West Brom Club Information

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About West Brom FC

West Brom was formed in 1878 by workers from Salter's Spring Works in West Bromwich, and have played their home games at The Hawthorns since 1900.

Albion were one of the founding members of The Football League in 1888 and have spent the majority of their existence in the top tier of English football. They have been champions of England only once, in 1919–20, but have had more success in the FA Cup, with five wins. The first came in 1888, the year the league was founded, and the most recent in 1968, their last major trophy. They also won the Football League Cup at the first attempt in 1966. Since the early 1980s the club has been less successful. From 1986 to 2002 they spent their longest ever period out of the top division, although there has been something of a revival in recent years: 2008–09 will be the club's fourth season in the Premier League since 2002.

The team have played in blue and white stripes for most of their history. They have a number of long-standing rivalries with other Midlands clubs; their traditional rivals were Aston Villa, but more recently their major rivalry is with Wolverhampton Wanderers, with whom they contest the Black Country derby.

West Brom Grounds

West Bromwich Albion led something of a nomadic existence during their early years, playing at five different grounds in a 22-year period. Their first ground was Cooper's Hill, which the club occupied from 1878 to 1879. From 1879 to 1881 they played additionally at Dartmouth Park, appearing to alternate between the two grounds during this time. Albion's third ground was Bunn's Field, also known as The Birches, where they played for a single season in 1881–82. With a capacity of between 1,500 and 2,000, it was their first enclosed ground, allowing the club to charge an entrance fee for the first time. The increasing popularity of football led the well-established West Bromwich Dartmouth Cricket Club to rent their Four Acres ground to Albion from 1882 to 1885, but they quickly outgrew their new home and soon needed to move again. Albion's tenure of Stoney Lane, from 1885 to 1900, was arguably the most successful period in the club's history, as the club won the FA Cup twice and were runners-up three times.

The expiry of the lease on Stoney Lane, as well as the club's desire for a more spacious location, saw them move once again in 1900, this time permanently. All of Albion's previous grounds had been close to the centre of West Bromwich, but on this occasion they took up an "out of town" site on the borders of Handsworth. The area was covered in hawthorn bushes, which were cleared to make way for the new ground, hence its name, The Hawthorns. Albion drew 1–1 with Derby County in the first match at the stadium, on September 3, 1900. The Hawthorns experienced its record attendance on 6 March 1937, when 64,815 spectators saw Albion beat Arsenal 3–1 in the FA Cup quarter-final. In the 1990s, following the Taylor Report, the ground became all-seated. Today, it is a 28,003 capacity stadium, comprising the Birmingham Road End, Smethwick End, East Stand and Halfords Lane Stand. At an altitude of 551 feet (168 m), The Hawthorns is the highest ground among those of all 92 Premier League and Football League clubs.

The West Brom Fans

The official West Bromwich Albion supporters club has branches throughout the United Kingdom, as well as in Ireland, Australia, Canada, Denmark, Malta and Thailand. Albion's "club anthem" is Psalm 23, commonly referred to as The Lord's my Shepherd, of which only the first verse is sung. Supporters of the team celebrate a goal by bouncing up and down and shouting "Boing Boing", a chant that dates back to the 1992–93 promotion season. In recent years fans of the team have celebrated the end of each season by adopting a fancy dress theme for the final away match, including dressing as vikings in 2004 in honour of Player of the Season Thomas Gaardsøe. In 2002–03 Albion's fans were voted the best in the Premiership by their peers, while in the BBC's 2002 "national intelligence test" Test the Nation, they were found to be "more likely to be smarter than any other football supporters, registering an average score of 138".