from TWR bookreview

Cass Pennant of West Ham's Inter City Firm, and Martin King of Chelsea's Headhunters, have both released their own books in recent times on the subjectoffootball 'firms' and the phenomena that surrounds the different gangs all over England, the fashions, the haircuts, the music, the crack. Here they join forces in a publication that looks at 'characters' at clubs throughout the land, some who are genuine hardmen who've spent a fortune and literally fought for their clubs all over the country, and others are simply eccentric football fans who have gone to great lengths to support their side, from changing their names (such as Pompey fan john Westwood who has changed his name to 'Mr Portsmouth') to claiming to having never missed a single match in nearly thirty years (Gary 'Sunderland AFC 'Lamb) AII in all it is fair to say there is a diverse cross~section of fans featured here, with the majority being well-known hard cases.

It has to be said that a lot of the majorly of questions asked do relate to football violence,'biggest riot you have been involved in', 'hardest firm you've come across', 'best mob your team has ever put toqether' etc, but there is also plenty of humour with 'worst terrace fashion you've ever seen '(the Scousers and their shell suits in the 1980s get slaughtered!), 'worst ground you've ever been tot and so on.

BOLLOCKS!

Authors Cass Pennant and Martin King claim that soccer violence is nothing new, with Millwall and West Ham fighting each other at football well before the Second World War, and in the North East the worst Sunderlnd-Newcastle violence was seen in
1901 when Sunderland fans ran rlot on Tyneside to an extent where there were so many injured people In the Tyneside
hospitals, they had to start ferrying the injured from both sides through to Wearside.

Pennant and King claim that most football hooligans are as loyal as any fans of any club, and that all the sociologists,
psychologists and journalists who have tried to claim they are simply scum who don't like football are talking absolute
bollock.

When widescale, almost trendy, football violence started in this country in the late 1 960s with the Skinhead craze, most people who went to football from that time through the 70s and 80s (and through the Suedehead, feather-cut, punk, back-to-skinhead and then the'casual' phenomenon of the early 80's to this day) got caught up in trouble at football because there were no limits.

Since the 'casual' scene came about, the fighting at football nowadays is primarily between organised gangs who meet at
pre~arranged venues away from the well policed stadla with their crime-busting CCTV cameras and heavy stewarding and
policing .'Shirters' and 'scarfers' (people who wear replica club tops or colours) are left alone by the modern hooligan groups. (*The word'hooligan onginated from a iarge London family of Irish immigrants called the'Hoolihans' who were renowned for their fighting prowess) This book also destroys the myth that all football hooligans are from sink estates or are sad bastards from backgrounds of great social depravation, Many run their own businesses and are extremely wealthy, most hold down well paid jobs, and many stil l'run' with firms because of the buz they have had, rightly or wrongly, from being teenagers and foliowing their club home and away wrth mates they have known and loved for a lifetime.

SUNDERIAND CHARACTERS

The two Sunderland characters featured in this book are Frankie Wheatley, who is secretary of the Horden and Peterlee branch of the SAFCSA, and, as previously mentioned, Gary 'Sunderland AFC' Lamb, who now lives in Seaham, Co. Durham.

Frankie is a well known face and is Sunderiand mad. His first experience of troubie at football was when he went to see the lads at Preston in 1971, and all the Sunderland end ran across the pitch and 'took' the home end by chasing the North End fans out of the ground, this was the trend in those days, to try and 'take' the home end as a sort of 'scalp'. If you didn't take the end, you'd try and get an opposition hat or scarf as a 'trophy' It all seems a bit childish now, but then it was fresh and new and the excesses of the football gangs had not resulted in people losing their lives or in Heysel or the many other disasters and deaths caused by football hooliganism, not just here but abroad, especially in Latin American countries such as Argentina and Uruguay.

FASHION... AND AG6RO

Frankie states that his favourite all-time terrace wear were the National Coal Board donkey jackets that were all the rage, Ben
Sherman shirts, Levi sta-prest and Doc Marten boots. When the 8Os came it was the smoother Lacoste polo shirts and jeans.
Wheatley relates his worst feeling following football as seeing your team relegated, citing Sunderland's 1997 exit at Wimbledon
under Peter Reid as the worst ever.

He tells of being badly beaten up at Millwall away in 1974, a match that has gone down in folklore for those uniucky enough to be there. The Old Den was an evil place, with no exit roads outside, and Frankie actually tried to pretend he was deaf and dumb as the fighting got a bit heated! Taking Middlesbrough's Holgate End in the early 1 970s (Peterlee Pirates flag bang in the middle) was the best taking of an end he witnessed and a big ruck with Newcastle in the mid 8Os sticks in his mind.

He recalls a big Chelsea tum out at Roker for the first match of the 1975-76 season and a good Sunderland show at West Ham in the 80s, recalling: 'Chelsea had a good two or three thousand outside the back of the Fulwell and were chasing a lot of our lads up the backstreets, they had a good firm that day.

'At West Ham, we had it out with Bill Gardner (West Ham ICF) and the lad with the hair lip, it was a good toe to toe.'

LAMBY

Gary 'Sunderland AFC' Lamb's angle in the book is a bit different, he seems more of a lover than a fighter and claims never to have missed an SAFC game in nigh on thirty years, the last one he couldn't make being West Brom away in 1974, with a feeble excuse of being involved in a car crash on the way to the game. Part-timer!

Lamby reckons the worst terrace fashion he ever saw was seeing hundreds of Bristol City fans in Bay City Rollers gear in the mid 70's, trousers with tartan strips down the side held up by braces and guys running around in huge platfomm shoes. Naff. He remembers once being chased four miles with Tony McGill, his big mate, to Bristol'sTemple Mead statlon before a game at Bristol Rovers, and also recalls Newcastle belng ambushed outside The Fort pub in the 1980s affer a group of kids enticed them into the ambush by calilng them, the Mags then chasing thern down a back lane where hundreds of Sunderland fans were Iying in wait 'Sunderland 'Til I Die' is Lamby's favourite SAFC chant of all-time. He will be too!

FASCINATING

The terrace culture phenomenon is a massive industry right now, and this book gives a sharp insight into the minds and make-up of fans from clubs all over the country.

Whether you are fascinated or disgusted by the phenomenon, it isn't going anywhere. Indeed right now, the growth in football firms is reaching new peaks as younger fans hear tales from older relatives and friends about many of the old days recalled in this book by people who have been there throughout. I would be surprised if this is Pennant and King's only volume of 'Terrace Legends' l suspect that this is only a taster to test the water, and that more could follow fairly soon.

from the Sunday Star, November 2003

A RUCKING TOP READ

Hilarious tale from Supergrass' mate Martin King, co-author with Cass Pennant of a new book about soccer hooligans, Terrace Legends. As is customary with new tomes, the publishers hold a launch party but this proved a little difficult given the nature of the book.

"We had to forget the idea of a launch party," says Martin. "It wouldn't be a great idea to have some of the country's meanest football fans converging on a pub with free beer. It could have been a recipe for disaster."

from the Newham Recorder

HOOLIFANS BROUGHT TO BOOK

Former West Ham United football hooligan and now best-selling author Cass Pennant has joined forces with his once sworn rival in a groundbreaking book.

Cass, who was one of the best-known figures in the Hammers-following Intercity Firm and fellow best-selling writer Martin King who was the Chelsea Head Hunter main man, have buried the differences between their own mobs to produce what has been described as "the definitive book on terrace culture".

Terrace Legends reveals the stories of the men who for decades ruled the football terraces and are the faces behind the biggest gangs in football history - "behind the rucks, the rules and the respect". Every name featured - including a builder, bank manager and solicitor - will be familiar to ex-hoolifans from every team across the country, it is said.

"Some of the people from the terraces are now as well-known as the footballers themselves," said Cass.

A spokesman said of Terrace Legends: "Never before has such a wide-ranging book on this phenomenon appeared, because never before have the men of violence been prepared to co-operate. Brom the bovver boys of the Sixties and Seventies to the football casuals of the Eighties, the names central to the biggest firms - the names that were to become the stuff that terrace legends were made of - have all been tracked down and interviewed."

from John King (author of The Football Factory book) in the Observer supplement, December 2003

AMONG THE THUGS

If you want the hard, honest truth about football fans, about what happens in the bars and on the streets, I recommend a new book Terrace Legends by Cass Pennant and Martin King. This is a tougher alternative to the smoothly boring prose of the professional ghostwriters and Hornby clones. It's not written by outsiders salivating as they exaggerate acts of fan violence while simultaneously demanding stricter punishments. Instead, it puts the aggro in its context which, as anuone who has been around this sort of thing knows, is a lot less vicious than writers such as Bill Buford, author of Among The Thugs, or Douglas Brimson would have you believe.

Hooligans love the beautiful game - and I would rather spend a night drinking with the characters featured by Pennant and King than share a single overpriced beer with the snobs who slate this sort of social history.