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

Exeter City

Nickname: The Grecians

Ground: St James’ Park

Stadium Capacity: 8,830

Song: Go West (1979)

Exeter City’s famous musical fans include Chris Martin of Coldplay and the singer, Joss Stone. Sadly, neither Coldplay nor Joss have ever provided a song for the club, but if they did, they should cover ‘Go West’ by The Village People.

‘Go West’ has been used to taunt supporters of teams from the West Country, such as Exeter City, as rival fans changed the words to: “Go west where the football’s crap”, which isn’t geographically accurate. The further west you go, the closer you get to the best football in the world – you just need to cross the Atlantic Ocean to reach Argentina and Brazil.

It is an apt song for Exeter, though, as while Scotland and Wales missed out on the 2014 World Cup in Brazil, one club booked a place in the sun without having to quality, and that was Exeter City.

In 1914, Exeter became the first side to play Brazil after the Football Association was asked to send a professional team to South America to take on the continent’s top sides.

The trip comprised 15 players and, as it was before long-distance plane travel, the team had to travel by boat. The trip nearly ended before it began. During a stop-off at Santos, the entire team was arrested – they had gone for a dip in the sea unaware that bathing was banned.

After games in Argentina, Exeter played three matches in Brazil. The Brazilians selected an ultimate side from Rio and São Paulo to beat the professionals, which they did 2 – 0, and the national team was born. The playing styles were similar to today in that the Brazilian squad impressed with their trickery, and the Exeter squad displayed classic physical European play by knocking out the teeth of two of the samba superstars.

To celebrate that game’s centenary and coincide with the World Cup, Exeter took part in a glamour friendly. It played a team of players from the reigning Brazilian champions and other domestic sides in a repeat of the 1914 game.

Today, Go West is sung as a tribute to the side, and a version was recorded for charity in 2012 by Phil Smyth, the son of City legend Cecil Smyth, who played 273 times for the Grecians in the 1960s.

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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

Everton

Nickname: The Toffeemen

Ground: Goodison Park

Stadium Capacity: 40,221

Song: Theme From Z-Cars

Suppose the modern TV cop show gets curious about where it came from and searches for its ancestors. In that case, it will discover that every classic police show, here and in America – The Sweeney, The Bill, Law & Order, NYPD Blue, Law & Order, even Brooklyn 99 – has one ancestor in common: Z Cars, a classic British police drama.

Z Cars was one of the first ‘real life’ police dramas on British television when it launched in 1962. It was broadcast live, even though most shows were pre-recorded. The live setting gave it an immediacy that other police dramas lacked, while the plots tried to present a more realistic portrayal of life on the street than the idealised stories the public had been used to seeing.

When American TV producer, Steven Bocho, developed the then ground-breaking Hill Street Blues in 1981, it was Z Cars that inspired him:

“I wanted my writers to watch Z Cars, and I wanted them to get that idea of overlapping dialogue, to get the home life in there. The BBC had already done it, and I wanted to emulate it.” 

One of the critical differences between Z Cars and other shows of that time was that it was set in a fictional northern town – Newtown – rather than in London. This move to the regions was seen as a radical step, and another break from the plummy accents and pinstriped suits image the BBC portrayed in the 1950s.

The show was filmed near Liverpool, and during a break from filming, the cast arranged a trip to watch Everton in action. When the club found out that the actors would be there, they arranged for the team to walk out to the Z-Cars theme, which was based on music from an old Liverpool folksong called ‘Johnny Todd’.

The fans loved the new song and requested the club to keep playing it. Except for one season when an attempt to replace it with more modern music was rejected by the fans, it has been played ever since.

It seems appropriate that a song associated with such an influential show should be played by Everton because, in its way, Everton has influenced others across the globe too. An influence that means you’ll never hear a chant of “there’s only one Everton” at Goodison Park. Nor at the Estadio Sausalito, the home stadium of a Chilean football club, Everton de Viña del Mar. There isn’t just one Everton; there are four current teams called Everton (and one other that has long since disbanded).

The most well know of the other Evertons is Everton de Viña del Mar. It was founded in 1909 by a group of English ex-pats who named it Everton in honour of the English side, which was, at that time, touring Argentina along with Tottenham Hotspur. De Viña del Mar was only added in the 1950s.

Although football was already popular in Argentina, Everton and Spurs travelled to South America to encourage enthusiasm for the fledgling game and share their superior tactics and skill with Argentina. It must have worked too, much to England’s regret in the 1986 and 1998 World Cups.

Today, the two clubs have strong links fostered by the Ruleteros Society, a dedicated supporters club, who, in June 2011, helped unveil a marble plaque at Goodison Park commemorating players who had fought and died in both world wars. Among the fallen players it honours were Frank Boundy and Malcolm Fraser – founder members of the Chilean Everton, who had sailed home to volunteer. They died at the Somme. An identical plaque can be found at Estadio Sausalito.

The clubs have only met once, and that was on 4 August 2010 in a specially arranged friendly in Liverpool to play for the Brotherhood Cup. The English Everton won 2 – 0.

Much like Z Cars, Everton has, from its Mersey home, quietly influenced teams across the world.

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

England

Nickname: The Three Lions

Ground: Wembley Stadium

Stadium Capacity: 90,000

Songs: Various

Together, football and music can combine to create something exhilarating as thousands of voices together inspire heroic feats. Think of Liverpool fighting back from 3 – 0 down against AC Milan in the 2005 Champions League Final as the crowd sang ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’. Or The Lightning Seeds, Frank Skinner and David Baddiel’s ‘Three Lions (Football’s Coming Home)’ raising the prospect of a repeat of an England triumph before the national team crashed to Germany in the semi-final of the 1996 European Championships. 

However, just a few years earlier, no one could have imagined the power of a song. Especially a football song as they were considered naff and unfashionable. It took one band, New Order (recording as England NewOrder) to change that, and make football songs cool, when they released ‘World in Motion’ in 1990. 

What’s remarkable is that this song, routinely declared the best football song of all time, came just four years after the worst song, and the second-worst and the third-worst and the fourth-worst and the fifth-worst football song as 1986 saw a whole album of songs each more terrible than the last. 

In 1986, writers Tony Hiller, Stan James, and Bobby James joined forces to write England’s official song ‘We’ve Got The Whole World At Our Feet’ and the B-side ‘When We Are Far From Home’. But they didn’t stop there. The England squad also recorded several medleys with them for an album, the ‘England World Cup Party Anthem’. 

The album started with the official World Cup 1986 song, whose only achievement was to reach a rather apt chart position of 66. Otherwise, it’s entirely forgettable. But the rest of the album is not, no matter how much you may try to scrub your ears and wash your brain cells out. A medley of songs starting with Happy Wanderer and ending at Y Viva Espana warms you up for some of the classics that follow on this album. No sooner have the “Val-deris!” and “Val-deras!” faded away than the team are belting out ‘Volare’. This was the highlight. It got worse. Someone had the bright idea of a World Cup of songs as the squad introduced you to every country in the world just by the power of music. You can hear Italy (‘Arrivederci Roma’), France (‘C’est Si Bon’), the United States (‘New York, New York’) and back home (‘Rule Britannia’) before later travelling to ancient Persia (‘Rivers of Babylon’) and finishing at the hottest spot north of Havana (‘Copacabana’), where it wasn’t just Tony who died that night, it was all pop music, mugged by 22 men with three lions on their chest. 

Yet, just four years later, a miracle happened. New Order managed to make a football song that was not only considered to be good but also cool. How did they do it? The simple answer is they were asked. As band member, Peter Hook, told GQ magazine:

“Tony Wilson [legendary late Factory Records boss] was at a football do, and the PR team from the FA was there. He was telling Tony what a fan he was of New Order and Factory Records, and he said, ‘God, I wish I could get them to do the World Cup song.’ So Tony said, ‘Well, why don’t you f***ing ask them then?’ It was as simple as that.”

The next step with the band signed up was to write a song. As lead singer and songwriter Bernard Sumner was not a big football fan, the band asked actor Keith Allan, who they knew through their Manchester nightclub, the Hacienda, to help. As band member Stephen Morris explained:

“It all slotted into place that we’d get Keith onboard for the lyrics. Coming up with the music is almost the easy bit. It’s what you say in the lyrics that is hard to pull off without basing it on a terrace chant.”

When recording the song, the England squad were invited to the studio. However, only a few turned up: John Barnes, Paul ‘Gazza’ Gascoigne, Des Walker, Peter Beardsley, Steve McMahon and Chris Waddle. As attendance was not compulsory, the rest all went to the pub. 

At the studio, the players were given champagne and asked to try and rap over the song. While John Barnes’ version made the final song, he wasn’t the best on the day. As Keith Allan said: “John Barnes was the best. Well, almost the best. Gazza was better by a country mile, but you could not understand a single word he said.”

After it was released, England, criticised by the press before the World Cup, managed to lift themselves and reach the semi-final against their arch-nemesis of 1966, Germany. ‘World In Motion’ and ‘Nessun Dorma’ provided the perfect background, a one-two of classical music with modern dance without the violence of the terraces or the brutish threats of hooligan chants. If there was beauty in the music, there was beauty on the pitch, and none more so than Gazza, who may not have been able to rap, but he was easily the finest footballer of his generation, and whose control, skill, speed, and movement were sublime. And then, in the semi-final, he received a yellow card, his second of the tournament. Even if England won the match, he realised that he would miss the final through automatic suspension. Tears flowed, both on the pitch and at home, and his heartbreak humanised football for every viewer.

While England would go on to lose the penalty shootout, Gazza’s tears and the songs of the tournament combined to propel football in a new direction, away from the terraces and into people’s homes, a fact Stephen Morris recognised:

“It happened at a great time for football because it was the tail end of violence at matches. Suddenly, ladies started liking football, and a match became a family thing; nobody was frightened. It was a cultural shift.”

Football had changed. A nation changed. And one song had helped achieve that – and it only took one man to ask New Order if they ever fancied writing a song for England.

Yet, while ‘World in Motion’ is one of the best football songs ever released. With its electric beats and catchy chorus, it was, and is, a classic. It inadvertently hit on a winning formula that most football songs had missed – bin the team. No one wants to hear central defenders attacking the chorus with all the subtlety of a two-footed lunge. 

Before ‘World in Motion’, the football song had a set formula: the professional singer sang the verses while the team sang the chorus – though it wasn’t singing, it was terrace chanting set to music. The history of England’s world cup songs shows this in action.

The first England World Cup song was the 1970 song, ‘Back Home’. This was a strange choice for a World Cup staged in Central America. Rather than celebrate the heat and fire of Mexico, the squad sang of a longing to know what was happening back in England. “Back home, they’ll be thinking about us… Back home, they’ll be really behind us … Back home, they’ll be watching and waiting”.

And, while the song reached number one, England could only reach the quarter-finals after they lost 3 – 2 to West Germany after extra time. England had been winning 2 – 0 before losing three goals. We can take a good guess at what the England fans thought of that back home.

Thanks to England’s failure to qualify in 1974 and 1978, the England world cup squad was absent from the charts for 12 years. When England returned to the competition in Spain in 1982, it did so with a statement of intent as the players sang ‘This Time’.

“This time, more than any other time, this time. We’re going to find a way, find a way to getaway. This time, getting it all together.”

While in 1986, a similar sense of entitlement can be heard in ‘Whole World At Our Feet’ with its cry of “We’re going to beat the world, so here we go!” Unfortunately, the rest of the world included Maradona, and England was sent home in the quarter-finals after Maradona’s infamous Hand Of God goal. 

By 1990, the FA, perhaps in a final throw of the dice, decided that a football song should be more about the song than the players. 

By 1998, the World Cup song was no more. The England squad was too busy/cool/not interested in gathering together and singing on an official song. The FA, from this point on, would back an official song that didn’t feature the squad at all. France 1998 would see ‘(How Does It Feel To Be) On Top Of The World’ by England United, which featured the Spice Girls, Lightning Seeds and Echo and the Bunnymen. 2002 had Ant & Dec sing ‘We’re On The Ball’ while Germany 2006 saw Embrace release ‘World At Your Feet’. 2010 saw no official song while the 2014 campaign was due to feature Gary Barlow’s ‘Greatest Day’ until the FA quietly dropped all plans to release it just two weeks before the tournament started. It was a brilliant move as it turned out – England’s greatest day was the day before the first game – its campaign was over after just two matches. 

Maybe one day England will release an official song again. If so, it will struggle to match a song that shows you don’t need football players to make the perfect football song. 

In 1996 Ian Brodie, a songwriter and singer for the Lightning Seeds, asked comedians David Baddiel and Frank Skinner to help write lyrics for a song commissioned by the Football Association for the 1996 European Championships, which would be held in England. The FA had suggested the song should refer to the three lions on the England badge, which when combined with Ian Brodies’ views that it should be a hopeful song, resulted in a song which has become a national anthem, returning to number one in the charts in July 2018 for the 2018 World Cup. As Ian Brodie explained: 

“I thought it was only worth making if it reflected how it feels to be a football fan,” Broudie said. “Even the most successful teams don’t always win, but there’s a suspension of reality, and you believe anyway — whether you support Rochdale or Man[chester] United. I’ve always felt there was something very primal about music that links into that. At the most raw, emotional times, people sing together, whether it’s a funeral or football match. ‘Three Lions’ has something of that — we’re all in this together, we’re all willing to dream.'”

With Baddiel and Skinner, who presented a comedy football programme for the BBC, he wrote a song that brought every fan together around a simple but meaningful chorus: “It’s coming home! It’s coming home! Football’s coming home!”

Yet, despite its confidence and sense of ownership, there is no arrogance in the chorus. Football was coming home – everyone accepted that England was the home of football, and this was just a statement of fact. However, behind the simplicity, there was also history. The song deftly referred to former players’ significant moments and highlighted the highs of winning the World Cup with the lows of early exits and decades of disappointment. When England managed to raise hopes, against all odds and the usual pre-tournament doubts, the song moved from a single to the charts to the terrace and to the hearts of every fan that sang it. As the team advanced to the semi-finals, it seemed as if the song was self-fulfilling – football was coming home with each victory – until it finally didn’t. As Germany yet again were victorious in a semi-final penalty shootout. But that didn’t matter because the song wasn’t a statement. Fans don’t sing “Football is home!”. They sing about the journey and not the destination. Football is coming home one day; we just don’t know when. And, until it does, there’s one song the fans will sing: Three Lions. 

After 1996, David Baddiel believed Three Lions was the end of the football song. He told the BBC in 2016:  

“Three Lions killed off the football anthem quite conclusively. There were a few attempts after 1996, but no one managed it, and that’s because it is the best football anthem of all time.”

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

Elgin City

Nickname: The Black & Whites

Ground: Borough Briggs

Stadium Capacity: 4,520

Song: Samba Di Janeiro

Since 1917 our sovereign has sent a birthday message to everyone celebrating their 100th birthday. In 1993 Elgin City celebrated its centenary. However, instead of a warm message from the Queen, all it got was a blunt message from the League Management Committee warning Elgin that the club was being stripped of its Highland league title. While birthdays are normally celebrated with cake and a party, Elgin had celebrated its century by cheating to win the Highland League.

Elgin City had ‘won’ the league by four points. Controversy erupted when it was revealed two players should have been ineligible to play Elgin’s final game due to suspension. The player’s suspension was set to begin on Saturday, 24 April, but Elgin had requested its game be brought forward 24 hours. At a League Management Committee meeting on Thursday, 29 April, the league decided that by failing to mention that two of the players faced suspensions when it asked for the change, Elgin had brought the game into disrepute. The Committee voted unanimously to strip Elgin of its title. The Queen, we imagine, was not amused.

Further controversy followed in 2012. Elgin was elected to the Scottish football league in 2000 and had maintained a respectable position in the third division. But, when Glasgow Rangers were required to start again in the third division in 2012, Elgin spotted the chance to raise some additional money by opening its ground to Rangers’ large travelling support by selling nearly 6,000 tickets for its first home game. One problem – the ground only held 4,520.

When the football league spotted the mistake, the game was postponed on health and safety grounds.

Postponing the game meant Elgin missed the chance to go top of the league. Elgin was just two points behind Rangers and would have leapfrogged the Glasgow club if it had won.

Apart from these infamous events, Elgin is famous for winning the Highland League 14 times and being the first and, as yet, only non-league side to reach the quarter-finals of the Scottish Cup.

Elgin’s badge has the Latin slogan ‘sic itur ad astra’, which means ‘thus shall we reach for the star’. Sadly, the team doesn’t use ‘Reach’ by S Club Seven. For the last few years,’ it has played ‘Samba de Janeiro’ whenever they scored, but this ended in 2012. It was probably when it realised that Elgin, as the second most northerly club in the UK, had more in common with the Arctic Circle than the beaches of Brazil.

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

Edinburgh City FC

Nickname: The Citizens

Ground: Ainslie Park (temporary)

Stadium Capacity: 3,500

Song: The Racecourse Red and Blues 

The Citizen’s created history by becoming the first-ever club to win promotion to the SPFL via the Pyramid Play-Offs,  after winning a second successive Lowland League title in 2015/16. In the years since they have consolidated their position in the SPFL. 

Our search for a song did lead to a fantastic song by Chris Rogers, which was runner up in the Edinburgh FC Song of the Year competition in 2000. After checking more closely, we realised the Edinburgh FC stood for Edinburgh folk club. D’oh! However, the song, an elegy to what it means to be a football fan, is well worth seeking out because who cannot relate to this:

“My father should shoulder the blame,

For starting me off on this way.

It’s never been glory or fame

That brings me back day after day.

Obsession was born in the 60s,

Never was broken again,

A lifetime of pity began with York City,

A nothing-each draw in the rain.”

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

East Stirlingshire

Nickname: The Shire

Ground: Ochilview Park

Stadium Capacity: 3,746

Song: The Curse

Former East Stirlingshire player Bobby McCully told the Daily Record a story about the man the club had just appointed its manager in 1974.

“I travelled to training with Tom Donnelly and Davie Robertson in a car and one night [the boss] pulled me aside.

“He said: “It’s some night eh, it’s freezing, you must have got soaked walking from the train station. I told him I always travelled by car with Tom and Davie, but the following week my expenses were missing.

“So I went in to see him and he just gave me the eyes and said: ‘You come by car, you won’t be needing individual expenses’. He’s a shrewd man.”

That man was Sir Alex Ferguson, and East Stirlingshire was the first club to spot his potential.

In 1974, Chairman Willie Muirhead was in Germany watching Scotland in the World Cup finals when he asked Scotland manager Ally McLeod for a name he could recommend as the club’s next manager. The name he suggested was Alex Ferguson.

Sir Alex, at his last press conference before retiring, reflected on his first appointment and how the world has changed since then:

“Forty years almost, 39 years as a manager; 1974, going from that day at East Stirling, eight players, no goalkeeper, to today, six goalkeepers, 100 players or something. I remember the old chairman was a great chain smoker, and I would say: ‘Can you give me a list of players you’ve got?’ And he’d start to shake, his cigarette was going at a hundred miles an hour, and I had to remind him again a couple of days later.

“He gave me a list of players – eight players and no goalkeeper. I said: ‘You know it’s advisable to start with a goalkeeper. Are you aware of that?’ So my first signing was from Partick Thistle, Tom Gourlay. God, he was big. I paid £800, but all the other guys were done for £100 signing-on fees, free transfers.

“And that’s your education.”

Sir Alex was the manager of East Stirlingshire for just 117 days. In that time, he galvanised the club, brought a new-found belief to the players, briefly took them to third place and, most notably for the fans, led them to its first league victory over rivals Falkirk in 70 years.

Remarkably, 117 days has had such an impact on one club, but East Stirlingshire has been Scottish football’s whipping boy for most of its existence.

It was formed in 1880 by a group of friends and neighbours in Falkirk. It took its name from a local cricket club, ‘East Stirlingshire Cricket Club’. Despite early success in the local leagues, the club has struggled since it was admitted to the Scottish football league in 1900. Financial problems at various times in East Fife’s history has seen it let players go to survive; it became the first club in the senior league to have a manager coach for free, while between 2002 and 2007 it finished bottom of the Scottish football league five times in a row, including losing 24 games in a row.

One of its unofficial songs is known as The Curse. It’s called that because every time the fans sing it at opposition teams (changing the lyrics each time), East Stirlingshire loses a goal before they get to the song’s end. A typical verse goes like this:

“1 man & 1 sheep went to play for Montrose

1 man & 1 sheep went to play for Montrose

1 man & 2 sheep went to play for Montrose

1 man & 2 sheep went to play for Montrose

1 man & 3 sheep went to play for Montrose

1 man & 3 sheep went to play for Montrose

1 man & 4 sheep went to play for Montrose

1 man & 4 sheep went to play for Montrose

1 man & 5 sheep went to play for Montrose

1 man & 5 sheep went to play for Montrose

1 man & 6 sheep went to play for Montrose

1 man & 6 sheep went to play for Montrose

1 man & 7 sheep went to play for Montrose

1 man & 7 sheep went to play for Montrose

1 man & 8 sheep went to play for Montrose

1 man & 8 sheep went to play for Montrose

1 man & 9 sheep went to play for Montrose

1 man & 9 sheep went to play for Montrose

1 man & 10 sheep went to play for Montrose

1 man & 10 sheep went to play for Montrose

The whole Montrose team is made up of sheep

The whole Montrose team is made up of sheep”

(Source: terrace chant)

Other versions for other teams refer to “one man & one bridie went to Forfar” and “one man & one ship went to Stranraer”.

Here’s a tip for East Stirlingshire fans: if your team, which needs every point it can get, loses a goal every time you sing this song – you stop singing it. However, the fans haven’t listened, and the club was relegated from the SPFL in 2016.

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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

East Fife

Nickname: The Fife

Ground: New Bayview Stadium

Stadium Capacity: 1,980

Song: The Cowden Family

When Rangers beat Hibernian 7 – 0 in December 1995, Gordon’ Jukebox’ Durie scored four times. You might expect a man who scored four goals to make every paper’s back page, but not this time. Gordon played with Paul ‘Gazza’ Gascoigne, and everyone remembers what Gazza did instead of Gordon’s goals.

Midway through the match, referee Douglas Smith dropped his yellow card. Gazza picked it up and tried to give it back, but not before, with a flourish, he pretended to book the referee.

Douglas Smith was not amused, though all the fans were laughing, and Smith grabbed the card back, turned the tables on the Georgie joker, and booked him for dissent.

When questioned by Hibs player Joe Tortolano about why he had booked Gazza, Douglas is reported to have told Joe: “He might be able to take the piss out of you, but he’s not taking the piss out of me!” 

In 2012, Gordon’ Jukebox’ Durie was appointed manager of East Fife, the club where he began his career, but, due to illness, he only lasted a few months before he had to step down. 

With his local knowledge, Gordon will know East Fife’s finest musical achievement. In 1996, East Fife fans made national news when they appeared on the BBC comedy programme ‘They Think It’s All Over’ to sing their version of the Addams Family theme-tune: The Cowden Family, directed at their rivals Cowdenbeath.

“They come fae near Lochgelly

They hivnae goat a telly

Their dirty and their smelly

The Cowden Family“

(Source: terrace chant)

Buy the Sound of Football from Amazon.

Our book ‘The Sound of Football: Every Club, Every Song’ has been updated for the new season with songs from clubs like the newly promoted Wrexham, and with a new format (as I’ve learned how to create a proper index). Songs are now divided into categories so you can quickly see which clubs have used the same ideas see by category which clubs share similar songs.

You can buy the new edition here: 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

Dunfermline Athletic

Nickname: The Pars

Ground: East End Park

Stadium Capacity: 11,480

Song: Into The Valley

Dunfermline Athletic run out at East End Park to The Skids song ‘Into The Valley’, Which has also been used by Charlton Athletic and, for a brief time, Bradford City when it was in the Premier League.

The Skids were formed in 1977 in Dunfermline. The band’s (now sadly passed on) Stuart Adamson went on to form Big Country, while another founding member, Richard Jobson, went on to become a noted TV presenter, producer, and filmmaker. Into The Valley was their biggest hit – and what a hit it was. Fast, thrilling, exciting, no wonder Dunfermline fans adopted it – it was the exact opposite of a Saturday afternoon at East End Park.

The song does have a local connection. While Richard Jobson has said that the song was about a friend killed on a tour of duty in Northern Ireland and the recruitment of Scottish youths by the army, Dunfermline fans believe that the song refers to High Valleyfield, an area near Dunfermline known locally as ‘The Valley’.

The club is nicknamed the Pars, and one theory about why it has this name is that it was short for ‘paralytic’. The players were meant to be renowned for their drinking, so they were called the Paralytics, shortened to Pars.

In recent years, fans have needed a strong drink. Financial problems led to relegation from the top-flight, while subsequent administration and another relegation to the second division followed, after the team was docked points. In July 2013, a fan-led consortium rescued the club after it looked like it might have been the next club to go out of business.

Since the 1950s, fans have left Eastend Park after the game to the sound of Jimmy Shand and his band’s ‘The Bluebell Polka’. The track was Jimmy Shand’s biggest hit, getting into the Top 20, becoming the first (and only) Scottish traditional dance band to have a top 40 hit. It was produced by George Martin, who produced all The Beatles’ albums. 

 
Jimmy Shand had an eventful life. He was born near Dunfermline, in East Wemyss in Fife. He was a miner who got blacklisted from working in the mines due to playing benefit gigs for striking miners. As a musician in the fifties, he’d release a record a month and was the first person to do proper tours up and down the UK, laying down the blueprint for the rock bands of the 60s. As far as we can tell, the club adopted the song following its chart success and, just like Crystal Palace and Liverpool, chart success has led to terrace longevity.

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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

Dundee United

Nickname: The Terrors (and not The Arabs (see below))

Ground: Tannadice Park

Stadium Capacity: 14,229

Song: Love Is In The Air

For the 2014 Scottish Cup final, then Dundee United player, Ryan Gauld, was treated to a special version on an old classic. ‘Gauld’, sung to the tune of ‘Gold’ by Spandau Ballet, was designed to inspire the Tangerines — and their midfielder — for the cup final against St Johnstone. Sadly, it didn’t work. St Johnstone won, and Gauld left Tannadice soon after in a move to Sporting Lisbon.

It’s sad that the song didn’t catch on as it was another cup final anthem – ‘Love Is In The Air’ that came to define United.

‘Love is in the Air’ has been sung at Tannadice for nearly 20 years. It’s commonly thought to have been adopted by fans during the Scandinavian invasion of the 90s when the club acquired a clutch of players from Norway and Sweden. Back then, in honour of Swedish striker Kjell Olofsson, it was sung as ‘Olof’s in the Air’.

The song achieved tipping point and unofficial anthem status after Dundee United’s famous 1 – 0 victory in the Scottish cup final over Rangers in 1994 – Dundee United’s first ever Scottish cup triumph. And fans – known as Arabs – have been singing it ever since.

Arabs is a strange nickname as the club was originally set up for Irish immigrants. In 1909, a group of immigrants, led by bicycle dealer Pat Reilly, decided to form a new club – then called Dundee Hibernian – as a focus for the local Irish community. It chose an area of Dundee at Clepington Park as a ground for the new club. Pat had one problem. Clepington Park was already used by local side Dundee Wanderers. Undeterred, Pat had a quick word with the landlord and, after agreeing a higher rent, Wanderers was told to live up to its name, and find a new home.

Wanderers was livid. It had been based at Clepinton Park for 19 years only to be evicted by a club with no history, no place in any league and, at this point, no manager. Though Pat Reilly sorted that out too by appointing… Pat Reilly.

In a final act of (understandable) spite, before Wanderers left Clepington Park it dismantled a grandstand and wooden changing rooms along with the fencing which enclosed the ground. Wanderers even removed the goalposts so that all that was left was a grass field. In return, Pat Reilly, changed the name of the ground/field to Tannadice Park (named after the nearest street and entrance to the ground) so that no trace of Wanderers remained.

Today, there are few traces of Dundee United’s Irish origin. The name was changed from Hibernian to United in 1923 and the original green colours were changed first to black and white and then to its current tangerine orange. 

While no one knows exactly how the fans got their nickname as the Arabs, the most common reason given is that in the 1960s, after a particularly icy spell, United hired a tar burner to melt the ice on the pitch. However, tar doesn’t just melt ice, it also burnt all the grass beneath.

Undaunted by a lack of a playing surface, United ordered several lorry-loads of sand, spread it around, painted some lines on it, and played several games before the grass grew back. When the team started winning on this unconventional surface it was described as having taken to it like Arabs.

The name stuck and even after the grass returned, Dundee United’s fans started to dress up for big games and cup final appearances. Hence the fans are now ‘the Arabs’ and not the team – and why in Scotland you’ll find Arabs singing a Nordic inspired song.

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