Like most Saints fans I find it amusing when Pompey get turned over and agree with Beddy that theirs is always the second score I look out for in the hope that they have lost. I think Duckhunter is a little bit unfair in his dismissal of Portsmouth and I can't really see any other team becoming a fierce rival quite like Pompey - even if the worst happens and they slip put of the league either this season or the next.
After Portsmouth, I would tend to agree with the comments about Brighton although I think this has something to do with their current manager as opposed to anything else. It's a bit like Luton Town in the 1980's who always prompted a lot of bitterness between the two sides that stemmed from their regular routs against us and the unfairness of the awful plastic pitch. A "second" rival is always soemthing that is going to fluctuate depending upon circumstances. The relationship with Portsmouth can never be substituted.
There is no way that any other club can quite replace the "affection" we have for Portsmouth. I have often argued on this board that they are a bigger club (atleast historically) than Saints even if they have been run with the kind of financial mis-management which would make Robert Mugabe like look like Sir Digby Jones. No matter how parlous their circumstances, they always seem to bounce back and their resiliance is more than matched by their fans who will adamantly insist that Southampton is a smaller club even from the point of view of football's basement. A good friend of mine once remarked to me that Portsmouth fans will never concede superiority over Southampton and the whole scenario is rather like the poor old knight in Monty Python who is chopped to pieces and is still itching for a fight! I think alot of this has to do with their fans and the fact that, outside London clubs such as Millwall or West Ham, Portsmouth are the only genuinely working class / traditional football team in the South. Portsmouth reflects the hard knocks of football's working class origins (despite their own very middle class beginnings) For most Portsmouth fans, we are the provincial up-starts who have enjoyed, for the most part, sensible and modest management whereas Portmouth have always been run in a reckless yet Romantic fashion. Portsmouth reflects the misplaced footballing dream whereas Saints seem to be pragmatic realists. PFC fans love their club with a kind of passion that most Saints fans will never be able to appreciate. I do feel they have the more passionate supporters albeit far more fickle and unrealistic in their expectations than Saints fans who tend to be more grounded in their expectations. I really think that the rivalry is extremely deep rooted in issues that often go beyond football and embrace all sorts of cultural issues as well. Because of this chalk and cheese difference which manifests itself in so many ways, no other club will ever match the rivalry between our two clubs. We are such opposites that there is almost a case to be add that each club needs the other in order to define itself. As someone pointd out above, you can't feel bad about Bournemouth and, I suspect, like most Saints fans I am glad when they do well and a reversal in a match won't prompt the satisfaction of discovering that Portsmouth have lost yet again, even if this season the poor results have gone beyond being funny. Fair play to the PFC fans who stick by their team knowing they will suffer a dubbing every Saturday!!
I await the brickbats.......