Bloody Casuals: Diary of a Football Hooligan

England.

Introduction

THIS BOOK is written in the close season of 1986. It’s about football hooliganism in Britain - in particular, the emergence of organised groups of youths called ‘Casuals’ or ‘Trendies’ or ‘Scallywags’. They emerged around 1980/81 and, although they are quieter now due to a massive police crack-down and the use of jail sentences since the Heysel disaster in Brussels, where 38 people were tragically killed, and the Millwall-Luton riot, where hundreds of fans tore Luton ground apart and fought with police, they are still going strong in almost every city in Britain.

This book is not in any way written to glorify hooliganism or Aberdeen’s hooligans. Having been an Aberdeen Casual for four years, having travelled to England and Europe with other Casuals, and having served a jail sentence for my part in an ambush of visiting Casuals, I feel that I have stories and views that would be of great interest to many people. It’s for ordinary folk that I write.

All the events described did happen at some time, though possibly not all on the day I mentioned. Not all of the names are real. Some of the lads prefer not to be mentioned, possibly because they are still Casuals, but most of those who are included here are no longer taking part.

The book contains some vulgar language - it can be offensive, but it’s the way the Casuals speak.

CHAPTER 1

A Particularly Violent Day

EIGHT AM at the Schooner Bar, Aberdeen. A young lad, Ray, joins three others who are waiting for the bar to open: Jim, Mole and Strath. He is told, as all the others will be, that twenty five have already left Aberdeen on the 7am train - some to check out the shops in Glasgow for a new jumper or jacket, and some who simply couldn’t sleep for sheer excitement and anticipation of the day ahead. You leave on the first train and come home on the last, if you’ve got the bottle.

A heavy key turns in the door and the four walk in, shampooed, shaved, with gold chains on their necks and about £180 worth of clothes on each. Jim is first at the bar: What yous for then, boys? Me and Strath’s startin’ with orange. So’s Mole. Ray?

Ah, make it a pint of lager and lime, seein’ as it’s Celtic.

They all laugh. On days like this it’s always tough, especially after the match, and that’s they way they like it. Jim has a bottle of Pils for good measure.

With vintage UB40 playing, the boys grab a table slowly, in ones and twos. More trendies enter the bar. Many have had very little sleep, but they don’t care. It’s Celtic today and they’ve been speaking about it for weeks.

By 8.25am there are around thirty-five in the bar, mostly discussing rubble in the town last night or what they’re wearing, or the possibilities of rubble at Scottish and English games. Usually some Aberdeen boys travel to England but not on the big ones - and Celtic certainly is a big one. A couple of lads from Torry are meeting two lads from Leeds, and there’s always a few Scallies from Liverpool, but never more than ten. They can come with Aberdeen as long as there’s not too many of them - because it’s Aberdeen’s mob, not Aberdeen plus somebody.

8.35am. Now there’s about 60 in the bar. One large group round a small table is the nucleus of the mob, an unwritten but accepted fact. There are about 25 of the elite, and even within that there is a scale of rank, though not many discuss it. Major decisions like train times, time to leave bars for the match or for rubble, and routes to avoid police, are decided amongst these top boys, and of these lads there are normally no more than two major decision makers, or as some would say, leaders. For two years I was one of the leaders, and to the majority of young Casuals I was the number one, although Ray was always there, too.

Got any hash? Jim shouts over to Glennie, who’s just walked in. Lovely little half-quarter of black here, my sons. Don’t worry, well get wasted on the train.

One of the under-fives is handing out new north east firm stickers. There’s around 50 under-fives and more big lads are jumping off buses and taxis, panicking that they won’t have time to get their tickets. For different reasons - wages lost at cards or simply because they’re out of a job-there are normally one or two, sometimes three, ‘tappers’, who get 50p or £1 from as many people as they can to pay for the train, food and a couple of pints. I have seen a young tapper clear a card school of £50 from 50ps given to him by those in the school.

As we walk to the platform the usual railway coppers are there, looking for drink. The same half dozen cops - as long as you keep the joints under the table and don’t get caught jumping the train, they’re alright, not like the real filth in the town. Well Mr Allan, said one PC, I see there’s a good team of you going today.

Aye, there’ll be a sound when this lot hits Glasgow, I’m nae jokin!

As the train pulls away at 9.06am there are just over 200 Casuals and around 25 scarfers (or Christmas Trees, as we call them) on board. They are not our enemies - far from it, we’ve saved their skins a few times. The Casuals and scarfers, however, never go together in the town of an away game. It’s not that all scarfers hate fighting, but Christmas Trees usually fight when they lose a game. For us fighting is the game. You get boring games like St Mirren and good games like Celtic. Almost all Celtic and Rangers’ fans want to play. They may throw stones and run from us, but they all enjoy the game.

The lads are now settled in. There are fifteen card schools and seven or eight groups of hash smokers. A couple of lads manage to get their half bottles of vodka and orange on, hidden down their balls. Most like to keep control of their senses. Some like to drink what they can to dull the sight of the hundreds behind the handful they might be running into.

I play on the big boys’ table while the going is good. The same old faces are there; Watty, Turdie, Gregg, Big D and two more who wait for dropouts. There’s always an audience of ten or a dozen, and plenty look-outs to shout when the guard comes on so that one or two jumpers can hide in between the seats. An old favourite of the jumpers is to sit on the bog with your jeans and pants to the floor and leave the door saying ‘Vacant’, so that any punter will just get embarrassed and go elsewhere, and the guard won’t check a vacant bog.

In the school, pots of £30 and £40 are not rare for three card brag. The most I won was on a train to Hibs - £74. When we got to our usual bar in Edinburgh my round was 18 pints of lager, two tops and three lime, 60 fags and four pies. That was a score gone for a start, but it’s the accepted thing to do, to stand your hand when you’re in the winnings. And quite right, too.

Another ten Casuals come on at Stonehaven, and a handful at Montrose, but from then on you’re no longer in your manor. Now you’re entering jute territory. Many good rucks have been had in Dundee, but it’s harder now because, as in Aberdeen, the police are very well organised, and there are so many when you play Dundee, or Dundee United, there’s always the same faces. It’s not so much one football team against another (although at games of high importance it can make confrontations even more violent), it’s more one city against another.

The next stop is Perth, home of St Johnstone. Although they have a small, violent mob, they’re a bit primitive - still skinheads - and there aren’t that many of them.

Stirling is half an hour from Glasgow and sometimes some of the younger lads (the under-5s) get off here. That’s because if it’s an early train then all the big boys go for beers and the under-5s are left alone on the streets of Glasgow. If there are too few on an early train then they’ll just get off and wait for the next train, and more under-5s for back-up.

Once past Stirling, the adrenalin really starts to flow. The lads get restless and the card schools stop. Tension is high, not through fear (at least not generally) but through overwhelming excitement and anticipation. For sure there will be the usual police presence, sneering down their noses at us. Scum, they’ll say, and we’ll look at them just long enough not to get pulled up. Even some of the coppers are recognisable from previous games. How feverishly hated they are - hated more than the lads we’ve travelled to fight.

There will also be representatives of other mobs there to suss out how many are coming off this train. Maybe Rangers or Motherwell will be there, waiting for a train to Edinburgh, or a couple of West Ham ICF or Scouse Scallies just up for the day to see what this Aberdeen mob is like. They’ll have read about the mob in The Face or The Maker, or seen it in a real paper like The Observer. However, I think even football thugs, while realising that all the fashion and violence is real, know that stories about us in gutter press newspapers are glorified beyond all recognition.

The corridors of the train are full now, and the doorways are solid. The time is 12.30pm and everyone wants to be on the platform first. Your boat at the front of the mob, that’s the business.

As the train slows down to stop, Casuals are filing out of the train, bursting with excitement. We’re in Glasgow once again - magic! We wonder what’s going to happen this time, and hope it’s as mental as Rangers was earlier this season.

The scene is pretty much standard. There’s about 20 uniformed cops in the building, and quite a few vans just outside. (It’s a funny thing that coppers are supposed to be such heroes for stopping violence, when sometimes I think they love it more than we do. Nothing pleases them more than dragging a young thug by the hair into their van, knees in his ribs and kicking him in the legs or back. They always make sure they don’t hit your face and let you sue them. I have witnessed a cop with a Hearts scarf outside Tynecastle shouting: Come on then, you Casual bastards and when the Casual he was challenging booted him in the legs, he whisked him off into a nearby car and charged him with police assault. There’s got to be something wrong there, surely.)

As usual, Paul and a couple of mates (Aberdeen Casuals from Glasgow) are amongst the welcoming party which includes two lads from Edinburgh, seven from Fife, the 25 that travelled on the 7am train, 16 boozy Hazelhead Casuals from a minibus and three cars-full whose drivers just had to show the lads their new