IN a shocking new podcast former football hooligans boast about never getting beaten and eulogise about the thrill of brawling on the terraces.
Hosted by retired boxer Tony Bellew it tells how everything from kettles to billiard balls to darts were used as missiles to terrify rival fans and the police.
YouTube/@JamesEnglishHooligan Bill Gardner boasts he had 400 fights[/caption]
BPMIan Hambridge was killed during a riot at his first football match[/caption]
AlamyRunning battles between Leeds and Birmingham fans in 1985[/caption]
Being part of these gangs is compared to being a religion or finding a new family.
But among the unrepentant thugs, glorying in what was known as the “English disease” during the 1980s, are reminders of the innocent lives lost to this ugly pastime.
There are the 15-year-old Leeds United fan Ian Hambridge who was killed during a mass riot at Birmingham City’s ground and the 39 supporters who lost their lives at the Heysel Stadium in 1985 alone.
Or 21-year-old Gerald Comerford who died when a brick was thrown at him on the way home from a game in 1977.
We also hear how the good Samaritan trying to save the life of a police officer, when Millwall ripped up Luton Town’s Kenilworth Road ground, was punched by a pitch invader and how undercover cops were threatened with pool cues when they infiltrated a notorious football ‘firm.’
There is certainly nothing beautiful about the game described by the people Everton fan Tony spoke to for the BBC’s Gangster Presents series Hooligans.
If somebody wanted to fight me, I’d fight them
Bill Gardner
Not that many of the punch-up loving ‘supporters’ show much remorse for their past.
West Ham fan Bill Gardner, 70, gloats: “I think I’ve had over 400 fights in my life, and I never got beaten. I’ve never had the fear that normal human beings have.
“I was never frightened when I was with my mates at West Ham.
“They all knew they could rely on me, and I would never leave them alone. If one of them went down, I would pick him up, and I would still do it today.”
BBCEverton fan Tony Bellew presents the podcast Hooligans[/caption]
Remarkably, Bill doesn’t consider himself to be a ‘hooligan’.
He argues: “A hooligan is somebody who smashes things up and breaks things. I’ve never done that.”
“If somebody wanted to fight me, I’d fight them.”
A history of violence
Tony’s six part podcast, which is streaming now, charts the rise of violence on the terraces and attempts to eradicate it from the country’s favourite sport.
It looks at the upbringing of the men and women drawn to the tribalism of a club’s most thuggish ticket holders.
Tony says: “What people misunderstand about hooliganism is that it was born out of frustration.
“What I’ve learnt through doing this podcast is that these people were doctors, they were solicitors, they came from all different walks of life and they go to these matches and have fights with other fans to escape their day-to-day lives.”
Londoner Bill says his mum used to “hit me with lumps of wood, lumps of rubber, plastic” and West Ham “made me feel at home.”
Chelsea fan Mark Alleway, who later found God, also felt drawn to the danger as a teenager.
What people misunderstand about hooliganism is that it was born out of frustration
Tony Bellew
He says: “If they had said at 14, 15, Mark, what do you want to be? I would have said ‘I want to join a football gang and I want to be a football hooligan.’ It was my life.”
While Cockney Al, the nickname for a Birmingham City hooligan, tells how he went “a little bit off the rails after my brother died” as a schoolboy.
He continues: “Once you get involved, you’re expected to get involved every week, and that’s what happened to me. I was 15, and we played West Ham on the night time at Birmingham and West Ham come out of New Street Station, and quite a lot of people feared them.
“Well, because I was from London, it didn’t bother me seeing 200 Cockneys come running out of New Street Station, so I run through our lot, and just run into West Ham.
“That was my first major fight and then it just grew from there.”
Death on the terraces
AlamyA fan injured at the Birmingham City v Leeds United riot on May 1985.[/caption]
A wall pushed over by fans at the Birmingham matchAlamy
AlamyA police officer hurt during pitch invasion during Luton Town v Millwall game[/caption]
But even for Al, what happened at Birmingham’s St Andrews ground on May 11 1985, when they took on Leeds United, was too much.
As hundreds of supporters poured onto the pitch a kettle was launched from a trashed refreshment stand and a St John’s ambulance nurse was kicked unconscious.
The wild mob pushed a wall over onto 15-year-old Leeds fan Ian Hambridge from Northampton.
It was his first ever game and he died a few days later from his injuries.
Al says: “I remember my brother’s face when I got home. He just looked at me and he never said a word, never said a word. And that was enough.”
That might have been an accident, but what happened to Wolves fan Gerald Comerford in 1977 was not.
On the way home from a game he stopped in Cambridge when a brick was thrown out of the side of a car window at him.
It hit his jugular vein and killed him.
The men in the cars had been chanting “Cambridge, Cambridge.”
Stabbed in the back
Former Chelsea youth footballer Robert Isaac had a very fortunate escape in October 1984 when he was cornered by a gang of Millwall fans.
Robert recalls: “They just piled in. And I remember going down on the floor thinking if I don’t get up now I could possibly die.
“So I managed to get up, don’t ask me how, I can’t even really remember it, got up and then just sort of charged through everyone and just kept running and running as fast as I could.
It felt like there was deep heat on my back
Robert Isaac
“And it weren’t until about a minute, two minutes later it felt like there was deep heat on my back or something. So I felt round, there was a lot of blood.”
Only his leather jacket had prevented the knife piercing his lung and killing him.
Promising player Robert Isaac was knifed by rival fansRex
GettyEngland fans riot at a 1993 World Cup qualifier in Poland[/caption]
Blending in
Trying to keep the rival gangs from battering each other to death was a thin blue line of police officers.
When Millwall supporters tore the plastic seats and anything else they could get their hands on at Luton Town’s ground in March 1985 33 cops were injured.
One of them, Andy Clark, says: “I got hit on the back of the knee with one of these pieces of concrete.
“So I remember being on the floor and thinking, I’m going to be run over and that there’s going to be a crowd come running across me and this is it.”
He adds: “A police officer had nearly died and had been resuscitated. And the guy that was resuscitating him was being punched and kicked at the time.”
The guy that was resuscitating him was being punched and kicked at the time
Andy Clark
Chief Constables knew they had to do more to stop the trouble makers.
Some of them asked their officers to pose as hardened fans in order to infiltrate the gangs.
But four of them were easily spotted when they went for a drink in The Crown pub behind New Street station in Birmingham in the last 1980s.
The doors were closed and they were surrounded by up to 20 people, some of them armed with billiard cues.
An officer says: “They were threatened and accused of being police officers, which of course they denied. They were actually sat having a drink with one of our targets.”
The hooligan target took offence at being accused of being a cop and everyone managed to get out alive.
Gangster Presents Hooligans. You can listen to all of the episodes from the series right now, first on BBC Sounds.
YouTubeFormer Chelsea football hooligan Mark Alleway turned to God[/caption]
BBCBBC Sounds has a six part Hooligans series[/caption] Published: [#item_custom_pubDate]
