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Richard Sutcliffe: Is football hooliganism back in vogue?
After several outbreaks of violence this season, including five Manchester United fans being stabbed this week in Rome, is football hooliganism back to haunt us? Richard Sutcliffe reports.
TWENTY ONE arrests, three pubs wrecked and rival fans clashing in the streets as more than 100 police officers battle manfully to keep order.
This sounds like a typical Saturday during the Seventies and Eighties when football hooligans were, literally, running riot on what seemed a weekly basis.
In fact, these scenes occurred just last month when the northern footballing outpost of Carlisle played host to the sort of trouble that many believed had been consigned to the history books. Despite a police operation later described by the town's Chief Superintendent Andy Davidson as "the largest of its kind in maybe 30 years", fighting broke out before and after the home side's 3-1 victory over Leeds United.
Just a week earlier, Leeds's followers had been involved in similar disturbances at a game against Millwall with mounted police having to make several charges outside Elland Road to keep rival fans apart.
The two outbreaks of disorder mirrored Home Office figures for the 2006-07 season that saw arrests at football grounds in England and Wales up by eight per cent to almost 3,800 – the first rise in four years. A Home Office spokesman was quick to put the increase down to "a tougher police approach to anti-social and disorderly behaviour", but the figures still begged the question: Is football hooliganism back in vogue?
One man who can perhaps answer that question is Eddie Kelly, the 38-year-old being one of around 40 contributors to a new book chronicling the exploits of one of the most infamous hooligan gangs of them all – Leeds Service Crew.
So named because they travelled by service train in the early Eighties rather than the then more heavily-policed 'football specials', the Service Crew became synonymous with violence and mayhem.
The new book, which will be officially launched tonight at Spencer's pub in Leeds, has been written by journalist Caroline Gall and charts their role in some of English football's blackest days when the likes of Birmingham, Bournemouth and Chelsea were on the receiving end of a visit from one of the most notorious gangs around.
Kelly, now retired from the hooligan scene, agreed to meet the Yorkshire Post in a city centre pub ahead of the launch. He said: "It has changed massively since the Eighties and I doubt you will ever see hundreds on each side fighting in the street again. But trouble does still happen from time to time.
"I am not involved any more, but I think it will keep happening. There are younger lads coming through and then there are some of the older lads who might have drifted away, but then something happens to draw them back in.
"It could be splitting up with the wife or something like that. And once they start going again, then they get the taste for it.
"The police have a lot of powers, but I don't think they will ever stop it completely."
Kelly was not involved in any of the trouble at either the Millwall or Carlisle games this season due to being not only retired from the scene, but also halfway through a four-year banning order from attending matches.
It was this ban that prompted Kelly to get involved with the writing of the latest instalment of 'hooli-lit', an incredibly successful publishing genre that has spawned a host of best sellers. Colin Ward's seminal Steaming In and Among the Thugs by Bill Buford started the ball rolling in the late Eighties and since then all manner of hooligan firms have rushed to put their reminiscences down on paper.
It has proved a lucrative business with Guvnors, about Manchester City hooligans, and Cardiff City's Soul Crew both shifting around 60,000 copies apiece, while sales figures for Steaming In are believed to have reached six figures. It was during the writing of one such book on the Birmingham Zulu Warriors hooligan firm two years ago that the seed for Service Crew was planted.
Kelly explains: "I know a few of the Birmingham lads who had just brought their book out and they said 'why don't you do one on Leeds?'
"I had just been banned so thought 'why not? It will all be about stuff in the past so what more can they do to me?'
"I was put in touch with Caroline, who had written the Zulus book, and it all went from there. It has taken over two years and, in all, there were about 40 different lads of various ages who took part.
"We said right from the start that there would be no bull**** and no lies. If we had been done anywhere in the past, there was no point claiming any different.
"It was also a chance to right a few wrongs because there has been some rubbish written about Leeds in other books."
One of the commonly-held perceptions of anyone involved in hooliganism, whether past or present, is that they have little interest in football, something that Kelly refutes. He first watched United as a nine-year-old in 1979 and said: "The lads are the ones who stick by the team, no matter what. In the Eighties when we were relegated, the lads still went everywhere to support them. It was the same last season when crowds went down to 16,000 after a lot of those who started watching in the Premier League stopped going.
"Anyone who says the lads are not fans does not have a clue. The result on the pitch means everything."
Outsiders may not understand what motivates the hooligans to do what they do, but there can be little doubt that their shared experiences create a bond that is hard to break.
Kelly said: "I was probably about 13 when I first got involved in any trouble. It was nothing too serious, just getting chased by the police after a match when there was a protest against (manager) Jimmy Adamson. But it was a real adrenalin rush.
"The camarederie was great. It was a great feeling to know as you walked down a street in another town, and looked around to see all your mates there, that none of them would let you down.
"I know of lads who would do anything to help each other out, some of those who own companies have given their mates a job to help them out."
Asked what he says to those who feel books on illegal activities such as hooliganism should not be published, Kelly added: "People buy them. The Zulus sold about 22,000 copies and the publisher thinks ours mightsell more.
"I have even had some (police) officers asking me if they are in the book. One said 'make sure I get a mention'.
"What went on then is part of social history, there is no point hiding it away. You can't change the past. The book lets people know what it was like, unlike the films that have been made recently (Green Street and Football Factory). They made me cringe because they are nothing like how it was. This may go against the grain for some people, but it (hooliganism) has been every bit as much of a culture as anything else.
"Everyone is different. There are some people in life who go to garden centres and enjoy it. Now that is something I will never understand. Why would anyone want to spend any time at all in a garden centre? That is not normal to me.
"Our enjoyment came through following Leeds United everywhere. And no one can take those memories away."
YP
