by Chugg, Sandy
But first we had to find out what plans the riot police had for us. An hour after the game had ended we were still stuck in the gym and our patience was running thin. We asked what the script was and were told that we could be held for twenty-four hours. The cops had a problem. Because of some legal technicality they could only deport us back to our country of origin, which of course was Spain. And that’s what they did. We were put back on the bus, which would take us back to Salou. That at least was some consolation. We could now enjoy what was left of our holiday and soak up the Spanish sunshine.
As I took my seat on the bus I got the first indication of the media storm that was to follow. Through a crack in the window I could see a photographer taking shots with a long lens. ‘I hope to fuck that’s just the French papers,’ I said to the boy next to me.
For the journey back to Salou we had an escort worthy of a visiting head of state. There were several police cars, riot vans, motorcyclists and even a helicopter. Talk about overkill. The Scottish media had also parked their tanks on our lawns. Our little expedition was the top story on the BBC and STV news and it was plastered on the front page of almost every Scottish newspaper. We thought that the English lads would attract the attention of the media, given the huge numbers involved, but not us. Our mob was minuscule by comparison. But by now the writing was well and truly on the wall.
Back in Salou at our hotel we got a phone call from a Daily Record reporter, which I took. I told him that I had no comment to make and I refused to confirm who else was there. He then reeled off the names of people he believed were in our group, including mine. That was a shock to me as I thought the reporter didn’t know I was there. ‘I don’t know what you are talking about,’ I curtly replied, and put down the receiver.
The next day I phoned Mum to tell her that I might be named in the Daily Record. But the paper had beaten me to it. ‘I’ve already had them at the door and they tricked me into giving them a photograph of you. But I didn’t tell them anything that could hurt you,’ she told me. I did my best to reassure Mum, trying to convince her that everything would be all right. I didn’t do that great a job; in fact I didn’t even convince myself. I knew the papers would have a field day at my expense.
The irony was that I had been making a real effort to turn my life around. I had met Kerry, the woman who was to become my wife, and I was doing an HND in sports coaching at college, where I had been at the top of my class. I realised however that I was kidding myself. Football violence was still the driving force in my life, to the detriment of everything else.
Sure enough, when I got a hold of a copy of the Record I was cast as the villain of the piece. ‘Chugg is the leader of the 58-strong group who were detained in Salou,’ it told its readers. And it wasn’t just the Daily Record. I was named as the SNF leader or ringleader by every Scottish media organisation from the BBC to The Sun. I also now discovered that our detention in Bordeaux had been given blanket coverage, something we had been blissfully unaware of at the time.
Reporters had even approached the college, and my employers, Clyde Football Club, to get their reaction, and while both had said I was highly thought of it must have been embarrassing for them. I knew there was a possibility that I might be kicked out of college and sacked from my job. More importantly, Mum and Kerry were upset. I felt sorry for them but I wasn’t ashamed of what I had done. After all I had only gone to France to fight like-minded individuals, not scarfers or ordinary French people. In fact as the calls poured in from journalists in a strange way I almost felt proud. FV was what we were all about; it was what we lived for and to be recognised for that was very satisfying, if you follow my logic.
It was at this point we discovered the extent of the police operation. We got the night porter at our hotel drunk and he told us that two under-cover cops had posed as hotel workers to keep an eye on us. It was little wonder they had been so clued up about the coach trip to Bordeaux. But the authorities had known all about us from day one at Glasgow airport, despite our best efforts to keep things quiet. We were convinced that someone had grassed us up. Our main suspect was Andy Blance, leader of those Hibs boys who had decided to stay with the CCS after Fat McLeod had broken ranks and formed the national firm. To tease the media we put a £5,000 ‘contract’ on Blance’s head. It was shite of course but it kept the pot boiling and it gave us a few laughs when we saw how seriously the papers took it.
We didn’t go the Morocco game and instead flew home from Reus on the Saturday. Our expectation was of a huge media stushie at Glasgow airport and a scramble to get photos of us for the Sunday papers and news bulletins. We were right on the money. The place was awash with journalists, most of them looking out for ‘SNF ringleader’ Sandy Chugg. Customs and Excise, however, did me a big favour. ‘Right, Mr Chugg, come with me,’ I was instructed. They had targeted me because I had a conviction for selling drugs and they hauled me into an office and conducted a full body search. They probably did it to annoy me but in fact they saved me from the abuse the rest of the boys were getting from pressmen and the general public in the main concourse. The place was thronged with tourists waiting to fly out on their annual holiday and when they spotted the SNF with their ‘three-lions’ England T-shirts they didn’t hold back. Our lads were roundly abused and called ‘scum’ and ‘a disgrace to Scotland’. Inevitably, fights broke out between the SNF and the holidaymakers, which the police did their best to contain.
By the time I was released by Customs several more flights had disembarked and when I was walking out I was part of a huge crowd and therefore hard for the few remaining pressmen to spot. My stepdad had come to meet me and he told me to put on my hat and sunglasses and that also helped. I am convinced that many of the reporters were expecting me to be six-foot two and built like an all-in wrestler. They wouldn’t have been looking for a guy at five-nine with a slight build. The result was that they didn’t get a photo of the SNF bogeyman, because I was bundled into a car and driven off.
Avoiding the press at the airport was a minor victory because I knew from that day on I would be a marked man: not only for the media but also for the police. Despite me having given up active involvement in football violence, I am still a target. Thanks to Salou I have endured thirteen years of grief.
21
TALES FROM THE MOB
Some of the boys were kind enough to provide me with their memories of life with the ICF. Towards the end of the chapter I have also included a couple of stories from the youth wing of the mob; after all, they are the future.
Here is a selection.
How the ICF Was Formed (by Pedro)
It might upset some of our boys but the famous Rangers ICF was inspired not by a Rangers fan but by an Aberdeen fan, or casual.
It was 1983. I was fifteen and I remember that a boy at our school supported the Dons. As part of a group of what would later become known as casuals he followed them home and away. Every Monday morning he would come into the playground wearing big thick trainers, split jeans and a Peter Storm cagoule and regale us with tales of taking a mob to Edinburgh and Dundee, and how it would go off big time with the locals.
Fashion and fighting. A fifteen-year-old’s dream.
We wanted some of that. In Glasgow we were in a bit of a void in fashion terms. Most of us were just getting out of Sta Press and two-tone.
A small group of us from school had been going to Ibrox for a few years and sitting in the Broomloan stand, where the away fans were housed. In those pre-Souness days Rangers didn’t have such a big following and so you got to know the guys around you pretty quickly. At that stage there was no organised football violence as such.
Anyway, this day my school pal ‘Aberdeen P’ told us the Aberdeen casuals were going to be in town (on their way to Paisley for a game with St Mirren) and a dozen of us went in for a look. We clocked them at Queen Street station. They were thirty-strong, all of them aged from about fifteen to twenty-two. They were wearing brightly coloured clothes and they
all had serious haircuts, with a few even sporting moustaches. Looking back there was a huge difference between us. Most of them were adults and we were just kids. Aberdeen P introduced us to them and after a closer look at their clobber, some chat and a bit of Glasgow lip a few blows were thrown. We lost but we didn’t run; we stood our ground and had another go . . . and lost again.
At this stage a few of the older Aberdeen mob got bored and went to the pub. We licked our wounds and headed for Enterprise, an amusement arcade, where we met up with some other young Rangers fans from the north side of Glasgow. Looking for reinforcements to take on Aberdeen we told them about the incident and when they heard about what had happened they were right up for it. So it was a bigger, altogether more confident group that marched the three hundred yards back to Queen Street, where we had it with the younger Aberdeen lads. We did well initially, belting quite a few of them, but they bolted to the Pig and Whistle pub where they called out their big guns.
Although we got another going over when their older lads re-engaged we were hooked. That night four or five of us decided that we wanted to become casuals, although some of the boys who had been in Queen Street decided against it, simply because they didn’t fancy a bent nose every weekend. Those who were up for it spent the next few months saving our spare dosh from the milk round and investing it in footwear like Adidas New Yorkers, Puma G Vilas and Adidas Wimbledon. We also dressed ourselves in Lacoste T-shirts, flared jumbo cords and some decidedly dodgy Paisley-pattern granddad shirts. It was hard to find the right gear, Glasgow not exactly being awash with this type of attire at the time.
Before we knew it we had twenty guys from our area who knew each other well and who would back each other up, whether they were in the right or the wrong. On our first few forays to Rangers games as casuals we were met with open hostility from some of our own scarfers. But we brassed it out and didn’t shy away from the inevitable confrontations. Most of the older Rangers fans realised that we were bluenoses too, just like them, and eventually the aggro calmed down.
The boys who sat alongside us in the Broomloan also started to dress casually and the whole thing just spread from there. We regularly got thrown out of the ground for misbehaviour and sometimes we struggled to get into the away end at Ibrox, even though few teams brought much of a support. It went on like that for the rest of the season and for most of the following season too. Being arrested was also becoming much more prevalent.
In terms of our name we called ourselves the Inter City Firm from day one. The reasoning was that we would get more credibility by copying the name of a real mob. Simple as. Then, in 1985, some of the guys suggested that we move into seats in Section Red of the Govan stand. It made sense. Section Red was the nearest area in the stadium to the away support and it gave us a good visible mob for both the visitors and the television cameras. We adopted the name Section Red for the mob and it really caught on, but, later that season we moved again to the terraced enclosure and the Section Red moniker faded into history. A few of the boys suggested an alternative name of Her Majesty’s Service but it never took off. ICF just seemed to stick but although we were ICF in name we rarely used British Rail’s expensive commodity, the Inter City train, and stuck to the old football specials due to the financial constraints of the Eighties.
The mob got bigger and bigger. For most of the boys it was back to nodding-acquaintance time. There was no organisation or hierarchy. Guys just went to the football, met up, had a wee ruck and went home to their estates on a Saturday night to do the same thing.
There is a postscript to the Aberdeen story. Later in season 1983/84 they were guests of Rangers and for weeks beforehand all the ICF boys were asking every nutter they met to come along. We were desperate to have another go at them. Before the game, Aberdeen, being an organised bunch of lads, came off the train, stuck together and took their usual liberties. However, after the match, Rangers got their act together. I can honestly say I have never seen a mob like it in Scotland. Maybe the quality wasn’t there in some cases but in terms of quantity it was phenomenal. And it wasn’t just casuals either. There were all sorts of nut jobs, from skins and punks to scooter boys and scarfers. We trailed Aberdeen all the way from Ibrox to the city centre, skirmishing with them as we went. Then, as they approached Queen Street, we knew it would be our last chance. The whole unruly Rangers mob went nuts and launched a mass charge. Aberdeen to their credit tried to face us up but they had no chance, due to our vastly superior numbers. The Dandy Dons took a right pasting.
The Rangers ICF had come of age.
A Busy Afternoon (by Andy McC)
My first outing with the ICF came when I was thirteen. It wasn’t a great start because we got a right chasing from the Capital Service Firm who are, of course, attached to Hearts. Because I was always playing football on a Saturday I didn’t go with the mob again until I was seventeen. For my ‘comeback’, which turned out to be a Rangers versus Motherwell game at Fir Park, I went with six other lads from my scheme.
I was wearing a pair of dungarees, a pair of green Kickers (Unlimited ones) and a short bubble jacket. I thought I was the dog’s bollocks but looking back I must have looked a real prick. That said I wasn’t as bad as some of the other boys, a couple of whom were sharing two pairs of Adidas Gazelles, one pair red and the other blue. They each had a red trainer on one foot and a blue trainer on the other foot, which (thank you guys) took the heat right off me.
We headed down into Queen Street to get the train and when we got there a couple of the guys who were with me noticed a few ICF at a table in the station bar. In fact the place was full of ICF, laughing and drinking. The ICF boys at the table invited us over and asked if we wanted to go to Motherwell with them.
‘Why not,’ we replied.
So, about two o’clock, with everyone having gulped down the last dregs of their pints, we went onto the lower deck of Queen Street to catch a train. There were around sixty ICF there, a pretty good mob. We stayed with the younger element and let the older ICF get on the train first. During the journey everyone was talking about what was going to go off when we got to our destination and what they were going to do to the Saturday Service, Motherwell’s firm.
Everyone piled off at Motherwell station and marched up the hill towards Fir Park. To our left there were a few Saturday Service following us and they were giving us dog’s abuse, letting us know in no uncertain terms what was going to happen to us when we got a wee bit further up the road. A couple of the younger firm tried to go across the road to have it with them but they got shouted back. ‘Keep it tight,’ they were told.
A few yards further on someone shouted ‘It will happen here,’ and with that we heard a loud roar from across the street. Fifty Motherwell were running at us. We started jumping about and clapping our hands, excited that it was about to go off.
‘ICF, ICF, ICF,’ we shouted, a chant that made the hairs on my neck stand up, and one that has the same effect even today.
We ran towards our opponents, who by this time had picked up traffic cones and were throwing them at our front line, but we were too strong and we pushed them right back. Fist fights broke out all over the shop and a couple of them got decked and then stamped on. It wasn’t long before the Old Bill turned up in their vans and they held us there, before giving us an escort to the match. I went into the stadium but some of the older boys went to the pub. After the game we met up with the boys who had gone drinking and although we ran into some SS as we headed back to the train station they got chased and nothing major went off.
On the train back to Glasgow a lot of people were talking about how we might run into the CCS because Hibs were playing the Beggars at Celtic Park that afternoon. When we got to Queen Street we all came out together down the steps, then passed a pub called Berlin and on to George Square. We saw a few lads outside a pub called Chambers; they were CSC, Celtic Soccer Crew. More and more of them piled out of the pub and fronted up to us at the edge of the square. Before we c
ould steam in there was a huge roar from the other side of George Square. It was the Hibs mob. Celtic charged them and we charged Hibs and Celtic. With three mobs going at it there was chaos. There were scuffles all over the place, with no one giving an inch. Out of the corner of my eye I saw a CCS lad get thrown through a plate-glass window by a couple of Celtic.
Next thing I knew the sirens were blaring and the polis were piling out of their vans to break it up. I have never seen so many cop vans in one place, when the reality is that it only takes a couple of Glasgow’s boys in blue to break up even the biggest brawl. Everyone started running their own way (it was like something out of the movie ‘ Warriors’) and as I made my way home with a couple of my pals I felt a warm glow of satisfaction about the day’s events.
South of the Border (by Porky)
1989 was a big year for ICF going to Chelsea matches. One of the lads used to run buses from the city centre and they were always packed out. There was one particularly memorable day out in March 1989 when both Chelsea and Man City were in the old English second division and were battling it out for top spot. We left the Toby Jug early in the morning with a bus full of lads, but with a few scarfers on board as well, and headed for Maine Road. Most of us were going in the Chelsea end but a couple of lads had City as their second team and so there was plenty of banter on the road down.