Portsmouth Songs and Chants: From Play Up Pompey to Portsmouth

If you were to think of a football club that is known for its vociferous atmosphere, the truth of the matter is that you might not have Portsmouth all that high up your list. Whilst the football club’s own supporters would doubtless be quick to tell you that they always get behind their team and can create a decent atmosphere at Fratton Park when they’re called upon, those from outside of the area would be unlikely to suggest that they have ever felt any kind of overwhelming sensation of noise and support from the home crowd. If you were to ask a Southampton fan, you’d almost certainly get an even less polite response about them…

That rivalry is one that certainly features quite heavily in some of the songs and chants that roll down from the terraces when Portsmouth are playing, irrespective of whether it is their south coast rivals that they’re up against. This is all about making noise to support the team, even if what is being chanted would fit into the ‘less than savoury’ category. Some of the songs that Portsmouth fans produce are ones that you’ll hear at football stadiums up and down the land, such is their ubiquitous nature, whilst others are rather more specific to Pompey. There are also songs that are about specific players, but we’ll ignore them where possible.

That, of course, is down to the transient nature of football, with players coming and going depending on their skill level and the position in the Football League that Portsmouth find themselves in at any given moment. That means that the list of songs that we’ve got here is far from finite, so if you think that you’ve heard a different song that isn’t listed here when you’ve been to see Pompey play live or watched them on the television then the reality of the matter is that you will almost certainly be right. That being said, this will hopefully give you a bit of a taster of what to expect from Portsmouth supporters when watching their team.

Play Up Pompey

If there is one song that is synonymous with Portsmouth Football Club above all others, it is this one. The chant is arguably one of the oldest and most recognisable club-specific songs in English football, with its origins stretching back well over a hundred years. There is some debate about exactly when it was first sung, but what is not in any doubt whatsoever is that it has been a fixture at Fratton Park for as long as most supporters can remember. That is thanks in no small part to its simplicity, as well as the fact that the tune will be recognisable to virtually everyone that has sung ‘Same old (insert team name), always cheating’.

Simple it may be, but there is something rousing about the whole thing when it is belted out by a full stand of supporters. It is the sort of chant that gets louder the more desperate the situation becomes, which is either a testament to the loyalty of the Portsmouth faithful or a reflection of the fact that things have occasionally been rather desperate at Fratton Park over the years, depending on your perspective.

The lyrics, short and punchy as they are, go as follows:

Play up Pompey!

Pompey play up!

The Glory of the Gates

This is a more recent addition to the Portsmouth songbook than the likes of Play Up Pompey. It is a song that speaks to the particular identity of the club and its supporters. The song is a celebration of Fratton Park itself and the heritage of supporting the football club, carrying with it a sense of pride that goes beyond just following a team. It is about belonging to something, which is very much in keeping with the spirit of football support on the south coast. The song is built around the idea that walking through the gates of Fratton Park is itself an experience worth singing about and that the ground, imperfect as it is, represents something.

Not only that, but it represents something important and enduring about the club and the city. Not every supporter could tell you exactly when the song first emerged, but it has become a firm favourite and is regularly heard during home matches. The song, as you will no doubt work out from reading the lyrics, is sung to a tune you will recognise immediately, even if you’re not sure how you know it or what you know it from. As with many football chants, it isn’t exactly lyrically wonderful, but it does the job of providing a sense of atmosphere at the football ground when Portsmouth supporters feel like the players need it.

Here is how it goes:

I went and saw the glory of the gates of Fratton Park,

I went and saw the glory of the gates of Fratton Park,

I went and saw the glory of the gates of Fratton Park,

And the Blues go marching on!

(Repeat)

If I Had the Wings of a Sparrow

It would be remarkable if a list of Portsmouth songs did not feature at least one chant directed at their nearest and most bitter rivals. The animosity between Portsmouth and Southampton is one of the fiercest local derbies in English football, and it colours a great deal of what happens in the stands when the two clubs are mentioned in the same breath, which, it is fair to say, happens rather more often than either set of supporters would ideally like. The specific words of the anti-Southampton chants vary more than some of the other songs on this list and some of them venture into territory that would not be entirely appropriate to reproduce here in full.

Suffice it to say that the general sentiment is one of deep and heartfelt dislike, and that Portsmouth supporters are not shy about expressing it at every available opportunity, whether Southampton happen to be the opponents on the day or not. Here is just one example, which is a song that you may well have heard other versions of sung by different teams and putting the appropriate words in where necessary:

If I had the wings of a sparrow,

If I had the arse of a crow,

I’d fly right over St Mary’s tomorrow,

And shit on the scummers below!

Sh*t on,

Sh*t on,

Sh*t on the scummers below, below!

Pompey ’Til I Die

The ’Til I Die template is one of the great reliable workhorses of football supporter culture and Portsmouth fans have long had their own version. The sentiment is straightforward enough, expressing a lifelong and unconditional commitment to the club that no change in fortune can diminish. This is evidenced by the fact that Pompey have certainly had a number of changes in fortune over the years, yet the supporters continue to turn up to Fratton Park and show their love for the players on the pitch.

From the highs of back-to-back Premier League survival, the FA Cup triumph of 2008 and then the financial collapse that sent Portsmouth down, the fans have seen it all.

The lyrics go:

I’m Pompey ’til I die,

I’m Pompey ’til I die,

I know I am,

I’m sure I am,

I’m Pompey ’til I die!

Portsmouth

In some ways, it is a bit of a cheat to have a song with no lyrics as a tune on this list, but given the fact that it is the music that Portsmouth run out to on every home match day, it would be wrong to exclude it from the list entirely. The song itself is a traditional English folk music number, appearing in The Dancing Master in 1701 before being used as one of three arrangements used by Ralph Vaughan Williams in 1923.

More than five decades later and the musician Mike Oldfield decided to do his own version of it, releasing it as a single and, remarkably, it charted higher than any other Oldfield hit, reaching number three in the UK charts.

It came out after In Dulci Jubilo, the Christmas hit that more people will be more familiar with, and before William Tell Overture. Even though Oldfield was born in Reading, the name of the song meant that it inevitably became closely associated with the football club. It is played before every home game, but was also linked to the club’s successful run to winning the FA Cup in 2008, even being played at Wembley after the full-time whistle of their game against Cardiff City that saw them lift the trophy. Two years later and Pompey were back in the FA Cup final, this time against Chelsea, with some fans trying to get the song to number one.