Founding of the clubs: 1885–98 Millwall Rovers Football Club was formed in 1885 by
tinsmiths at JT Morton's canned food factory on the
Isle of Dogs in the
East End of London. Ten years later,
Thames Ironworks Football Club was formed by
Dave Taylor, a foreman at
Thames Ironworks and Shipbuilding Company, London's last major shipbuilding firm.
Arnold Hills, the company owner, decided to form a football team to improve the morale of his workforce. With each set of players and supporters working for opposing firms, competing for the same contracts, rivalries developed. The earliest meetings between the clubs were reserve games: the first ended in a 6–0 home win for Millwall Athletic Reserves on 14 December 1895 over a newly formed Thames Ironworks side.
Sixty meetings in sixteen years: 1899–1915 On 9 December 1899 the two teams met for their first competitive fixture – a Fifth Round qualifying match in the
FA Cup. Millwall Athletic won 2–1 at Thames Ironworks'
Memorial Grounds; their goal scorers were
Hugh Goldie and
Bert Banks. Millwall reached the
1899–1900 semi-final and lost 3–0 to
Southampton, but gained the nickname
The Lions from a newspaper headline heralding them as "The Lions of the South" for their cup exploits. The teams' second competitive meeting was a Southern League match that spanned two centuries. A fixture at the Memorial Grounds on 23 December 1899 was abandoned after 69 minutes owing to smog, with Millwall leading 2–0. Instead of replaying the game, the remaining 21 minutes were completed after the return fixture four months later, on 28 April 1900. After Ironworks won 1–0, the players took a short rest and played the rest of the abandoned game. With no further score, Millwall won the game 2–0. Thames Ironworks was disbanded in June 1900 owing to disputes over the running of the club. The following month it was relaunched as West Ham United. The club's nickname is
The Hammers, owing to their Ironworks origins. In the
1901–02 and
1902–03 seasons, Millwall and West Ham competed in the Southern League,
London League,
Western League and
Southern Professional Charity Cup. The two sides met seven times in each of these seasons, the highest number of meetings in a season between the clubs. During this period Millwall were unbeaten in 12 consecutive games against West Ham, with nine wins and three draws over two years. The run was finally broken on 1 September 1904, in a 3–0 victory at West Ham's first ever game at
Upton Park, with two goals from
Billy Bridgeman and one by
Jack Flynn. On 17 September 1906, in a Western League game, Millwall player
Alf Dean was hurled against a metal advertising board by West Ham's
Len Jarvis. Others were stretchered off following heavy tackles. The
East Ham Echo reported: "From the very first kick of the ball it was seen likely to be some trouble, but the storm burst when Dean and Jarvis came into collision (Millwall had two players sent off during the match). This aroused considerable excitement among the spectators. The crowds on the bank having caught the fever, free fights were plentiful." In 1910 Millwall decided to drop Athletic from their name and move out of
East London. The last
East London derby between the teams was at Millwall's
North Greenwich ground on 24 September 1910; West Ham won 2–0 with goals from
Danny Shea and
Fred Blackburn. Four months later, Millwall travelled to Upton Park as a team from South East London for the first time. The game ended in a 2–2 draw.A number of friendlies and non-competitive derbies took place during the
First and
Second World Wars. In total, 33 matches were played between the teams in
Wartime Leagues. They both fielded severely depleted sides of juniors, reserves and non-professionals, playing 14 games in the
London Combination between 1915 and 1919. West Ham won nine, Millwall three and two were drawn. After the First World War, the
Football League was reintroduced in England by
The Football Association and West Ham joined the
Second Division for the
1919–20 season. Millwall joined the inaugural
Third Division in the
1920–21 season, in the Football League expansion of 44 clubs to 66. In 1926 a
general strike was observed by workers around the
Royal Docks, the majority of whom were West Ham supporters. An unsubstantiated story states that Millwall-supporting shipyard workers of the Isle of Dogs refused to lend their support, provoking outrage. At this time, Millwall had already moved away from the Isle of Dogs and had been playing in New Cross for 16 years. The teams met for the first time in the Football League in the
1932–33 season, after West Ham were relegated from the
First Division. On 17 September 1932, West Ham beat Millwall 3–0 at Upton Park in the Second Division, two goals being scored by Vic Watson and one by
Jackie Morton. They played 19 games against each other during the Second World War: Millwall won 3, West Ham 12 and 4 were drawn. West Ham lost 2–1 to Chelsea at
White Hart Lane in the 1944–45 War Time Cup semi-final, with two Millwall guest-players in their team – both of whom went on to play for Millwall in the
South Final, which they lost to Chelsea 2–0.
Different leagues and hooliganism: 1946–87 After the Second World War Millwall's form was poor and the club dropped into the Third and
Fourth Division of the Football League. West Ham have never played below the Second Division in their history and often played a league or two above Millwall. The two sides did not play each other competitively between 13 October 1959 and 7 October 1978, making the 1960s the only decade the teams have not met. They also won the
European Cup Winners' Cup in
1965. Over four decades the sides were only in the same tier of the Football League for three seasons, in
1946–47,
1947–48 and
1978–79. They played two cup games against each other in the
Southern Professional Floodlit Cup in 1959 and the
Full Members Cup in 1987.
Football hooliganism reached its height in the 1970s and 80s. West Ham's
Inter City Firm and the
Millwall Bushwackers firm were at the forefront of the trouble, not just against each other, but against the police and firms associated with other football teams. In 1972, the two clubs played each other in a
testimonial match for Millwall defender
Harry Cripps, who began his career at West Ham. Four years later, a Millwall supporter, Ian Pratt, died at
New Cross railway station after falling out of a train during a fight with some West Ham fans. After the incident West Ham hooligans constructed the chant, "West Ham boys, we've got brains, we throw Millwall under trains." Millwall fans waited patiently for two years for revenge, until West Ham were relegated to the Second Division. Six officers were injured and 70 people were arrested after fans clashed in the street. Numerous weapons were also seized. The Lions' 2–1 home league victory over the Hammers on 14 May 1979 ended a run of ten games without a win against their rivals, which stretched over 46 years, back to 1933.
Pop Robson had given West Ham a half-time lead, but second half goals from
Dave Mehmet and
Nicky Chatterton gave Millwall the win. A 2–1 victory in the Full Members Cup on 10 November 1987 gave Millwall their first win at Upton Park in 73 years.
Alan Dickens gave the Hammers the lead in the second half, but two goals in three minutes from
Teddy Sheringham and
Tony Cascarino assured Millwall of their first away win in the derby since 1914. In 1988, Millwall won the Second Division championship and gained promotion, joining West Ham in the First Division for the first time in the club's history.
Paul Ince scored the only goal at The Den on 3 December 1988, as West Ham won the game 1–0. They also won 3–0 at home on 22 April 1989, with goals from
Julian Dicks,
George Parris and Alan Dickens. This is the first and only time either side has completed a Football League
double over the other. During the foundation of the
Premier League in 1992, the two teams competed in the tier below in the newly formed First Division. The last game played between the teams at The Den was on 15 November 1992. It was the featured Sunday game on
The London Match, an
LWT sports show. Millwall won the game 2–1, with goals from
Malcolm Allen and
Phil Barber.
Mark Robson replied for West Ham. In the
1993–94 season, Millwall moved into the first purpose-built all-seater stadium, after the
Taylor Report on the
Hillsborough disaster. In an eventful game, Millwall missed one
penalty and had another saved by West Ham goalkeeper
Stephen Bywater, who was subsequently sent off. Violence also broke out between the opposing fans. Millwall fans and the media named the match "The Mothers' Day Massacre". During an open-air showing in
Canada Square,
London Docklands of an
England game against
Paraguay at the
2006 World Cup, 100 West Ham and Millwall supporters fought each other, resulting in injuries to 16 people, one of whom required hospital treatment. The police shut down the screening with 10 minutes of the game remaining to be played.
Upton Park riot and West Ham move stadiums: 2009–present In the
2009–10 season Millwall were drawn away to West Ham in the
League Cup, which was the first meeting between the teams in the competition. The police cut the number of tickets given to travelling Millwall fans from 3,000 to 1,500, sparking anger among supporters; Millwall warned police of a higher probability of trouble. West Ham won the game 3–1 on 25 August 2009, their first win over Millwall in seven games played over in 18 years.
Neil Harris had given Millwall the lead, but a goal from
Junior Stanislas three minutes from the final whistle forced the game into extra-time. Stanislas added another and
Zavon Hines a third for the win. Violence marred the match before, during and after kick-off, with multiple pitch invasions by Hammers supporters. He was one of 20 people injured. The police concluded that the violence, because of its large scale, was organised beforehand. The Football Association brought misconduct charges against both clubs. A disciplinary tribunal fined West Ham £115,000 for "failing to ensure that their fans did not enter the field of play and refrained from violent, threatening, obscene and provocative behaviour", but concluded that the allegations against Millwall of "violent, racist behaviour and throwing missiles or dangerous objects on to the pitch" had not been proved. In a poor
2010–11 season, West Ham manager
Avram Grant guided his team to only seven wins from 37 games. On 15 May 2011, the Hammers were finally relegated from the Premier League after a 3–2 defeat at
Wigan Athletic. As Wigan equalised at 2–2, a
light aircraft flew above Wigan's ground, the
DW Stadium, trailing a banner which read "Avram Grant – Millwall Legend". Grant was sacked after the game. The plane had been hired by Millwall supporters from the fans' website House of Fun, celebrating Grant's failure to prevent West Ham's relegation. Their relegation meant they met the Lions in the
2011–12 Football League Championship. On 17 September 2011, their first league meeting for seven years ended in a 0–0 draw at The Den. Fixtures between Millwall and West Ham United are currently categorised by the Metropolitan Police as category C – games which carry a high risk of disorder amongst supporters. For the 2011–12 season, the
Metropolitan Police implemented London-wide operations to ensure that the games passed by without any incident. In 2013 a member of West Ham's hooligan Inter City Firm was jailed for 12 months for organising violence between West Ham and Millwall fans during an FA Cup match between
Dagenham & Redbridge and Millwall on 7 January 2012. He chose this game in the belief fewer police would be in attendance at a match in
Dagenham, but who instead, turned out in force to prevent trouble. In November 2014 the two sides' development squads were drawn against each other in the
U21 Premier League Cup. The Metropolitan Police took preventive measures against any trouble occurring, demanding the game at
Rush Green kick-off at 12pm and be played
behind closed doors. Millwall and West Ham moved a mile closer and are now under four miles () apart, when the Hammers moved into the
London Stadium in
Stratford in the
2016–17 season, which ended 112 years at Upton Park. On 24 August 2017, a
Nottingham Forest fan Paul O'Donnell died, following an attack by Millwall fan Andrew Lewis after O'Donnell had said "West Ham" to Lewis. A charge of manslaughter was eventually dropped against Lewis. In 2018, Hammers and Lions fans put their rivalry aside to help raise money for a West Ham fan suffering from cancer. Three-year-old Isla Caton needed money for expensive treatment of her
neuroblastoma condition. A Millwall fan did a sponsored run in a West Ham kit from The Den to the London Stadium to help raise funds for the sick girl. Shortly after her death in 2022, West Ham and Millwall jointly released a statement of condolences in solidarity with the Caton family. ==Results==