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

by Chugg, Sandy

  The plan was to go to the game and then head to Blackpool for a night out and for that reason the bus wasn’t hoaching with drink although as usual there were a few guys getting tore into a carryout. We hadn’t arranged with Chelsea to have a go at City; it was a take-it-as-it-comes scenario, where, if it kicked off, then fair enough. As soon as we arrived at the ground we were shepherded inside straightaway and I will always remember the strange sight of giant inflatable bananas in the home end (there was a craze for inflatable objects at the time). Not to be undone Chelsea had inflatable celery sticks, which I presume was to do with a witty Chelsea tune that still gets chanted to this day:

  ‘Celery, celery, if she don’t come

  I’ll tickle her bum

  With a lump of celery.’

  As it happened Chelsea won a five-goal thriller to go top of the league and we could go on our merry way to Blackpool.

  Everyone was game for a good piss-up and after we parked up we hit the first pub we came across and started to get the lager down our throats. There was a £20 football card doing the rounds and Walesey (R.I.P.) stood up on a stool and pretended he was scraping the card to find the winner. ‘Celtic’ Walesey shouted and with that some bloke jumped out of his seat and cheered, thinking that a score was coming his way. The poor guy got the pish ripped out of him and he quietly slunk out of the pub, tail between his legs.

  Just as we were getting ready to move to a pub down the road another mob walked in. Maybe we could have a little fun before we left. As they were getting the beer in one of our lads asked who they were.

  ‘Derby. Why, who are you?’

  ‘Rangers,’ our mate replied.

  ‘We hate Rangers.’

  Bang. It kicked off big style and we gave those Derby boys a right kicking, with one of our boys using the confusion to go behind the bar and try to nick the till.

  Job done we headed out into the night in search of a new pub. The jungle drums must have been beating because we struggled to get in elsewhere and a few bouncers got a sore face in the process for knocking us back. The only thing for it was to split up and I ended up going to a bar with a with a few east-end lads, where we had a great night.

  Our bus was due to leave at midnight but although we were on time there were only about twenty lads there, which was a bit of a headache for SC who was the convener. Then out of the blue, ten lads appeared and were hanging about, looking menacing. Without hesitation we steamed in and as they ran we kicked them to fuck and back. We were later told they were Leeds but that was never confirmed.

  It was 12.30 by the time the bus left, with about twenty of our party missing. This of course was in the days before mobile phones, so it was only over the course of the next couple of weeks that we heard how the rest of the lads got home, with eight of them hitching and getting a lift in the back of a lorry!

  A great day out was had by one and all and on the way back SC was already planning the next trip. I know he got a lot of stick from Rangers security for organising these trips so fair play to him for doing so.

  Sunderland and Celtic (by AL-K)

  Sunderland away in 1993 was one of the most-publicised ICF events ever and depending on your perspective it either made us or destroyed us. We were flying and the mob was at a stage when the babes were no longer babes and the guys who had joined in the early 1980s were now the main faces.

  We took a bus down, which was a mixture of new and old faces from all four parts of the city, although if I remember rightly Shettleston went down on their own bus. We got there early and had a walk round the city centre before heading for a pub called the Londonderry. The problem was it was packed out with Rangers fans so we found another decent pub and hung our ICF banner up on a window. There was no sign of any trouble and I can remember being more worried that our ginger-headed friend, who owed one of the top east-end boys money for a drug deal, might end up bumping into him and the Shettleston mob.

  We moved onto another pub and went to the bar downstairs. It was the time when our little ditty ‘Father’s Advice’ was being sung at games and we were giving it laldy when some Sunderland came in and started on a few of our younger boys. Then one of them shouted ‘Celtic and the IRA’ and that’s when it kicked off. They got chased out and everyone left the pub thinking we had done their mob, but it wasn’t them.

  Sunderland had not yet shown their faces but as we walked to their end there they were, team handed. We backed them off towards their end of the stadium and I remember Carrick taking a punch from a bloke who may not have realised he was one of our top boys. Our attitude was that if a main face got punched it was up to the lesser faces to lash back, not back away, and that’s exactly what we did. It went on good style for a couple of minutes before the Old Bill broke it up and escorted us into the stadium. During the game there were coins flying about everywhere with ‘We’re the Famous ICF’ being the main song of choice.

  We went back home to Glasgow thinking we had got a right result, not realising the maelstrom that was about to be unleashed by the Joke, sorry the Jock, press. It turned out three Sunderland lads had been slashed and to me the media, and especially the Daily Record, went right over the top. One group of people were however very happy with our trip to Sunderland: yes, you’ve guessed it, the Newcastle fans. We played them at Ibrox shortly thereafter and they loved us for it. The whole Toon Army sang ‘Thank you very much for slashing Sunderland’ to the tune of the Roses chocolate advert.

  A few days later I remember standing in work and this boy who used to run with Celtic in the Eighties was holding up a paper. He was pointing to it and laughing. Lo and behold, on the front page there was a picture of the pub in Sunderland along with a seven-page spread on the ICF. At first we thought it was cool and we kept all the papers. But as the weeks went on the dawn raids started and the three brothers who were suspected of doing the slashings were plastered all over the papers as they got lifted. Most of us ditched anything that could tie us to the ICF. I had an ICF tattoo and it suddenly dawned on my mum and dad that it was not an innocent football tattoo after all. After pressure from Mum I agreed to get my tattoo covered over and she paid for a new one, which now proudly guards my secret tattoo. I also got hassle at work. I got pulled into the office and was asked if they were to expect me turning up in the papers. I told them ‘no’, as I had given all that up years ago.

  My assertion that Sunderland could have been the event that destroyed our mob is perhaps a bit harsh. Some of the boys packed it in around that time, no doubt because of the heat we got from the police but also because someone sold the story of the slashings to the newspapers, which caused a great deal of distrust among us. At the same time however some people had their resolve strengthened and it did put Rangers back on the map as a travelling mob.

  The Youth (by Frankie W)

  The ICF Youth, as we became known, came about one day in late October 2005, when we weren’t even playing. It all happened when one of the younger lads in the firm tried to get a few of the newer members of the main ICF together and have a dash with Celtic, who were at home to Hearts that day.

  We met up early and made contact with the CSC then moved around from pub to pub in the city centre trying to get them to front up. It soon became clear that the Celtic boy was a timewaster and that they had no intention of taking us on. They were having a drink in a pub at Glasgow Cross, he told us. So our little mob, numbering about twenty-five, headed down there and a few of us went into the pub to look for Celtic. Of course they weren’t there, which is par for the course for the CSC.

  Bridgeton was our next stop and someone had the bright idea that because Thistle were at home to Morton we could take on the North Glasgow Express instead. So we headed up to Maryhill and plotted up in their pub, the Pewter Pot, which the old-school ICF had attacked a couple of times in the past. Maybe it would be third-time lucky. Although we managed to contact both Thistle and Morton neither of them were interested in a dash.

  In some ways it had been
a wasted day but it started something that hadn’t been seen in a long time: a smaller, younger, highly enthusiastic Rangers mob on the prowl. That’s how the Youth came about and over the next few years we would have it with a number of firms, including Aberdeen, Airdrie and of course the CSC, with whom we had several run-ins.

  The Celtic encounters were always the most enjoyable. In November 2005 we lost 3–0 at Celtic Park but a few hours later around forty ICF, a mixture of old guard and Youth, smashed a sorry CSC outside a city-centre boozer. This came after eighty of us had gone onto their patch with the aim of running amok, only to be frustrated when the Old Bill turned up, which meant that we had to split, with a lot of lads calling it a day and going home.

  Another good dash with Celtic came when a lot of our main faces were away at a stag do near the end of season 2005/06 and we had drawn at Celtic Park. When we headed back into town the Celtic mob quickly realised that we had been weakened by the main faces being absent, which made them keener than usual to meet up. After a few hours it was game on and a decent-sized firm with a mixture of old school and Youth took them apart, pushing them back into the Gallowgate. Job done!

  *

  On 19 August 2006 Rangers were playing Hearts at Ibrox while Aberdeen were in Paisley to take on St Mirren. So we arranged to meet a busload of ASC in a field beside the Abbots Inch pub in Renfrew. We pulled a good mob that morning and plotted up in another boozer in Renfrew. But as time passed the Sheep were on the phone to say that not enough of them had travelled. Because it was getting close to kickoff the older lads among us either headed for Ibrox or for the city centre. They obviously thought that the prospects of FV were now remote if not non-existent.

  That left eighteen of the ICF Youth plus two young boys from Hearts. We decided to phone our Aberdeen contact back and say that we would come to them. So here we have twenty young lads nowhere near Ibrox on the day of a game, jailbaiting ourselves up. But we just had to have a go. Our main problem was that getting to where Aberdeen were without getting caught by the Old Bill was a difficult task. Luckily, a few of the lads knew the area so we jumped on a service bus that took us to an industrial estate, where we got off. After walking through a residential area we were just two minutes from the ASC boozer.

  The ASC boy was phoned again and told we would be there in a few minutes.

  ‘Get your mob outside,’ he was instructed.

  I don’t think they believed we would come because as we turned a corner there was an Aberdeen lad standing in the middle of the road. The look of surprise on his face was priceless. He ran round the corner, back to their pub. When we got there we fully expected the ASC to be waiting for us on the street but there were only a few of them there. Fair play, they had a go but they were no match for the twenty of us. The rest of their mob meantime were happy to lob bottles and glasses at us from the doorway of the pub, while others pelted us from the beer garden.

  Some quick thinking was needed and so one of our boys shouted ‘The Old Bill are coming.’ We ran up the road and the boy who had shouted the warning told us he was only joking; it was his way of enticing the ASC out of the pub. It worked. After hearing the police were on the scene more of them piled out. That was our opportunity. We steamed into the newcomers and smashed them.

  As it happened no Old Bill turned up and we headed into the city centre for a well-earned drink. We came away from that fight with a feeling that we had got a result. You can only fight what is in front of you. I don’t understand why the Sheep didn’t empty the pub and take us on mob-to-mob because it would have made it a better dash. Maybe they thought we wouldn’t come to Paisley when Rangers were playing at home. Who knows? Whatever their reasons were they made a cunt of it that day. We did well and any row against Aberdeen is a result.

  22

  LOVE AND MARRIAGE

  My first encounter with Kerry, my wife-to-be, was bizarre. We met in that well-known footballers haunt, Victoria’s nightclub, in Glasgow’s Sauchiehall Street, in July 1997. I was lucky to be there. I had been drinking in McKinlay’s snooker club in Shettleston that night when one of my pals said he could get me into Victoria’s because he knew the bouncer. That was the starting pistol for a mad rush to my house to put on clean shirts and good shoes. Actually, despite our best efforts, the four of us still looked like an accident in a charity shop due to the un-ironed shirts and ill-fitting footwear.

  ‘Victoria’s?’ I asked myself. ‘We’ve got no fucking chance.’

  True to his word, however, my mate had a word with the bouncer and in we went. I wasn’t at my most confident. My shirt was like a concertina and I was more than a little embarrassed by my appearance. It was while I was admiring myself in front of one of Victoria’s many mirrors that I bumped into Kerry.

  ‘You don’t need to look in the mirror. You’re looking good,’ was my instant chat-up line.

  ‘It’s a pity you didn’t look in the mirror before you came out. Your shirt is a state,’ she retorted, quick as a flash.

  One of my pals heard our exchange and he put his tuppence-worth in.

  ‘You can’t speak to him like that. He’s Sandy Chugg, the top man in the ICF.’

  ‘I don’t care who he is. I’ll say what I think.’

  I remember being impressed by her frankness. Although as far as first encounters go it was hardly the stuff of a Mills and Boon novel.

  I went home alone and didn’t think much about what had happened. Then, the following week, someone arranged a blind date for Kerry and me. The look on our faces when we realised who we would be dating was priceless. Despite our inauspicious start we got on well that night. We both like to speak our minds and we also discovered there was a definite attraction. We started courting and before long it developed into a serious relationship.

  Our next problem was one faced by many people in the divided West of Scotland: religion. Kerry is a Catholic and I am a Protestant and a committed Loyalist. I also profoundly disagree with everything the Roman Catholic Church stands for. That does not mean I hate individual Roman Catholics. My nieces and nephews are Catholics and avid Celtic fans and I often help them to get match tickets. In addition, some of my pals are Irish Republicans and while I hate their politics I don’t hate them. In fact, they are very nice people and have turned out to be staunch friends, as I have noted elsewhere in this book.

  When it came time for us to get married the ceremony was in St John’s in Barrhead, which is a Roman Catholic church. Given my principles I thought that I might be struck by lightning when I walked into the place! Despite my misgivings I did it because of the love I have for my wife and also out of gratitude for the support her family gave me after the SNF debacle in Salou. The compromise was that my children would be brought up as Protestants. I wasn’t about to repeat the mistake my brother Christopher made. His kids were brought up Catholic and they support Celtic (although I love them both dearly). The only cloud over our big day was that some of my Loyalist friends refused to go into St John’s, preferring to stand outside until the ceremony was finished. That said most of my ICF and Loyalist friends did go into the church.

  Marriage didn’t change my lifestyle when it came to football, something that Kerry could never understand. She could never work out what drew me to violence and the casual culture although, in the early days at least, she found the scene intriguing. Over the years her attitude changed, simply because my love for Rangers and football violence meant that I put those things ahead of her and my family. I am not proud to admit it. I should have been a better husband and father and football and the violence that goes with it should have taken much more of a back seat.

  Even today Kerry is still of the view that I put the ICF first, especially when, as she calls it, I go into ‘robot’ mode. She thinks I still have something to prove. But being such a prominent member of the mob makes it very hard for me to walk away. I will always be known as ‘Sandy from the ICF’ and, let’s face it, I was a casual before we met, so she knew what she was ge
tting into. That said I believe things have been getting better in the last few years although Kerry insists that I could do more around the house. I am still trying to find the right balance, and I admit that at times it can be a real struggle, but we are both making a real effort to make it work and that surely is the main thing.

  She is a devoted mother and our three wonderful children are a great credit to her dedication and hard work. She hates the fact that police come to our door, as any mother would, and she doesn’t want her children to get the idea that what I do is normal. Given some of the things we have been through I daresay some other couples would have been divorced by now. But there is a deep-rooted love there that has kept us together and long may it last.

  23

  DRUGS

  Drugs have got me into more trouble than football violence ever did. I have spent fortunes on pills and powders of every description and using them has cost me several jobs; good jobs at that, jobs that could have set me up for life. My worst experience with drugs came when I was eighteen and trying desperately to fund an ecstasy habit: I was caught dealing LSD, ecstasy and Temazepam. I copped a three-year sentence and was sent to Glasgow’s notorious Barlinnie prison.