 1880 by James and John Pollock, who had one claim to fame: they had the only football in Cowdenbeath. As the official history notes: the brothers were originally from Ayrshire, on the west coast of Scotland, and had learnt to play football there. When they moved to Cowdenbeath on the east coast, they discovered no one played football. Their mother went to Glasgow to buy them a ball, so they could keep playing.

The official history of Cowdenbeath records that her son Davie said in 1952:

“Mither decided that we’d got tae hae a ba’ so she went tae Glesgae and brocht ane back. That ba’ was really the start o’ footba’ here.”

(Mother decided that’s we had to have a ball, so she went to Glasgow and brought one back. That ball was really the start of football here.)

Sadly, Mrs Pollock didn’t also bring another part of their Ayrshire heritage: classic poetry. The most famous son of Ayr is Robbie Burns, Scotland’s national poet. Instead, Cowdenbeath fans sing a song based on Scotland’s other national poet, William Topaz McGonagall, considered the worst poet in the world.

McGonagall was born in 1825 and wrote almost 200 poems, all of them awful. He was such a poor poet; audiences would throw rotten fish at him as he performed. But, despite dying penniless in 1902, his poems have become celebrated, if not for the right reasons.

At Cowdenbeath, in Central Park, fans sing one poem in particular – ‘The Coo Song’ (The Cow Song).

“There was a coo, on yonder hill.

There was a coo, on yonder hill.

It’s not there, it must’ve shifted.

There was a coo on yonder hill.“

(Source: terrace chant)

Robbie Burns, it is not.

It’s worth noting that William McGonagall was a teetotaller and a great supporter of the temperance movement. Robbie Burns loved drinking. So, if you want to write poetry, better order a double.

Buy the Sound of Football from Amazon.

Every fortnight we cover the best and worst football songs from every club in the UK from our book ‘The Sound Of Football: Every Club, Every Song’. You can buy it here

Cove Rangers/Berwick Rangers

Nickname: The Wee Rangers

Ground: Balmoral Stadium

Stadium Capacity: 2600

Song: None!

We’ve tried fan forums (couldn’t find one), emailed supporters (no one answered), checked fan chant websites (all listed ‘zero songs’), and we’ve begged online for leads, but we’ve drawn a blank. Cove Rangers, one of Scotland’s newest clubs, having joined the league in 2018 after a 7 – 0 aggregate playoff victory against Berwick Rangers, has no songs. Please let us know if you know a Cove Rangers fan or have ever heard them sing. Instead, let’s look at the team they replaced: Berwick Rangers, though their musical legacy is not much stronger. 

Berwick Rovers was one of the few clubs in the SPFL that neither played music when the team walked out or after the team scored, and we’re indebted to the Berwick Supporters Trust for confirming that there’s no official song for Berwick Rangers, saving many hours looking for pieces that don’t exist.

It’s not surprising that Berwick Rangers has no official song when you learn that its hometown of Berwick-upon-Tweed is still at war with Russia – or, at least, it is, according to local legend and its unique position near the border between Scotland and England.

Berwick-upon-Tweed is located in England, just two and a half miles from the border with Scotland, yet, Berwick Rangers play in the Scottish Professional Football League. A discrepancy came about due to a lack of local English teams to play against, leading to it facing teams in the Scottish borders instead.

The fact that Berwick-upon-Tweed is in England meant Berwick Rangers was the only team in the Scottish leagues required to implement the Taylor report in 1989, which followed the Hillsborough disaster. The report required all clubs in England & Wales to have all-seated stadiums. As Berwick-upon-Tweed is an English town, the club had to comply even though Rovers play in Scotland.

The town has had an equally confusing history, being, at times, either English or Scottish depending on where the border between the two countries was drawn. The Treaty of Everlasting Peace (between Scotland and England in 1502) stated that Berwick-upon-Tweed was ‘of England’ but not ‘in England’. This led to Berwick-upon-Tweed being mentioned separately from Scotland and England in Acts of Parliament. A separation that led to its continuing war with Russia.

In 1853, Britain’s declared war against Russia. The declaration referred to England, Scotland and Berwick-upon-Tweed. However, the 1856 Treaty of Paris that ended hostilities never mentioned Berwick-upon-Tweed. Because Berwick-upon-Tweed wasn’t mentioned, locals say that the market town of 25,000 people must still be at war with Russia as it never declared a ceasefire. And, as we know what Russia thinks of musicians, following its treatment of Pussy Riot, perhaps Berwick Rangers is playing it safe and not choosing any music in case it offends Vladimir Putin, and he decides to invade?

Berwick does have unofficial songs. Berwick supporter Michael Smyth provided us with lyrics to two songs that celebrate the club’s stadium and surrounding streets. We include both songs below. In the first song, “The Grove” and “The Harrow” are pubs that flank Shielfield Park. While, in the second, the reference to “Shielfield Road” is a bit of artistic licence – Berwick’s ground is actually off Shielfied Terrace. Perhaps this is an attempt to confuse Vladamir Putin if he ever restarts hostilities?

To the tune of Molly Malone:

“In Berwick’s fair city

Where the girls are so s***y

I first set my eyes on sweet Molly Malone

As she wheeled her wheelbarrow

From The Grove to The Harrow

Shouting B-E-R-W-I-C-K

BERWICK“

(Source: unknown)

To the tune of Blaydon Races (see Newcastle United)

“Aw me lads, you ought tae see them gannin’

Gannin’ along the Shieifield Road

Just as we were stannin’

All the lads and lasses there

See their smilin’ faces

Gannin’ alang the Shielfield Road

… Tae see the BERWICK RANGERS!”

(Source: unknown)

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