Irvine Welsh from America in The Daily Telegraph, 14th July 2003

There's always a pool of new faces with old connections as well. I meet Richey from Portsmouth, who shows me proudly where he features in the Pompey hooligan mob memoir of their 6.57 Crew. The book was co-written with Cass Pennant, whom I know from London. It's a superior book of its type, cheerfully admitting its bias towards Portsmouth, but trying to dispel a lot of the myths around the subject with candour and honesty. It's the same spirit we're trying to achieve with a film project I'm currently working on.

Andy's at me to read, but I decide I'm fed up doing pieces from Porno, so I read an excerpt from the 6.57 book instead. It seems to go down well among the expatriate crowd, although I don't know what the Americans present made of it. The evening got, well, once again...messy.

from The Portsmouth News, 18th November 2002

WE DON'T WANT YOB BOOK HERE

CLUB FURY AT GLORIFICATION OF NOTORIOUS 657 CREW

Football bosses, fans and police today united to condemn a new book glorifying the thuggery of notorious Pompey hooligans - the 657 Crew. And today Milan Mandaric vowed to investigate whether action could be taken to get the club's crest taken off the cover of the book - Rolling With The 657 Crew.

The book, being written by Cass Pennant, the former leader of West Ham hooligans the InterCity Firm, and Rob Silvester celebrates the actions of the 657 Crew. Pompey club chairman Mr Mandaricspoke of his concern that the club's image could be severely damaged by the book.

He said: "It would be very sad if this one book could tarnish the rich tradition of this club. It promotes a totally unfair image. There's nothing we can do about the club's history, but times have changed. Our club goes away in their thousands and are well behaved."

Police fear the book could attract young football fans into becoming the next generation of matchday troublemakers. PC Gary Morgan, Portsmouth police's football intelligence officer, said: "Hooligans are definitely coming back again. In the first, second and third divisions, it's more like it was in the late 1970s and early 1980s. It's getting worse, not better."

And Kevin Ryan, secretary of Portsmouth Supporters' Club said there was no place for yobs in football or the books that promote them. He added: "Portsmouth has become a family club but if hooligans come back it will put people off going to the games."

Although not due to be published until March, it is already being advertised on the internet and talked about by yobs. John Blake, a former Fleet Street editor and boss of the company publishing the book, said: "People should read the book before they make their minds up. It's still being written but it certainly won't be a glorification of violence, more a true story of what happened.

"Cass Pennant has written a number of books for me, serious books treated seriously which did not condone what happened in the past. His book about the ICF did not lead to a rise in violence at West Ham. But there is a fascination about this sort of thing and as publishers we publish books people want to read.

"It is like history now - people who bought the ICF book were children when all that happened, they wanted to find out what it was all about."

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READ IT - AND WEEP

I learned this week of a disappointing trend. At a time when we are supposed to believe football hooliganism has been consigned to the bin of 20th century unpleasantries - like kids down mines, anti-semitic movements and Thatcherism - the clamour for books about the unsavoury activity are incredibly popular.

At a major local bookshop, the book about Pompey's infamous 657 crew outsold Alan Knight's autobiography by a country mile. I suppose it matters little to the readers the subject matter is offensive. I hope simply, copies of it are not passed down to the next generation like Biggles was in my day.

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When I was asked to review this book, I thought 'here we go, another load of testosterone filled tales of bravado' but I have to admit I couldn't have been more wrong. Rolling With The 6.57 Crew is an unbelievable read. It grabs you by the scruff of the neck and then drags you from the late sixties to the end of the eighties through a world not many of us can visit. It deals with the exploits of the infamous 5.57 crew which ha taken its brand of football support around the country for the past twenty years, following Pompey.

The violence can sometimes be graphic but it's told in such a matter of fact way it feels integral to the plot of the book. The main protagonists, who must now be in their mid thirties, talk in half-a-reminisce half-documentary style which really gives the reader a page-turning buzz of adrenalin.

Sometimes frightening, often humorous but always entertaining, it was hard for me to put the book down and I finished it in two evenings. While I wouldn't condone the 657's actions, these events actually happened and a social document of this kind should be out there for those who want to know the truth about this mythical group.

Graham Hurley in The Portsmouth News, 12th May 2003

MESSAGE IN THE MAYHEM

Like them or loath them, Pompey's fabled football hooligans the 6.57 Crew compel attention. For two decades, they carried the city's colours to the far corners of the kingdom, earning themselves a reputation for limitless alcohol and extreme violence.

If you were Millwall, the 6.57 meant a fortnightly must-attend riot on the concourse at Waterloo. If you were Chelsea, and the Pompey crew were heading north, then King's Cross was the battlefield of choice. That same afternoon, If you happened to be a Leeds football hooligan at a home game, then the 6.57 would guarantee you an outstanding ruck before you sorted out Chelsea and Millwall again on the trip home. A single outing to Elland Road, one Pompey veteran remembers fondly, and you'd be up for at least five decent fights.

Memories like these litter the new book Rolling with the 6.57 Crew, by Cass Pennant and Rob Silvester, which repays an hour or two's attention on a wet afternoon if you truly want to understand the city. Only from Portsmouth would a couple of hundred lunatic hooligans set off for major combat without bothering to tool themselves up. And only Portsmouth would breed that special mix of craziness and courage which so impressed bigger, better-armed, more organised crews.

The book, in essence, reads like a series of military despatches. There are battles for territory. Traps are baited. Colours flaunted. And when the police intervene, rival firms' first loyalty is often towards each other. 'You really give it to us,' groans one grateful Millwall trooper to a 6.57, blood pouring from a head wound after someone had caught him with a lump of concrete. 'Brilliant ruck.'

Not for one moment am I condoning football violence. On the evidence of this book, there were very good reasons not to be in the wrong place at the wrong time when hundreds of drunken 6.57 set about doing the business. I'm also very relieved to have missed the notorious sacking of Le Havre, when the 6.57 reduced Anglo-French relations to an all-time low in the belief that the demolition of a football ground and several pavement cafes was somehow a protest against the hated Gregory chairmanship of PFC.

But there remain important questions about the source of all this violence. The authors point to the history of a city banged up on its own little island bombed by the Luftwaffe, and left to wither in the post-war years. That sounds almost plausible. But the truth, I suspect, surfaces elsewhere in the book. Finding yourself in the middle of a major ruck - total anarchy - supplied an adrenalin-fuelled rush like no other. You tasted power as well as blood.
Appalled? Yes. But it happened, just the same.

from readers on amazon.co.uk

January 23, 2004
Reviewer: Matt from Emsworth, Hampshire
Good read, hard to put down! A lot more happened at the time which is not mentioned - bit of a shame. But a good book for those that want a glimse of what went on down at Fratton in the 70, 80's. Don't quite know why Cass has anything to do with it but well worth buying!

October 20, 2003
Reviewer: A reader from United Kingdom
This book provides a snapshot of social history in England during the eighties. The grammar is not brilliant but neither were the lyrics of the music of the era eg Madness. The book demonstrates how someone can rise above their earlier lifestyle and perhaps it will inspire others to move on.

July 6, 2003
Reviewer: A reader from Hampshire
I bought this book as a Portsmouth supporter of many years. I have no involvement with the hooligan element of football, however, I found the frank dialogue of those involved in scuffles over the years riveting. The only section that let the book down a little was the long winded section on Skinheads, which focused mainly on the fashion and not on the subject for which the book would be purchased!!

June 8, 2003
Reviewer: blach1 from Manor Park, London United Kingdom
Being a Pompey fan, when I heard that a book on the 657 crew was coming out I had to put my name down for one. Its not often that people write books about Pompey but with whats happened this season that might be about to change. The book itself is not one of the best written you will ever read and the reason is simple. A lot of the extracts in the book have been written by people who were actually there and are therefore not natural writers. A lot of the book concentrates on the 70's and 80's when most of the football hooligism took place.

If you think this book just concentrates on fighting you are wrong. It deals with peoples views at the time and you can actually see their point of view. Being a young fan I wasn't around at football grounds in the 70's and only started attending in the late 80's by which time a lot of the trouble had died down. This book gives you a real feeling of what it was like to go to matches during these years and also reasoning behind why what happened did happen.

Some of the stories told by the 657 are hilarious and there is a great poem in there about the New Scummers ground. The book is not biased towards other crews and does give a lot of respect out to other clubs up and down the country from what their experiances of them were. I don't think in the whole book the 657 ever claimed to be the best crew out there, only one of them.
To sum up, I loved this book and couldn't put it down till I'd finished it and then felt gutted that I had. For someone that wasn't a part of that age I got a great understanding of the way the youth back then thought and reacted the way it did.