Rangers and the Famous ICF: My Life With Scotland's Most-Feared Football Hooligan Gang

by Chugg, Sandy

  13

  THE ENGLAND NATIONAL TEAM

  I am proud to be British and I never want to see any of the four nations that make up the United Kingdom break away. Such is my passion for this great country of ours that as a young hooligan I always tried to wear Union Jack boxer shorts, T-shirts and socks, and if it wasn’t Union Jack gear I would don clothes with the Red Hand of Ulster logo prominently displayed. My choice of outfit was always a great source of amusement for the older boys in the ICF. In fact it led to Harky giving me the nickname Billy Britain, and it is one that has stuck with me to this day.

  Given our strong sense of Britishness, fans of other Scottish clubs claim that the ICF joined up with the English national team’s firm to fight Scotland fans. That is crap. We are Scottish and British, not English and British. While we have nothing but contempt for the Tartan Army bampots who denigrate the idea of British identity that does not mean we put England above Scotland. In fact some of the most vicious football violence I have ever taken part in involved Rangers ICF members fighting the English national firm.

  My first experience of the England mob came in 1985. I was twelve and a Rangers Soccer Babe, just starting out on the great hooligan adventure. They came up to Glasgow for the Scotland–England game that year and again in 1987. I was in awe. There were just so many of them, and they were almost all massive beer monsters. The England lads had been making headlines all over Europe and when I saw them, and the way they took the piss on the streets of Glasgow, I understood why.

  I went down to Wembley in 1988 for the England–Scotland fixture with an old school pal from Shettleston. We travelled by coach on the Friday morning, one out of a convoy of hundreds that clogged up the M6 and then the M1. My mum and my aunt were also on the coach, which made the journey slightly bizarre. They weren’t going to the game; their intention was to go shopping on Oxford Street and no doubt to keep an eye on me. We arrived about two in the afternoon and were taken to our hotel in Piccadilly Circus, after which we did the whole London tourist thing.

  The next morning me and my pal headed for Trafalgar Square where we ran into a few boys we knew from Blackley’s Baby Crew. They had come down with the main mob, the CCS, and I would guess there were about three hundred Hibs there altogether. We didn’t get any grief from the Hibs boys and in fact we walked with them the rest of the way. En route the CCS had it with Leeds and then Chelsea and they gave a good account of themselves. At Trafalgar Square it was fucking chaos. There were thousands of Scots milling around, most of them drunk, and fights were kicking off all over the shop with the many English firms who had come along for the fun.

  We got the tube to the game and as we were walking up Wembley Way I realised just how special the place is. Wembley is steeped in tradition. But there was another great tradition about to be played out: all-out warfare between England and Scotland. The atmosphere was tense, especially after what had gone off at Trafalgar Square. This time I was desperate to be part of it.

  In the stadium I had hoped to be alongside the CCS and those ICF boys, including Harky, who had travelled down. So you can imagine my disappointment when I found myself in the upper tier behind one of the goals, sixty feet above Scotland’s top hooligans, who were congregated in the lower tier. It didn’t take long for it to go off. Hibs had a massive presence and ably assisted by elements of the ICF they steamed into England. It was a magnificent sight to behold and the Scots fought like lions. I was desperate to get into the fight and eventually I managed to scramble down into the bottom tier but by the time I got there the Old Bill had things well under control.

  After the game, boys from every major Scottish firm – Hibs, Aberdeen, Rangers, Hearts, Celtic – mobbed up and went looking for England. There were skirmishes all over the place, with mounted police charging both sets of hooligans. I was in a group that chased some England into a multi-storey car park and we had a memorable set-to, which ended with one of their boys being thrown off a stairwell on the second floor. He was hurt but not, as I found out later, critically. The fighting continued all the way to the tube station until the cops managed to squeeze us onto trains for the city centre.

  Scotland more than held its own at Wembley (off the pitch at least) and it gave us a lot of confidence for the next game with England, which of course would be the following year at Hampden. That turned out to be the most memorable Auld Enemy encounter of them all, one that led to questions in Parliament and calls for the fixture to be scrapped.

  To say that the 1989 Scotland–England game was eagerly anticipated by mobs north of the border would be an understatement. Everyone was buzzing; everyone wanted a slice of the action. There would be no repeat of what happened in either 1985 or 1987 when the English had wreaked havoc without any real response from us. This time it would be different. We were two years older, we were better organised and our club mobs were more formidable, even if some of them had their own agendas while they were fighting under a Scottish banner.

  On the day of the game I travelled into the city centre by taxi, heading for Minstrels bar, which is opposite where the Riverboat casino is today. On the way in I noticed that along with the massive police presence there were huge mobs of England roaming the streets. Their body language left me in no doubt that every last one of them was looking to spill Scottish blood. We would have to be at our very best if we were to stand any chance of competing with that lot.

  When I got to Minstrels I was delighted to see that upwards of two hundred ICF were out. We also knew that Hibs would be fielding at least two hundred and that Aberdeen would have about the same. Nor did the other clubs let us down. The Utility was out in force and so too were our provincial colleagues from Motherwell, St Johnstone, Partick Thistle and Kilmarnock. The common denominator that day was that no cunt wanted England to take the piss. I was tooled up. I had a spring cosh in my pocket and most of the ICF were also carrying a weapon of some description. There was no alternative. We knew that the English boys rarely left home without a tool and that they were not afraid to use them.

  We left Minstrels and made our way up Hope Street. Almost immediately, at the junction with Argyle Street, we were confronted by a huge mob of Derby County. I was immediately struck by how old they were; I was sixteen but some of them were old enough to be my father. It didn’t faze us. The roar of ‘ICCF, ICCF’ went up and we charged. Drawing my cosh I was confronted by this fat fuck, thirty-five if he was a day. I bounced the cosh off his skull but it must have been a cheap one because it broke into little pieces, leaving me to rely on my fists and feet.

  By this time hundreds more England had appeared and they split us into two smaller groups. I was in a group that got backed off to the railway arches and although they were getting the upper hand we were giving everything we had. The Old Bill were doing their best to break it up but their job was rendered nigh impossible as more and more mobs appeared. To our right we were flanked by one hundred and fifty Newcastle and in the confusion I remember steaming into them as well. My run-in with the Geordies didn’t last long because out of nowhere a brick shithouse of a cop grabbed me by the ear, wrestled me to the ground and stuck on a pair of handcuffs.

  ‘Fuck off. My day is over,’ I thought as I was thrown into the back of a police van with a group of England. There were dozens of these vans in the city, and they were quickly being filled up with boys from both sides. I thought I would be taken to the nearest station and charged but I was to spend four hours in the back of that particular vehicle. The cops were too busy lifting people to take us anywhere and the only consolation for me was that as the van sped from one trouble spot to another I got a great view of some of the best FV in the history of the beautiful game.

  Jamaica Bridge was typical. I watched open mouthed as Harky and Christie, with the assistance of a few Rangers Soccer Babes, backed off twenty of Stoke’s Naughty Forty crew. I was so proud of their bravery and their fighting spirit. They were outstanding that day; it was in the best traditions of Rangers and t
he ICF. When we got to Eglinton Toll, which is not far from Hampden, there was an almighty tussle between two hundred Hibs and the same number of English outside a petrol station. I was very impressed by the way the CCS boys handled themselves and I said as much to one of the Dykes boys when he was arrested and bundled into the van.

  Finally, the cops took us to Stewart Street police station and on the way there we were joshing the English about what they could expect in Barlinnie prison. ‘You’re going to the BarL boys. You’ll get your back doors booted in there,’ we chortled, using a well-known euphemism for anal sex. Some of them were fucking shiting themselves; you could see the fear etched across their faces. They were well aware of Barlinnie and its fearsome reputation and taken out of their comfort zone some of them weren’t as tough as they thought.

  Inside Stewart Street it was a real Who’s Who of football thugs. The place was awash with leading faces from every corner of the United Kingdom. They kept me in a cell overnight and the next day, at five in the afternoon, I was released. I was well pissed off. Not only had I sat out most of the FV but I had now also missed a league decider between Rangers Boys Club and our bitter rivals, St Mary’s Guild, a Roman Catholic team (the good news was that the game finished in a draw, which meant we won the league).

  In the Sheriff Court on the Monday morning I got a £75 fine, which was paltry by the usual standards. But I did get a double bollocking: one from my mum and the other from my team manager at the Boy’s Club. It was becoming apparent to me that I was a much better football hooligan than I was a footballer!

  The media reaction to that game was something to behold, and no wonder. There were more than two hundred and fifty arrests, dozens of people were seriously injured and taken to hospital while pubs, shops and restaurants got trashed. The Sheriff Court was so busy that a special thirteen-hour sitting was necessary to deal with the sheer volume of cases. More than £11,000-worth of fines were imposed for offences ranging from breach of the peace to assault.

  The headlines in the Scottish press said it all: ‘Hampden Mayhem’, ‘The Battle of Glasgow’, ‘Battle Stations’, ‘Thugs Battle on Our Streets’, ‘Scrap the Bovver Match’. Politicians, as politicians always do, jumped on the bandwagon. The Labour party’s official spokesman called for the fixture to ‘be put on ice’. John Maxton MP, whose constituency includes Hampden Park, demanded that the fixture be scrapped while Scottish sports minister Michael Forsyth said that he was ‘bitterly disappointed’ by the violence and called for a report into what had happened.

  Interestingly, but perhaps predictably, some of the Scottish papers put the blame squarely on the England boys. One argued that ‘Scots soccer fans had been the target for England’s marauding morons,’ while another took the view that ‘English football hooliganism came to the streets of Glasgow yesterday’. We knew different. We were not victims, we gave as good as we got and then some. Never again would the English come to our city, our country, and take the piss. Those days were long gone.

  By the time Euro 96 came along my attitude towards the Scottish national team had changed. I was getting a bit pissed off with the Tartan Army’s obvious, and growing, hatred of England and such was my frustration with their attitude that I told one paper I wouldn’t open the curtains to watch Scotland. Paul Gascoigne was also a factor: he was at the peak of his powers as a Rangers player and I wanted him to do well in the tournament, even if that meant he turned it on against Scotland.

  I was by then a leading light in the ICF and Harky and Davie Carrick were keen that I should go south for a crack at England, Holland and anyone else who got in our way. But I wasn’t that bothered, mainly for the reasons I have cited above. Then there was my relationship with other Scottish mobs: I had made derogatory comments about some of them and I wasn’t sure about their reaction; down there, amid all the confusion, I would be a sitting duck. So, reluctantly, I decided to sit Euro 96 out and watch it in the pub.

  It was the wrong decision.

  I put a grand on England to beat Scotland and settled down in Deans’ bar to watch the game. I was delighted to take the money off the bookie but when I saw the running battles after the game in Trafalgar Square I was in turmoil. I knew the boys would be in the thick of it and I realised that I should have been there, standing toe-to-toe against the English. It got worse. Harky kept phoning me, giving me running commentaries on what was going off. That made my guilt unbearable. I had let my mates down; I had let the ICF down. It is something I regret to this day.

  Euro 96 was my last chance to have a crack at England. Although the ICF turned out for the Euro playoffs between Scotland and England in 2000 by then the cops had the whole thing sewn up with their intelligence units, closed-circuit television and banning orders. Although I had been enraged when the Tartan Army booed ‘God Save the Queen’ before the game at Hampden I was still keen to have it with England. After the game (which Scotland lost 2–0) we mobbed up in the Printworks pub and then moved from pub to pub, playing cat and mouse with the Old Bill. A rumour spread that Man United were in Shenanigan’s in Sauchiehall Street and we did our best to arrange a meet but the cops were onto us and the same thing happened when we tried to hunt down Aberdeen’s mob. The night just fizzled out and so did Scotland’s playoff hopes despite a 1–0 win at Wembley in the return.

  It was another glorious Scottish failure.

  14

  CATCHING THE SMALL FRY

  I have always had the utmost respect for the boys who make up Scotland’s smaller mobs. They didn’t have the benefit of great numbers, with fifty being possible only on a very good day. Nor did they enjoy great longevity; most of them had only two or three of what I would call good seasons. They were also, perhaps inevitably, always stronger at home, the main exception being big cup games when they got their act together and put a decent firm out. But those special days came along once in a blue moon. For the most part the wee guys had to rely on their native courage and daring, and they had both quantities in abundance.

  Motherwell

  The Motherwell Saturday Service deserves its place in the pantheon of great Scottish mobs. For me the men of the MSS were the founding fathers of the organised-football-violence scene in this country. Their battle with Aberdeen at Fir Park in 1983 was historic. It was the first time two mobs of casuals squared up to each other and it was also the first time that the media got a handle on what was to become such an important social phenomenon in the years that lay ahead.

  There were other reasons to admire the MSS. They were game as fuck and, like their team on the field, would take on much bigger and better-resourced outfits without a moment’s hesitation. That takes guts. In the early days they were a match for anyone, which speaks volumes for their dedication and forward planning.

  And I couldn’t help but admire their politics. Many of the Saturday Service were staunch Loyalists and played in a flute band that hails from the town.

  Most of the MSS encounters I was involved in came during the mid-to-late Eighties. In December 1985 there was a particularly nasty, thirty-a-side fight at Argyle Street low-level station. It spilled onto the street, panicking Christmas shoppers. We smashed them with a metal crowd-control barrier and then when they were on the run a few of them got a right kicking. Fair play to Motherwell: a week later they attacked some of our boys at St Enoch Square and gave them a bit of a pasting.

  However, the best day from that era was 3 May 1986, when we beat them 2–0 at Ibrox and I was beginning to make a name for myself in the firm. I remember it well because the game was played just after the announcement that Graeme Souness was to become Rangers manager.15 When the ninety minutes were up twenty-five Motherwell walked around from the away end and confronted us in a housing estate behind the Copland Road stand. Despite putting up a spirited fight the MSS got a bit of a doing. Our main man that day was Barry Johnstone, who, as always, was in the thick of the action. I was in awe of the way that Barry steamed into the SS without a moment’s hesitation, displaying exe
mplary courage and leadership.16 With someone like that on your side you just couldn’t lose.

  I have to admit taking a bit of a liberty that day. Motherwell had a big, blond-haired boy in their firm and when he got decked a few of the young ones got wired into him. He got a real kicking and in the course of a frenzied attack one of our boys (not me) slashed him across the face. I remember straightening up after kicking him and noticing that my clothes were covered in red stains. ‘Where the fuck did that blood come from?’ I asked myself. I looked down at Mr Blond and saw that there was a gaping hole where his cheek used to be. I heard later that when he got to hospital he needed fifty stitches the slash was so bad. As I said, a bit of a liberty.

  It was always tasty with Motherwell, especially on their patch, and one dash with them in 1991 – just after Graeme Souness announced he would be leaving Rangers – sums that up. Unfortunately, I was in jail and missed it but Mr Blue was there and this is his version of what happened.

  Motherwell at Fir Park, 1991: Mr Blue’s Story

  As Rangers were marching towards the title in 1991 the world was great. Souness had built a team capable of competing with anybody in Europe, the rave scene was in full swing – meaning great drugs and birds everywhere – and there was still a spot of football violence if that was your thing.

  Everything was fucking great, then . . .

  ‘Graeme Souness has resigned as manager of Glasgow Rangers to take control at Liverpool,’ announced Rangers director David Holmes.