Southampton’s social media team have gone viral after a post mocking South Coast rivals Portsmouth’s floodlight failure which saw their Championship game with Millwall called off.
A power outage at Fratton Park left fans and players in the dark on Wednesday night. Millwall were just about to kick off at Pompey when the lights cut out, plunging the stadium into darkness.
The home side posted on social media that they were ‘looking into’ the issue at around 7:50pm. But an hour later, a further update announced that the game had been abandoned.
Tonight’s match against Millwall has been postponed for safety reasons due circumstances beyond the club’s control.
We will update fans further in due course.
— Portsmouth FC (@Pompey) November 27, 2024
Fans of rival teams quickly responded to mock the home side’s unfortunate issue.
One posted: “Whip round for the skates, anyone got 50p to put in the leccy meter?”
Another added: “Pay up Pompey, Pompey Pay Up!”
Southampton Mock Portsmouth Floodlight Failure
But it was arch-rivals Southampton who fired the most popular jab at their neighbours.
After Portsmouth’s match had been called off, Saints’ social media admin shared a picture of their own St. Mary’s Stadium lit up with floodlights and captioned: “Football under the lights”.
Football under the lights 💡 pic.twitter.com/YhpT7ptWE6
— Southampton FC (@SouthamptonFC) November 27, 2024
This naturally went down a treat with both Saints and Millwall fans.
One user replied: “Brilliant that”, while another said: “Might be the best post ever from Admin. Superb.”
Millwall supporters who had travelled to Fratton Park took the opportunity to stoke the South Coast rivalry further.
As the stadium sat in the pitch black, visiting supporters sang: “How s*** must you be? Southampton have lights.”
But despite the bitter rivalry between Southampton and Portsmouth, some Pompey fans could see the funny side.
“You know what, we deserve that”, admitted one Portsmouth supporter on Twitter (now X).
Another added: “That’s good for you lot tbf. Fair play.”
Portsmouth Bosses Explain Power Outage At Fratton Park
Speaking after the Millwall game was called off, Portsmouth chief executive Andy Cullen explained to the media that the club had lost power about half an hour before kick-off.
He told BBC Sounds: “We were able to restore the floodlights just after 8pm and I have to give full credit to the match officials, who gave us every opportunity that we could to fix the problem and get the power back on.
“We then got to a point where the floodlights back and the emergency lighting was on in most of the stands, however, there were still issues in terms of non-emergency lighting and other areas, such as CCTV which wasn’t working to its full extent. So we had a decision to make in terms of crowd safety.”
Cullen then explained that another issue occured later on, which affected the ability for travelling Millwall fans to get home safely.
He added: “There’s more to a match than just 22 players on a football pitch. We had a capacity crowd here tonight and we did not have the confidence that we could get through the whole game with other lighting not working.
“We then got to 8.30 – we still felt there was an opportunity to push it through – but then there was a further problem in terms of the last trains going back to London for the Millwall supporters. They would not have been able to necessarily get those last trains back, so a decision at that point had to be made.
“I’m really disappointed and upset that we’ve had to call the game off. But it was the only logical decision we could make at that particular time in the interests of everyone’s safety.”
