Rangers and the Famous ICF: My Life With Scotland's Most-Feared Football Hooligan Gang (11 page)

That era was the real deal, the peak of FV, and our clash with the CCS in August 1990 at Easter Road is a good example of that. I had arranged for two buses to take us along the M8 and I remember being delighted at
the turnout. All the main ICF were there, supported by a healthy complement of baby crew. All in all we had about eighty that day, every last man completely reliable. The buses dropped us at Haymarket and we walked through the back streets, knowing they would have spotters the length of Princes Street. We turned right, and came onto Princes Street at its eastern extremity. Hibs were taken completely by surprise, a real plus for us, but they still made a fight of it. Imagine the scene: more than a hundred and fifty of the country’s most formidable thugs going at it hammer and tong. It was bedlam. Fights spilled from the pavement onto the street, stopping the Saturday-afternoon traffic in its tracks. I was in a stand-off with their baby crew, fending off blows from every angle and then coming back in with a few digs of my own. No one gave an inch.

It would have carried on a lot longer but we heard the wail of sirens and then a fleet of police cars and vans screeched to a halt. One motorcycle cop wasn’t so lucky. As he braked the silly cunt fell off the bike. When he got back to his feet I noticed the dark scowl on his face and immediately realised that someone was going to pay for his mishap. I was right. He drew his baton and lashed out indiscriminately at the boys nearest to him. Harky was particularly unlucky; Evel Knievel caught him on the leg with a bone-jarring blow that must have hurt like fuck.

When the police broke us up we mobbed up again and made for Easter Road. On the way it kicked off again and it was the same after the game as we made our way along Princes Street, shadowed every step of the way by the CCS. All of a sudden the air was thick with missiles, as the two mobs came together for the third time in as many hours. Purely by coincidence there were dozens of Japanese tourists leaving their hotel for a coach trip and they must have thought it was something to do with the Edinburgh Festival.

‘Ah, what interesting street theatre they put on in Scotland,’ they must have been saying, because their cameras were clicking non-stop as they took a few choice snaps to show the folks back in Osaka.

I have no idea what our Japanese friends thought when the cops arrived and shepherded us into vans but that was the end of our fun for one day.

*

‘Come to Slateford. Get the slow train. The bizzies won’t expect it to go off there,’ Hibs told us on the phone.

It sounded like a really good idea. Slateford was in south Edinburgh, in the suburbs, well away from the city centre and the football hotspots. We
could have a battle with the CCS away from the prying eyes of Lothian and Borders police. That was it. Sorted.

But I wasn’t so sure. For one thing I knew Hibs would have been staking out the station at Slateford, the entrances and exits, the vantage points and the nooks and crannies. We had never set foot in the place; we would be heading into territory that was completely unknown. The fact there would be no police around was a double-edged sword. Yes we could have it with Hibs without the cops breaking it up, but, if the CCS got the upper hand, it might end up a bloodbath.

I was even less sure when we got to Central station and saw our mob. It wasn’t the best. By 1994 football hooliganism in general, and the ICF in particular, was going through a rough patch. Many boys had been lost to the rave scene, others had been deterred by the increasing sophistication of police surveillance techniques and the ever increasing resources the authorities were putting into combating hooliganism. It meant we only had about thirty-five boys out, many of them teenagers, inexperienced in the ways of FV. I had brought two young guys along with me from Shettleston and like the rest of the youngsters I could see they were excited at the prospect of facing Hibs. They didn’t realise what they were getting themselves into.

My mood wasn’t lightened by a hangover of Charlie Sheen proportions. The previous night I had hit the booze hard, supplementing it with copious amounts of ecstasy. I wasn’t sure if I was sweating because of the drugs or my nervousness about what lay before us in south Edinburgh. I tried not to show how I felt because that would have spooked the younger guys, who were nervous enough about facing a top firm.

We also had spotters out that day. Warren B, one of our top boys, lives in Edinburgh and he was in Slateford, trying to discover what Hibs were up to. He was on the phone to Davie Carrick throughout the journey, giving him regular reports. The news wasn’t good. Warren said there were forty CCS in the immediate environs of the station and another forty in two big furniture vans. His advice to Davie was clear: stay on the train, don’t get off at Slateford. It was a message that Davie relayed only to other leading members to prevent the younger boys losing their nerve.

As we were about to pull into Slateford station we were well fired up, fuelled by an hour-long orgy of lager, ecstasy and coke. One of the guys was carrying a bag of claw-hammers. ‘These are our insurance policy, Sandy,’ he confidently assured me. He was right. We would need them.
The CCS would be well tooled-up, despite their bullshit propaganda about not carrying weapons.

We saw two CCS on an adjoining platform. They motioned to us to come to an industrial estate that was just yards from the station. Fuck off, we thought, that is Indian territory; the perfect place for an ambush. We walked out of the station and onto Slateford Road. There were twenty Hibs at the bottom of an incline that leads to a railway bridge. Our twenty front-liners immediately charged and as the two mobs came together another twenty CCS appeared, giving them a numerical advantage. We gave as good as we got and those claw-hammers certainly came in handy. I was wildly swinging a hammer at them, but they kept backing off and I couldn’t land a meaningful blow.

After what seemed like five minutes – in reality it was a fraction of that – the furniture vans drew up and forty more CCS, led by Fat McLeod, poured out. That was the game changer. We were swamped. The CCS attacked us from the front and the sides and as the tide turned in their favour our boys were getting knocked over like ninepins. It was carnage, that’s the only word I can use to describe it. Even amidst a brutal fight for survival I will never forget the sight of two of our top lads going down and having the shit kicked out of them by large groups of CCS.

To increase the psychological pressure Hibs shouted ‘slash them, slash them’. On hearing this many of our younger lads, already in a state of shock, ran. It was the worst decision they could have made, because Hibs clipped them and when they were lying helpless on the road they too took a fearsome kicking. The main danger was the cosh. It looked like every Hibs boy was carrying one and many of us were coshed repeatedly around the head. One of my young Shettleston pals didn’t fare too well either: he was struck on the head by a sickening blow from a heavy glass ashtray and fell glassy eyed onto the tarmac.

The attacks from Hibs grew more and more frenzied. Each new act of violence spurred them on to even greater ferocity. It was the only time I have ever felt my life was in danger. I had to stay on my feet. If they had decked me I would have been going home in an ambulance, or even a hearse. All around me there were ICF boys lying on the pavement and on the road, many bleeding profusely, all of them in pain. Five of them would be hospitalised.

That was probably the only time in my life I was glad to see those flashing blue lights. I managed to make myself scarce and an hour later was on a train back to Glasgow, tail stuck firmly between my legs.

After Slateford our priority was revenge. A day like that could not go unpunished and from then on we obsessed about getting our own back. When Hibs were next due at Ibrox we had a huge mob out. There were one hundred and fifty of us in the Glaswegian, tooled up to fuck and itching to get at them. They told us they would front up but then said a couple of their boys had been involved in a violent incident the night before and that they had changed their mind. To me it was a feeble excuse. They knew we were raging and they didn’t fancy it.

The same thing happened the next time Rangers were at Easter Road. A coach-load of our top guys went through, armed to the teeth. I had two small coshes and a huge meat cleaver, which I hid in the toilet of John Robertson’s pub on Gorgie Road where we had plotted up for a pre-match drink. We belled Fat McLeod but he was vague about meeting us and we went back to our pints and our lines while they made a decision. All the while we could see the CCS going past in their cars, weighing us up. As the hours went by we got higher and higher and also more and more frustrated. Where the fuck were they? It was now half-seven and we had been in the pub for about eight hours, much to the disgust of the wives and girlfriends back home in Glasgow. There was nothing else for it. We would have to go and look for them and so thirty of us went into the city to track them down. Once again, they were nowhere to be seen. I realise the CCS were in the midst of a power struggle at the time – one faction led by McLeod, the other by Blance – but that was no excuse. Not fronting up on home turf is no way for a top mob to behave.

In fact it took us five years, until August 1999, to exact revenge on Hibs for Slateford. We ran a bus from the Pitz five-a-side centre in Townhead. There were fifty top hooligans out, a real hardcore, all of whom drank in Dr Brown’s in Queen Street. Guys like Jeff, Boris, Ricky C, General Jamie, Andy Mac, Big Gary, Davie, the usual suspects. I was wearing a white England rugby shirt, so bright it dazzled anyone within ten feet of me, which in hindsight made me a little too conspicuous. However, I was outdone in the dodgy-fashion stakes by Smoothy, who had an equally bright white Stone Island jacket on, which earned him the nickname Dr Death. Lager was swallowed, cocaine snorted, ecstasy popped and then we were off.

We drove straight to Edinburgh where we plotted up at the Haymarket bar. The plan was to use Edinburgh corporation buses to avoid police detection so half of us jumped on one bus while the rest got the next one that passed. We mobbed up again at Leith Walk and made straight for the
CCS’s spiritual home: the Royal Nip. Fair play to them, Andy Blance and one other Hibs boy came out to face us. And despite getting a doing they gave a fair account of themselves before the Old Bill arrived and broke it up.

Half of our group went to the game but the rest, me included, went back to the Haymarket. Football wasn’t our priority, being ready for Hibs was. During the game (which Rangers won 1–0 thanks to a goal from Jonatan Johansson) Ricky was approached by one of the CCS and phone numbers were exchanged. It looked promising.

The Haymarket contingent left the bar about fifteen minutes before the final whistle and made its way through the back streets to avoid the cops. As we passed the Scottish Parliament, which was still being built, we phoned the CCS and were told they were well up for it. We hooked up with the lads who had gone to the match and marched on, desperate to get to grips with the enemy.

Then we saw them, fifty CCS, standing outside the St James centre. I felt a warm glow. It wasn’t the usual adrenalin-fuelled nervous tension. We were just so confident; we knew we were a match for anyone. I remember thinking, ‘This is our time. We are the top mob now. We are taking no shit.’

When it went off we had them on the back foot right from the off. Taylor, one of their top men, was knocked out within seconds. I was desperate to get as many of them as possible, to pay them back for Slateford. This time it was me who was shouting ‘stab them’. They had no answer to us and we managed to inflict some hospital-grade injuries before the police arrived and spoiled the party. On the bus back to Glasgow we were elated and the celebrations in Doc Brown’s went on long into the night.

Five years of hurt had been erased.

I thought it would be interesting to include other memories of Slateford. So here is Mr Blue’s story. Blue of course was with the ICF that fateful afternoon in 1994 and ended up being hospitalised. Interestingly, he puts the ICF mob at twenty-two, much smaller than I thought. I suppose that makes our efforts all the more commendable.

A week before the game at Easter Road (which was in October 1994) word got round this would be football violence with a twist. No football! The police were an important factor in our calculations. By the late 1980s they were getting the upper hand and the last time we had gone to Hibs on the train about two hundred of us got sent straight back due to having no tickets. This would be around 1989. That said we did manage to have a memorable day up there when two coach-loads of us wrong-footed the boys in blue and did the business, but, that apart, they had things nailed down.

So we had to think of a way of avoiding the Old Bill. After much thought it was decided we would leave from Central station and go the scenic route, meeting Hibs somewhere along the Edinburgh rail network. I got into the bar in Central at one o’clock expecting to find a decent-size firm. There were two! We were looking to leave around 2.15 so that left about an hour for the numbers to grow. I needn’t have worried because by that time our firm had grown . . . to an astonishing twenty-two. As we sat in the bar there wasn’t even a decision to be made. We were going, 22 or 222, it really didn’t matter. We’d arranged it, so we were going. But I’d be lying if I said I was confident. Out of our twenty-two around half were what is known these days as ‘youth’ and half were solid, experienced lads. We got on the train as planned, no police in sight. I was laughing at the thought of those smug cunts hanging around Queen Street – the normal station for Edinburgh – content in the knowledge today was going to be another peaceful day on the football front.

On the train we didn’t have a care in the world. Then we got a call from one of our lads who lived in Edinburgh.

‘How many?’

‘Twenty-two,’ we replied.