Why baggies for west brom

However, to understand the real meaning behind the name the Baggies you have to go back before the team were even formed. Victorian England was a much different place than today, moral and ethically in fact their whole way of life was different. West Bromwich in early Victorian times was a dirty, drunk ridden town nothing to do except work, drink, make children and knock the wife about. For leisure time bare knuckle fighting, dog fighting, cock fighting, rat batting were the local sports, then along came Victorian middle-class society who thought it would be a good idea to change things a little.

The Victorian thinking was healthy body promotes a healthy mind, healthy mind, promotes healthy living, healthy living promotes a grateful workforce who will work better for their employer. In at the time when West Bromwich Albion were being formed there were already a few large companies in West Bromwich. Kenrick and Jefferson printing works had recently opened, Chances Glass with its school for its workers children already well established, George Salter Spring works busy making springs and the Hudson soap factory who at the time were probably the largest employers in the town and in a small way were a reason behind the Baggies nickname.

The Rechabites anti drink campaigners of the time even moved to an office opposite the Wine Stores in Sandwell Road in an effort to stop people drinking. To promote the Victorian ideals even further each of the firms and local churches started to organise clubs for its workers, Cricket, Bowls, Band practice anything to stop the workers going to the pub and get them active.

Cricket became the popular sport. This is, sadly, meaningless to anyone who's never seen Emmerdale Farm sorry, it's just "Emmerdale" nowadays, of course. To anyone who has, it will be blindingly obvious. The Dingle family are a bunch of fat, ugly, pig-ignorant thieves and petty crooks who live in a slum and do nothing but cause trouble. Any resemblance between them and the good people of Wolverhampton is completely intentional and not our fault whatsoever, honest.

The name was coined by Mike Thomas, then Treasurer of WBASC, who witnessed Villa supporters in the old wooden stand Trinity Road clapping at arms length, stamping the wooden floor at the same time while shrieking in a falsetto voice "Villa!

This reminded him of a seal or probably more likely a sea lion but the distinction was lost on us then. The name took off and a whole mythology built up around fish and beach balls. Reserve games between Villa and West Brom at Villa Park were great fun for many years - they don't like the rip being taken out of them Well, there's been a bit of an assortment over the last few years.

The reggae record that used to get played before kickoff was "Liquidator" by the Harry J. All-Stars, but it got removed from the play list because of complaints that the chanting that went along with it was likely to provoke disturbances. For a while, it was replaced by "Jump Around" by House of Pain, which featured lyrics such as "I never eat pork cos a pig is a cop" - clearly far more acceptable to the authorities.! We also sometimes played a piece of classical music - the one that they used to play during the Old Spice advert.

Apparently one of Denis Smith's last actions as manager was to suggest that we tried to Spice up the players' entrance onto the pitch by playing something a bit more uplifting than we did previously.

He was inspired by the excellent PA at Sunderland where they play a section from Romeo and Juliet, followed by Republica's "Ready To Go" - and everyone who's visited the Stadium of Light has come away impressed.

Unfortunately, at the time, the manky PA system at The Hawthorns meant that the plan didn't worked quite as well Peter Cottrell tells us that back in the s when he first started watching the Albion, and well into the s, the teams would come on to the pitch to the strains of "Stars and Stripes Forever" by John Philip Sousa. An apt title, if a rather naff tune. With the completion of the new East Stand, a new system was been installed and the whole programme of pre-match buildup music was been overhauled.

We started to use a couple of dance tunes to run out to - for the first half we used "Insomnia" by Faithless, which was out as a single in and is available on the album "Reverence".

We ran out to another dance tune in the second half; "Sandstorm" by Darude, which was a hit in ; you might still find it available on a single somewhere, but the best place is probably a compilation album of dance tunes. The pre-match music had a further overhaul in the late s, featuring tracks by Fatboy Slim "Right Here, Right Now" , Iggy Pop "Lust for life" , Jet "Are you gonna be my girl" , Doves "Pounding" and The Hives "Hate to say I told you so" , all of which should be pretty easy to find in your local record shop or lurking somewhere on-line.

Liquidator was released on the great Trojan Records label, and they still operate and publish a huge back catalogue of vinyl and C. You'll have no problem getting hold of a copy of the "The Liquidator". Trojan can be found at:. Videos, grandad?

What am they? Crikey, even the DVDs that replaced them are going out of fashion nowadays in favour of Blu-ray and online. But anyway, the Club Shop stock various titles, including season highlights as do various other sellers such as Amazon.

There is a growing selection of clips and other Albion-related stuff on YouTube as well. If you've got some information you want to add, or some questions you want to ask, just Contact Us Here's the list so far: Why are we called The Baggies?

And why the "Albion" bit at the end? Why do we always get knocked out of the Cup by minnows? Where and how did "Boing-ing" originate? Why do we call Wolves "The Tatters"? Why do we also call Wolves "The Dingles"? Why do we call Villa "The Seals"?

Frank Skinner and Adrian Chiles go and watch them together. But where does their less orthodox nickname come from? Not, as it happens, because of their particularly baggy shorts they wore during their glory years at the end of the 19th century.

Every team had them, of course. The story goes that they caught wind of the song and rather liked it, despite possible mishearing the lyrics. Indeed, these Brummies are said to then have imitated it at an Albion game, and it took off from there.

Again, though, other origins have been offered.