Getting the Idea: Blame it on a Slow Tuesday and a Stupid Argument
You know how it is. You’re sitting there, trying to enjoy a pint, and someone starts mouthing off about football history. Last week, it was the usual crew, and somehow we landed squarely on the South Coast Derby. Southampton vs. Bournemouth. Nobody could agree on anything. Was the rivalry even real before the Premier League? When was the first time they actually played? Some idiot swore it was a League Cup tie in the 80s. I just shook my head and decided right then I had to pull out the receipt book and shut them all up for good.
I wasn’t just interested in the last five years of results. Anyone can Google that garbage. I wanted the whole, ugly, beautiful timeline. Every single time those two clubs have lined up against each other, going all the way back to the early 20th century when Bournemouth was still called Boscombe. That’s the real history, the stuff the mainstream sources conveniently skip because it messes up their pretty narratives.
Phase 1: Smashing the Keyboard and Finding the Gaps
I started the way everyone does: diving into the usual suspects—official club archives and big sports databases. And immediately, I hit a wall. Those modern databases are terrible for historical accuracy. They love to show you the glamorous Premier League fixtures, but the early FA Cup qualifiers? The League One scraps? Forget about it. They were full of holes. I realized quickly I wasn’t just compiling data; I was going to have to actively dig for missing pieces.
I ditched the sleek websites and went immediately for the messy stuff: old fan forums, archived newspaper clippings, and historical record books from local libraries that someone had thankfully digitized. The initial process involved pulling every match date I could find and throwing it into a giant, messy spreadsheet. I didn’t verify anything yet. I just dumped and scraped.
What immediately stood out was the sheer volume of early meetings I had never heard of. Matches from the 1920s and 30s that were crucial for establishing the initial local rivalry, often in regional cups that barely exist anymore. The first major task was identifying the absolute, verifiable first official competitive fixture. The initial claim of the League Cup game in the 80s? Complete rubbish.
The Real Work: Tracking Down Ghost Matches
This is where the practice part really began. It’s not enough to find a result; you have to find three independent sources that agree on the date, the venue, the score, and the competition name. Why? Because competition names changed constantly back then. What one archive called the ‘Southern League’ might be labeled something else entirely in a different source.
I spent two full days cross-referencing and filtering. I used digital archives of local papers—the old ones, where the text is fuzzy and you have to search by date, not just keywords. It’s tedious, miserable work, but it’s the only way to get to the truth. I specifically zeroed in on the non-league and lower division clashes:
- Checking records from before 1970, confirming the early FA Cup clashes when both clubs were lower down the pyramid.
- Verifying the results during the 1980s when the teams rarely met, confirming those sparse League Cup appearances.
- Making sure to account for every single manager change and major red card listed, just to add flavor to the timeline.
The hardest part was confirming the goal scorers for some of the oldest games. For a 1927 FA Cup tie, one source said ‘Smith’ scored, another said ‘Smythe,’ and a third gave no name at all. I had to look up the actual team sheet from that week to figure out which record was lying. It’s a detective job, not history research.
Compiling the Derby Results: Finalizing the Master List
Once I had a verified list of every single competitive match, I started organizing it chronologically. I built a separate column for the “Era”—distinguishing the pre-WWII local rivalries from the modern, globally televised Premier League showdowns. This showed a clear shift in how the rivalry developed, moving from a local skirmish to a fierce battle for South Coast supremacy.
The total count was surprising. Much higher than anyone in the pub had guessed. And the dominant results really told a story. While Bournemouth has definitely found their feet recently, especially since their rise to the top flight, the early history is overwhelmingly dominated by the Saints. But that’s history, not prophecy. That’s why we track it.
To make the list usable and impossible to argue with, I structured it simply:
Timeline Structure Used:
- Date: The exact match date (verified).
- Competition: Specific Cup or League tier (no shortcuts).
- Venue: Where the match was played.
- Result: Final scoreline (home team listed first in my data).
- Notes: Any crucial context (e.g., “First meeting in the top flight,” “Controversial penalty”).
I realized the real value wasn’t just the wins and losses, but showing the ebb and flow. There were periods, long periods, where they simply didn’t meet at all because they were in different leagues. Those gaps are just as important as the clashes. The whole process took about five solid days of serious work, but now, I have the definitive record. I printed it out, laminated it, and now I just wait for the next idiot at the pub to claim they know better. I’m ready. I have the facts.