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The Kop
Standing on history: Spion Kop - a windswept hill in South Africa that has become ingrained in English football culture
Andy Greeves
Thousands of supporters across England sit in stands called the 'Kop'. The term is part of football vocabulary in the UK, in just the same manner as 'terrace', 'floodlight' or 'turnstile'.
The name 'Kop', is of course, synonymous with Liverpool Football Club, whose sprawling, one-tiered stand is as famous as Anfield itself. The thought of the Kop instantly conjures up images of red flags and scarves held aloft, the great European nights in which the stand served as a twelfth man and the sea of people surging to the front of the stand when their team scores.
The Reds aren't the only club with a 'Kop' either. Blackpool, Sheffield United, Sheffield Wednesday, Preston North End and Birmingham City are amongst clubs in the Premier League and Football League to have stands with the same name.
There is some confusion around what type of stand constitutes as a 'Kop'. The general features of a 'kop' is that the stand is usually one-tired, at a goal end of the stadium and is where the most vocal elements of a club's support is based. While the "Kops" at grounds like Anfield, Hillsborough and Bramall Lane hold in excess of 10,000 spectators each, a 'Kop' doesn't necessarily have a large capacity. Chesterfield's 'Kop' at the Recreation Group holds just a few thousand for example.
While football supporters around the world might know about the Anfield Kop, the other clubs in England which have a Kop and the general features of such a stand, there is less universal understanding of where the name 'Kop' derives from.
For that, we have to travel 110 years back in time to the Second Boer War, fought between British soldiers and Dutch settlers who laid siege to the British garrison of Ladysmith in KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa. The Second Boer War erupted when gold and diamonds were found in the area, leading to a near three year conflict which claimed the lives of 30,237 soldiers and 27,927 civilians.
One of the most bloody battles of the war took place on 23rd January 1900. On this date, the Boers and the British fought on a hill called Spion Kop, near Ladysmith. The British suffered 243 fatalities, with around 1,250 injured or captured. The only British soldiers left on the hill that day were the dead or the dying. The Boers suffered 335 casualties that day, 68 of whom were killed.
Present on that dreadful day were two individuals who would go on to be massive figures of the 20th century - Sir Winston Churchill and Mahatma Gandhi. Churchill was a 23-year-old war correspondent at the time and reported on Spion Kop:
"Corpses lay here and there... Many of the wounds were of a horrible nature... The splinters and fragments of the shells had torn and mutilated them... The shallow trenches were choked with the dead and wounded."
Gandhi was there in the capacity of stretcher bearer and the battle is said to have developed his commitment to passive resistance, having seen first-hand the horrors of war.
The British soldiers returning from war in 1902 are said to have spoken specifically about the bravery their colleagues showed on Spion Kop, when the term 'Kop' terms started to be used in the UK to refer to large banks/hills. It wasn't long before the name 'Kop' began to be used to describe stands at football grounds and the first record of the name's usage at an English football ground was at Woolwich Arsenal's (now Arsenal FC) Manor Ground in 1904.
Two years later Liverpool Echo sports writer Ernest Edwards commented on the resemblance between Spion Kop and a new open air terrace at Anfield, "This huge wall of earth has been termed 'Spion Kop', and no doubt this apt name will always be used in future in referring to this spot." The name was official consummated by Liverpool Football Club in 1928 upon the construction of a roof for this stand.
Unsurprisingly, Spion Kop in South Africa has become something of a point of pilgrimage for English football supporters and many have flocked there during this World Cup. Some have flown the cross of St George from the hill, as they remember the dead and get their first opportunity to see the resemblance between the steep bank and 'Kop' stands back in England.
The connection between Spion Kop and football isn't something exclusive to the English. South Africans are well aware of the link between the hill and Liverpool FC in particular, so much so that a local Reds supporters club has built a permanent memorial to the Hillsborough Disaster on the hill. The supporters club come to Spion Kop every year in April, to mourn the lives of the 96 Liverpool fans killed at Sheffield Wednesday's home ground during an FA Cup Semi Final in 1989.
The hill is therefore a sombre tribute to lives lost in both conflict and in one of the greatest sporting tragedies of all time.
English football will continue to use the term 'Kop' and thankfully the 'Kop' name now has far happier connotations, used to describe some of the most impressive stands at grounds across the country. New grounds not even built yet have earmarked the term 'Kop' for use at their forthcoming stadia. Tottenham Hotspur will incorporate a large, one-tier stand at their new stadium and could use the term to describe that stand.
With the World Cup currently being played in South Africa, it seems only fitting that more football supporters - English and otherwise - get an understanding of where the term 'Kop' comes from.
Reclaim the Kop
Hillsborough Disaster
© Andy Greeves & Soccerphile.com
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