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SUNDAY PEOPLE
17th March 2002
"I SMASHED ONE
OVER THE HEAD WITH AN ASHTRAY THEN
THREW A PINBALL MACHINE DOWNSTAIRS INTO THE CROWD"
|
I don’t like
the words thug and hooligan. As far as we were concerned, we were sporting
gladiators. It didn’t matter
that you were poor and working class, destined for a life of dead-end
jobs. Being part of a firm gave you a sense of belonging. We showed
the world: ‘We’re here and we’re happening … f***
you!’ You might find that
hard to believe but that’s really how we saw ourselves – the
football didn’t really matter. We would meet up
on match days, wearing Levi’s jeans or Sta-Prest, braces and boots,
a Brutus or Ben Sherman shirt in gingham check, perhaps a Slazenger
jumper. We were a procession
of Doc Martens. Everything had to feel right, for when you stuck the
boot in. For weapons, we’d
twist off the hand-knobs attached to the Tube train ceilings to use
as coshes. Flick knives are
shown off. You are now a bovver boy. No one – parents, teachers
or that horrible p*** of a foreman – telling you what to do. It was never mindless.
It had a culture, it was the fashion, it was trendy. We were on a rollercoaster
and nobody wanted to get off. We were only there for a row. People didn’t talk about the team, they talked about the mob that came with them. |
Everyone had a firm
of some sort. We first started chanting ICF across the terraces in ’78
– it was like a secret, sinister code. Even our own players were
puzzled. The deerstalker
hat and Pringle-wearing boys of Millwall became the Bushwhackers while
Chelsea must have employed a PR company to dream up Head-hunters. Manchester
United had their Red Army or Cockney Reds. The Leeds mob were known
as the Service Crew. A good firm was all about having no outsiders.
We trusted nobody outside our community, an attitude more commonly associated
with the East End underworld. The big goal was
to go on to enemy territory and take the home end. Nobody was going
to allow you just to walk in and do that. To achieve it was to rob a
whole community of its pride. It meant total humiliation on your own
patch. We got it down to
a fine art. We showed no colours so the plods thought we were home fans.
Never take the middle stairs – you come in from the side, controlling
the urge to get stuck in until there are enough of you. A new era was dawning. Characters who were unassuming, moderate in their drinking and big on thinking were rising fast in the firm’s leadership. The ‘70s hick, boot and punch had been replaced by a quick squirt (of ammonia) with a jiffy and a swift in and out with a craft knife, all the time being careful not to get blood on your designer labels. |
We didn’t mind
where or when we had a ruck. Once, when a West Ham game was called off,
we were at King’s Cross with nothing to do. So we went to Spurs
v Liverpool and had it off with both of them! I recall a fight
one night in a motorway service station, when we didn’t even know
who we were fighting. Turned out, it was around 300 CB enthusiasts returning
from a conference. Didn’t stop it from being one of the classics. I steamed straight
in and smashed one of them over the head with an ashtray. People were
flying everywhere. I was proud of my boys but there was still a gang
of them at the bottom, looking up. So this pinball machine finally gets
pushed off the edge, crashing bumpety-bump, smack-bang into ‘em. The other lot run
for it. That’s enough for them. Congratulations,
you’ve just met the InterCity Firm. After being what
we got up to, any right-thinking person would conclude we were all mad
bastards intent on one thing – killing the beautiful game we all
loved. We cared little
about the dangers involved – once you were in that sort of world,
it was hard to get out. Why did it come to an end? One day, an Arsenal fan died. This would have hit home to everyone. No football match is worth dying for. |
Watching tragic
events unfold at Heysel, when so many fans died in the battle between
Liverpool and Juventus fans, had an effect on me, one very similar to
the emotions aroused when the world witnessed the tragic events of September
11 – it was like a huge wake-up call. As a former football
hooligan, I’ve long thought the events at Heysel brought us out
of that dangerous world we’d been part of for so long. It had been such
an adventure, but it could never go back to the way it was. For starters, football
and the authorities sharpened up their act – there were proper
searches at every game, CCTV, days out wasted by dramatically improved
policing. The tide turned
and there even appeared to be a news and media blackout. We used to
get up early for the Sunday papers, then find out they had ignored our
efforts. The mass change
to all-seater stadia then came along and ripped the culture out of us. There’s no
more anonymity when you are sitting in a numbered seat with a camera
trained on you. Gotcha! We had good times
– the football became irrelevant for a while because the team was
so bad, but you went because you knew that on Saturdays you’d be
with your mates. Football violence still takes place, thought nothing like on the scale of our day. People have moved on. And if you ain’t, you’re a dinosaur. |
