|
The InterCity
Firm...hard, terrifying, vicious, brilliantly organised, tremendously
feared and highly fashionable. They were the most notorious firm of
Seventies and Eighties football hooligans Britain has ever seen. For
the first time ever, all the faces of the West Ham firm reveal their
memories and thoughts about the violence, the battles, the campaigns,
the run-ins with the authorities and all that came with it.
Best-selling
author Cass Pennant was one of the best-known figures of the I/C.F.
He has used his unique position as a West Ham insider to bring together
these first-hand accounts from the men who were at the eye of the storm,
both on and off the terraces.
These tales from
the terraces range from the inflamed East End rivalry with Millwall,
to the shed-end battles with Chelsea, from aggravation at Anfield's
Kop to the disaster that unfolded at Heysel. The stories unfold against
a backdrop of sharp fashion and music, such as The Cockney Rejects and
Sham 69, that became the hallmark of the hoolifans.
Such was the
notoriety of the I.C.F., that they became the subject of a television
documentary that attracted worldwide interest and changed the way that
outsiders would view football violence.
Brutally honest,
stunningly dramatic and genuinely authoritative, this book is a must
read for die-hard football fans and social historians alike: the people
that wrote it were part of a social phenomenon that changed the face
of a national obsession.
|
