Why do Oxford and Swindon Town hate each other?

Nathan Spafford
Oxford and Swindon mascots

Oxford and Swindon Town are geographically quite close but it’s not proximity that has fuelled their rivalry…

 

How far apart are these clubs?
Recent weeks have seen some of the biggest distances covered in the Odd Rivalries series, so this week we’re scaling it down to the minimum mass of land between two clubs to be allowed, and certainly the smallest gap we’ve had so far in geographical terms. A 30-mile stretch across the A420 separates Swindon in the west from Oxford on the eastern side of this particular A road.

Extremely unusually for this series, someone who is not a complete and utter lunatic could choose to walk that distance, with it taking just the best part of 10 hours to make the trip from the County Ground to the Kassam Stadium, while a bicycle ride back to the starting point would take just over two-and-a-half hours without rests.

In football terms, these two clubs are a similar distance apart – enough to be noticeable but not so far that a giant blanket wouldn’t cover the two. Both are having successful seasons at the time of writing, and despite having spent much of the 21st century above the U’s, Swindon’s good season is coming in League Two while Oxford are fighting for promotion to the Championship from the third tier of English football.

 

How and when did the rivalry begin?
Because of their proximity, the clubs regularly met for friendly matches in the 1950s and 60s, but once league fixtures became more regular, the fixture became anything but friendly. With the 1970s – the peak of gang warfare and football street fighting in Britain – came an increasingly volatile atnosphere between the two sides and their respective supporters.

But much like the Boards of Canada discography, 1969 provided one of the key and unexpectedly brilliant moments from the canon of this rivalry. Founding members of the Southern League, Swindon had long been the dominant force of the two, but Oxford’s rise had pitched the two as equals by the time man had landed on the moon.

League Cup holders Swindon faced their rivals in the third round of the following season’s tournament at the old Manor Ground. Both teams were in the Second Division, but the Robins were overwhelming favourites to progress to the next round. They largely possessed the same team as the one that won the cup the previous year, had defeated Roma in the Anglo-Italian Cup Winner’s Cup and sat comfortably above Oxford in the league standings when the two sides met.

Of course, football is never so simple, and in front of a sell-out 18,000 Manor Ground, Oxford were 1-0 winners, much to the chagrin and embarrassment of their visitors, starting a rivalry which would become all the more bitter and violent in the years to follow and still to this day.

 

What’s the most memorable moment from this rivalry?
The 1970s saw the two sides go head to head on multiple occasions with fan trouble occurring at both grounds, while the two towns’ respective speedway teams also endured a bitter hatred of one another, with riders and fans alike getting into regular scuffles which blighted both sports for a number of years.

But it was 1982 that will likely forever remain the defining fixture in this particularly savage and quite literal head-to-head. A smoke bomb was the primary protagonist in a particularly fierce fixture where the score was locked at 2-2. A Swindon fan threw said smoke bomb onto the pitch and in the midst of the confusion on the now-misty pitch, the referee allowed the game to continue, allowing the Robins to score the defining fifth goal of the contest and run out 3-2 victors.

Chaotic scenes ensued and the referee was struck by a coin from the Oxford crowd, and an already fierce rivalry was exacerbated further by the ugly scenes at the final whistle. Despite Oxford ending the season in the upper echelons of the table and Swindon being relegated to the fourth tier of English football, a hatred has existed between the two ever since.

 

Are they playing each other this season?
The two wouldn’t play again in the league until 1988, and the record of playing each other since that infamous fixture in the early 1980s has been patchy yet consistent. The two sides have not had long stretches of playing in the same division, while there was a nine-year absence of fixtures in the early part of the 21st century.

Given Swindon’s latest relegation to League Two level at the end of the 2020/21 season, the two have not met each other this term. But with Swindon among the fourth-tier front runners this campaign and Oxford looking like outsiders for promotion once more from League One, there is every chance of Odd Rivalry action resuming in the near future.

 

What’s the future for this rivalry?
Plenty. Given the added fact that geography does play more of a part in this rivalry than every other thus far in the series, there will always be some level of needle whenever the two sides meet. But this fixture also has the added spice of what has gone before being fresh in the mind every time the two sides do meet.

The disgust that you would meet for daring to mention the name Joey Beauchamp to the average Swindon fans show the contempt with which his name is held. The Oxford-born boyhood hero spent spells with his hometown club either side of a disappointing time with Swindon which makes him a figure of ridicule in Wiltshire.

The head-to-head record for the two sees Swindon ahead with 25 wins to Oxford’s 17 victories, while the two sides have shared the spoils on 20 occasions.