Saturday 4th June 1977 was a dark day for England’s International Football reputation….on and off the pitch.
On it goals from Gordon McQueen and Kenny Dalglish gave Scotland a historic 2-1 victory whilst off it the few England fans in the crowd of 98,103 had to watch in humiliation as the Tartan Army took Wembley to pieces. It was an insult that English fans vowed to avenge and swore would never be repeated. They kept there word!
A couple of years earlier England had began to establish a boisterous away following, trips to Basle and Lisbon in 1975 were amongst the first where large groups of England hooligans had began to export what is now world famously called “The English Disease” But there is no doubt that the invasion of the Scottish hordes kick started the English hooligans into action and from that day on they have never looked back!
30 Years of Hurt covers all the England games where violence erupted. From the early days when lads clashed with just about everyone who did not speak the Queens language, draped in Union Jacks and wearing tight fitting Admiral replica tops and singing “Rule Britannia” to the more sinister casual following who went about there business in a ruthless and blood thirsty manor, taking no prisoners in there quest to remain number one in the worlds unofficial hooligan league table.
Containing stories of derring do including the famous battles which made national headlines and saw hundreds deported to the ruthless smaller incidents which left scores injured and maimed.Told in a matter of fact way by the main lads from clubs all over the country 30 Years of Hurt reveals what it was like being a member of the hooligan army which for 3 decades shamed the nation and very nearly brought English football to its knees.
30 Years of Hurt is more than just another football hooligan book, it is the definitive history of England unrecognised army, who in the soldiers eyes did the same as there fathers and there fathers father’s before, they left England and fought….. for Queen and country!
REVIEW
The Guardian Sam Delaney
This is not one of those memoirs littered with exaggerated tales of "taking a 50-strong mob of proper naughty faces up to a League cup replay at Wolves." Neither is it a pseudo academic number that seeks to unearth the anthropological motivations of men who like to throw plastic chairs at horse-mounted policemen. It actually takes the best bits from both styles, offering first-hand accounts of the England national team's violent following from the late 1970s onwards. It manages to make sense of a culture that was borne out of the drudgery of Thatcher's Britain. With no job and no future, the consensus seems to be that there wasn't much else for a working-class lad to do in the 1980s other than bunk over to Europe on a ferry and beat up a like-minded German. It accurately traces the manner in which hooliganism slowly declined post-Thatcher in line with Britain's increasing prosperity. The bad news is that Euro-hoolies still see anyone in an England shirt as a prime target. Which could make following Sven's men in Germany a dangerous business.
