A Hooligan way of life

A Hooligan a way of life

I started attending football matches at White Hart lane in 1978 as a 12 year old with a mate (Les) from school.

He was the same age as me but looked a fair bit older at the time and could get away with a bit more. His parents ran a pub and he was a bit more street wise than me.

He had made a good few friends at Tottenham and seemed to know where everything was and how it all worked. Back then I was a little naïve and shy and so I just kind of followed him around.

But from the moment that game kicked off I was hooked. We were in the cage in the shelf. Back in those days it was where all the mad people went. It was where the singing and chanting was led from.

As a small boy I remember being slightly concerned when the surging from the back came, as this pushed everyone down the terraces towards the barriers. I would literally be lifted off of my feet with no control.

But somehow even though I was concerned I couldn’t get enough of it. The thrill of the signing and jumping about I had never seen anything like it before.

The game itself was against Chelsea which ended in a 2-2 draw. Even then the passion against them was evident and their hatred of us was just as clear.

I wrote an article for the fighting cock website a few months ago which relates to me meeting another school friend at this game. (Ricky) http://www.thefightingcock.co.uk/2012/11/yids-bringing-people-together/ 

Les my friend who introduced me to Spurs as I said got away with being a bit older than me so it was not long before he had moved on with his group of friends. It was not an issue for me I felt a bit out of the loop anyway. So I started to go to football with Ricky instead.

We carried on going into the cage but at the time there was still a bit of the old National Front (right wing political party) skinhead people about. So we decided although not through any kind of  conscious discussion to start going into the park lane.

The singing and chanting was still good plus you were close to the away supporters so you could have some good banter.

In those days the atmosphere was excellent I have to say. Everyone would sing it was normal, you were more out of place if you just stood there!

As we got a bit older and moving into the 1980s we began to go to away games as well as home games. Getting into games was cheap school boys only paid £1 and travel by train was easy to get away with without paying.

The more we went to games the more people we got to know. The emergence of the casual fashion also aided our notoriety amongst likeminded lads at the time.

If you look back to newspaper articles of the time football hooliganism was front page news as well as back page news. Every team had their own firm and Tottenham were no different.

There was a guy at that time who everyone knew as the “top boy” he had a large following and they travelled to away games via his organised coaches. The trouble for us was that you tended to have to be in your 20’s to qualify for inclusion on these away days. Just anybody was not invited, you had to be in the know and or be known.

My friend Les as he looked older had managed to get in with the right boys to know but for me and Ricky there was no option for inclusion.

As it turned out this was the same situation for plenty of other guys in their early to late teens, and so we became our own element within the Tottenham set up. Around this time the trend of travelling by train had started to kick in.

As it turned out for us, looking younger actually aided the situation. Trains were easier to bunk on (jib as we used to say) there was hardly ever any inspectors at the gate and on the train itself they just dodged through the football fans to avoid the inevitable abuse and confrontation they would have encountered.

For lads just ending school with no job (they was scarce then as well) this made football travel affordable.

There was no need for ticket allocations at these games you just turned up and paid on the turnstile. Again looking younger meant that there was little argument when you said school boy. Some of the guys on the gates were on the take anyway!

On many occasions we were pushed through two at a time meaning they could take every other persons £1 and not affect the attendance figure.

It was a helpful trick to learn to be fair because we employed it ourselves when money was tight. The turnstile guys had no time to chase you in those days.

Back then football became the centre of my life. I stopped hanging around with the kids on the estate where I lived and spent all my time with my football friends.

Saturday was the focal point of my life. A 3pm kick off was the norm but for Ricky and I and the majority of my friends the football day started at around 9am!

I would meet up with Ricky and we would get the overground train from Hackney Downs to White Hart lane. I bought the sun and he bought the mirror then it was off to the café next to the park lane!

Full English breakfast mug of tea and read the papers, who was playing who what the scores would be, who we hated the most!

The pub of the time was called the Bull down near Seven Sisters station. So after breakfast the long walk down there commenced.

Even though we were young because we knew everyone we were OK to spend our time there. The main bulk of our friends met there for a few pints bit of banter and also a bit of wheeler dealing.

Back then because the fashion was for highly expensive sports and designer wear, the average person could not just go out and buy it legit.

So there was a keen market for clothing accumulated in other ways. Shop lifting back then was far less of a problem. Security tags were rare, security guards even rarer.

The main trick was to take an item wrapped inside another item to the changing room. You would then put the item on under your clothes and give back the decoy item. Simple but effective.

On away trips the process was far less subtle, take one group of young lads rush into the nearest spots shop grab and run!

2 young shop girls with one old fella as the manager are not going to stray too far in those circumstances.

It was then on to the game, once inside a pint could be purchased in the concourse and taken up to the terraces. Whilst there were loads of police they were very rarely in the terraces they patrolled the edge of the pitch watching us through the cages erected to keep us off the pitch!

When I first started going to the lane the cage as it was known was the place to go. By the early 80s if you were known and part of the casual culture you stood in the area below the cage next to the park lane. This small triangle was nick named “casual corner”.

It was here that we all stood for the first live televised football match. Tottenham Vs Nottingham Forest 2^nd of October 1983. Unthinkable as it may be now we all turned up wearing bright red mainly Benetton clothing the idea being to stand out on television!

Being on television was a bit of a novelty at the time! It didn’t work needless to say.

I managed to attend a lot of different grounds during that time of my life and had some great memories from it.

I recall one time we went to Goddison Park it was dubbed the year of the cock as we won the FA Cup. During this year someone had brought a Cockerel to away games and thrown it on the pitch each time.

On this occasion we were all in the away end watching the police chase a cockerel around. It was comical this guy was following it about and as he got to it the cock would jump away. Inevitably we were all pissing ourselves laughing and taking the piss.

Even Scouse police didn’t like Cockney’s very much and the piss taking didn’t go down too well.

After about 10 minutes or so, the coppers frustration and embarrassment got the better of him. So they decided to grab one of my friends (Chris the chef) out of the stands and told him to catch it. Clearly their expectation was to make him look as foolish as the Cock had made them. However this totally back fired on them as Chris walked straight up to the Cock and picked it up, raising it above his head like a trophy!

Cheers erupted across the whole of the away end as we had not anticipated this result.

On another occasion we were on our way to play Watford. As usual the plan was to go via train, normally we would leave fairly early and make our way to the local city/town centre pubs, shops. As I recall it Watford had their own local station that football fans were pushed to by the police.

The idea was to keep football fans away from the centres and herd them directly in and out of the grounds. This would avoid trouble.

For this to happen the police would need to move us from one train across a platform to another waiting train.

On the platform the police were in force so trying to move through the station exit was not an option so we were pretty much funnelled to where we were supposed to go.

As we all boarded the next train one of the guys in my carriage (Scotty) tried the door on the opposite side.

These were old trains so there was no automatic openings these trains had normal handles. To everyone’s amazement the door was not locked off! Scotty threw the door wide open. There was no platform on this side of the train, this door opened to reveal fencing which was at the back of the local residents back gardens.

Without hesitation Scotty jumped over the back fence and into the garden of a Watford resident. He was swiftly followed by approximately 30 other Tottenham fans! As I ran along the garden path chuckling to myself I could see the lady of the house standing at the sink doing her washing up.

It will never leave me the sight of this poor woman mouth wide open in shock; she could not believe her eyes as this huge group ran through her garden. Scotty kicked the back gate open and there we were in this residential street.

The reality then hits as we all looked at each other not knowing where the fuck we needed to go to actually get to the game.

We did find our way to be fair via the town centre, I recall the entrance to the ground for away supporters was away from the front entrance we had to walk through a covered caged walk way. When we got inside the terraces the away supporters were in the same end as home supporters with the only separation between us was a piece of yellow tape!

There wasn’t any trouble that day, and we came away with a very good memory which I am still talking about today!

My Anfield experience was not very nice memory. It was a snowy day in 1984 when I was there and my overriding memory of that day was when we were leaving.

We were kept behind the Liverpool fans and funnelled into the space in front of the main exit gates. We were rammed in as was the way at the time. As we were stood there unable to move snooker balls came over the wall! One after another, you could not move and just had to stand there and hope that your head was not the next target!

The police just stood at the back of the crowd not allowing anybody to move out of the way!

I was lucky I came out unscathed, but have hated Liverpool supporters ever since.

There are loads of other games I attended all around the country from Brighton at an Easter weekend (dubbed the long good Friday after the film) where the Spurs fans took over the whole area, to Birmingham where the pitch was invaded to Manchester City (Maine road) where we were thrown out for “politely” reminding them that we beat then in the FA cup final!

As I was attending games in the 1980s I was fortunate to be able to attend both of the FA cup finals at the old Wembley. These were fantastic days out and coming away as part of the winning side is something I will never forget. Walking up Wembley way and seeing the colour the flags the scarfs and the unity of your fans makes the hairs on the back of your neck stand up!

After both games the focal point of celebrations was Trafalgar Square the fountains to be precise!

The police were as good as gold to be fair as crowds of Spurs fans jumped about in the water celebrating.

Football hooliganism was a massive thing back at that time; every team had their own element. The thing is though everyone knew who was who and most of the time trouble amounted to a face off and some abuse being thrown at each other.

Nobody actually targeted people not on the same wavelength not on purpose.

This time was no different in reality from our dad’s days of Mods and Rockers on Brighton beach.

Fashion and territory played as much a part as the football itself. We are all looking for an identity and for something to belong to. At this point of time football culture was the place to be and the people to know.

Some people found themselves in real trouble through this culture; I had a few scrapes of my own. But this is all part of growing up and finding out who you are.