Rangers and the Famous ICF: My Life With Scotland's Most-Feared Football Hooligan Gang (17 page)

As soon as we walked out the front door of the pub there they were, right in our faces. Twenty Motherwell, all of them well up for it. No one had time to think. No one had time to speak. No one had time to get apprehensive. It kicked off in a nano second.

Swedgers and I were confronted by two SS. As my opponent came at me I backed him off with a bottle of Miller while Swedgers was left to take on this cunt with the height and build of an all-in wrestler.

‘I’m British Army,’ Giant Haystacks proudly proclaimed.

‘Oh, that’s good,’ Swedgers replied, before smacking him full in the face, a blow that put the big man right onto his arse. I doubt if any of the rest us could have knocked the soldier boy down but Swedgers is a roofer to trade and no shrinking violet.

The fun didn’t last for long. Within minutes the sirens were blaring and we ran back into the pub, ready to play the innocent bystanders when the cops turned up. I took a call from Big Boris.

‘The outside of the pub is black with Old Bill. Get your arse outside and I’ll pick you up,’ he said.

Swedgers and I sneaked out of the side door and jumped into Boris’s car. It was just in the nick of time because as the police questioned the ICF boys in the pub it became clear they were out to get yours truly.

‘Where is Sandy Chugg?’ they asked. ‘We have information that Sandy Chugg was drinking in this pub.’ The boys of course blanked them and by this time I was long gone.

For me that day sums up Motherwell. We didn’t have to go looking for them, they came to us. Despite the fact that we were now the number-one mob in Scotland they had the guts to front up without being shamed into it, which made a refreshing change from some other mobs I could mention.

More power to their elbow.

I wouldn’t put Kilmarnock’s mob in remotely the same league as the Motherwell Saturday Service but they had a couple of reasonably good years in the mid Nineties.
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However, my first skirmish with them was 1986, when they were in the lower leagues. Six of us Rangers Soccer Babes, all from the east end, got the bus into the city centre and got off at George Square. The plan was to hook up with more RSB at our usual meeting place in St Enoch Square and look for someone, anyone, to fight. We didn’t expect to meet a mob of Kilmarnock on the way – Rangers weren’t playing them – but that’s exactly what happened. On our way to St Enoch’s we ran into thirty boys, obviously casuals, and although at that point we didn’t have a clue which club they were attached to we weren’t going to let that stand in our way.

There were more of them and they were older and bigger than us. But with the confidence of youth we threw caution to the wind and steamed in. It was a disaster. I got decked and on my way down I took a few more punches and kicks. In fact all six of us got a kicking before the Killie boys decided they had taught us enough of a lesson and went to catch their train. Bruised, battered and groggy we got up and inspected our injuries. I discovered that I had a burst nose, a chipped tooth and a black eye and that my five pals were in a similar state. What made me even angrier, however, was that one of the sleeves on my bright-red-and-blue Aquascutum shirt was caked in dirt. Those fucking Ayrshire bastards! That shirt was my pride and joy.

As we cleaned up in Buchanan Street public toilets we agreed that Kilmarnock were not going to get away with turning us over in the middle of our city. Given their age and the numbers they had with them it was a suicide mission but we were fucking raging. We sprinted round to Queen Street and caught them at the low-level station, where they now had a police escort.

‘We want a rematch,’ we demanded.

They didn’t take us entirely seriously.

‘Fuck off wee men. Did you not have enough round the corner?’ one of them sneered.

His mate was a bit more complimentary.

‘Fair play to you, wee men. You’re keen but youse have no chance.’

By this time the cops had seen what we were up to and we were told to get lost or we would be locked up. We got lost.

As I said Killie were at their peak in the mid Nineties and in a two-year period between April 1994 and May 1996 we had three outstanding offs with them. The first was on 10 April 1994, when we met them at Hampden in a Scottish Cup semi-final. The game was a rather drab goalless draw and to spice things up we went to look for their mob among the supporters’ buses that were parked on red blaes pitches not far from the stadium. To our delight we came across a bus with about thirty of them in it. We picked up stones and did our best to smash every window on the bus. To their credit Kilmarnock didn’t bottle it. They poured off the coach and, to our surprise, gave as good as they got before the cops arrived and broke it up.

We weren’t done yet. Hiding up a side street we waited until the convoy of buses started to move off. Then when we saw their bus passing some of us launched a volley of bottles while the rest charged round to the front of the bus, stopping it in its tracks. Once again I was surprised when they trooped off the bus to face us and once again I was surprised at just how fucking game they were. In fact I would say that over the piece honours were even. A few ICF got nicked but I got lucky and managed to sneak away.
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Unfortunately, I missed the middle off in the trilogy, which took place in November 1995 when we played them in a league game at Rugby Park. I was told the whole story by someone who was there and what a story it
is. Twenty ICF went down to Kilmarnock, including some of our heaviest hitters, but they came unstuck against a forty-strong home mob. Even allowing for the numerical disparity between the two groups that surprised me, because I knew the calibre of the ICF who had gone down there. It was by all accounts a particularly nasty fight, in the course of which one of ours, Craig C, got his arm broken after taking a full-blooded blow from a baseball bat. I was beside myself with anger when I heard what had happened to Craig. Taking a baseball bat to someone who is not tooled up is a real liberty. And one, I vowed, that would be revenged.

As Kilmarnock didn’t trap for the return fixture at Ibrox we had to wait until the end of the season to get our own back, but by Christ it was worth waiting for. It was now 4 May 1996 and we were due to face Killie on their patch in the last league game of the season. This time there would be no mistake, no underestimating them, no going with an under-strength mob. We also went well tooled up, with coshes, knives, CS gas and flare guns. They had chosen to follow that path and would now reap what they had sown.

We got on the train, stopping off at Barrhead to let the latecomers catch up and, by noon, when we got to Kilmarnock station, we had about forty with us. There was no way we were going to the game. We were there for one reason and one reason only: to kick fuck out of Kilmarnock. In the pub the forty became forty-five and then fifty and finally sixty as more and more boys arrived. I wasn’t the only one who had been angered by what Kilmarnock had done to Craig.

We were in that pub for three hours, getting drunker and drunker and angrier and angrier. Then the call came. Kilmarnock were on their way. We piled out and sprinted round to the pedestrian precinct in the town centre. There they were, about sixty of them. There was no eyeing each other up, no gestures of defiance; no songs or chants. Fuelled by righteous indignation we charged. They had no chance. We smashed them and when they regrouped we smashed them again. I don’t even remember throwing a punch, such was our dominance.

Only one of their boys put up any real resistance: a well-built cunt with a shock of red hair, who I believe goes by the name of Beastie. He was a really game lad, and even managed to mix it with Carrick, which, let me tell you, takes some doing. But I am afraid that after his heroics he blotted his copybook by pointing out a few of us to the Old Bill, who by this time had us corralled. It was no doubt an attempt to take the heat off his own mob but to me it is grassing. End of.

Not that we gave it much thought as we marched happily to the station, chanting raucously as we went. But we had to cut short the triumphalism. We knew that we were likely to be penned in again by the Old Bill as we waited for our train, which might lead to questioning and searches. Given that we were armed to the teeth that would be inviting trouble and, as a result, some of the boys decided to ditch their weapons in a clump of bushes. It resulted in a flare gun going off, causing a fire in the shrubbery, which cracked us up.

But none of that mattered. We had settled the score with Kilmarnock. The cunts would think twice before taking a baseball bat to Rangers.

Life is hard for Motherwell and Kilmarnock, both on and off the pitch. But for Partick Thistle, in the shadow of the Old Firm behemoth, it must be fucking soul-destroying. Glasgow’s third force have always been up against it and they always will be. So respect to the club and to their mob, the North Glasgow Express, for even turning up. The NGE has always been competitive with the likes of Airdrie’s Section B and Dunfermline’s Carnegie Soccer Casuals but like their team they are also-rans where Rangers, Celtic, Hearts, Hibs and Aberdeen are concerned.

I like many of the Express. They are nice lads and I have particular respect for one of their main faces, who I will call ‘Big H’. Two Asian brothers are also prominent in the NGE – Ben is one – and they too are stand-up guys. While they and their mates have never got the better of the ICF, in recent years they have taken on the Rangers Youth in a number of minor skirmishes.

That is not to say they weren’t up for the challenge. They have been willing to front up to us, with the result that we have had to put them in their place on a few occasions. Back in 1993 they began to mouth off, saying how much they wanted to do us. At first we tended to ignore them, having bigger fish to fry, but they kept going on and on about it and we thought to ourselves, ‘Fuck this. If they want it they are going to get it.’ The good thing was they were in the same city and we didn’t have to wait for a match day. So this night twenty-five of us went up to Maryhill, some in cars, the others by tube. Our plan was to attack their boozer, the Pewter Pot, which lies between Great Western Road and Maryhill Road and is close to Firhill stadium.

We mobbed up and made straight for the Pewter Pot and when we got within twenty yards of the place the front door swung open and fifteen NGE came out. They must have known we were coming because every one of their boys was carrying a baseball bat, a knife or a pool cue.

If they were trying to intimidate us it didn’t work.

The cry went up.

‘ICCCF, ICCCF’.

We steamed in, pushing them back, right up to the front of the Pewter Pot. They regrouped and charged but once again we pushed them back, forcing all but five of their mob back inside the pub. As the doors of the pub were barricaded we turned our attention to the five stragglers, relieving them of their weapons and giving them a slap for their trouble. There were still the other mouthy cunts cowering inside the Pewter to be dealt with. We laid siege to the pub, battering the front door and smashing the windows. But it was no use. There was no way through and encouraged by the sound of police cars in the distance we made ourselves scarce. A decade later, after a Scottish Cup semi-final, we did the same thing again, but this time we got into the Pewter Pot and waited for the NGE. When no one appeared we left for another pub and then went back to the Pewter Pot when they showed up. We mullered them, and it
was
them, despite their claims that none of their boys were actually in the pub.

There were always long gaps between our encounters with Thistle – we were invariably in different divisions – and if it was going to go off it was going to be a cup competition, which is how we came to face them in September 2008 after a League Cup tie.

Not for the first time the NGE had been taunting us, telling us they would have a mob out; daring us to front up. And once again we obliged. Before the game we assembled in Wintergill’s, a cracking old-fashioned pub on Great Western Road, while Thistle were ensconced not far away in the Woodside Inn. Their location was a bit of a problem, as the Woodside was owned by relatives of one of the Rangers Youth.

We were on and off the phone to the NGE, who told us they were trying to put a mob together but were struggling for numbers. At this point Boris and I decided to recce the Woodside and while we were doing that we had a chat with one of Thistle’s youth, ‘R’, who confirmed they were doing their best to pull a decent mob but were having problems. Boris and I told R that the trap would have to be in the street because the Woodside was a no-no in view of who owned it. We went back to Wintergill’s and waited for their response.

When we heard nothing we left the pub and began to walk to Firhill, making sure that we went past the Woodside so that the NGE would see us. We swung right up a side street, where we bumped into a tall, balding, athletic lad, who asked:

‘Are you Rangers?’

‘Of course we are,’ we replied.

‘I am Thistle. We’ve got a mob for an off.’

‘Go back to the Woodside and get your lads out of the pub. We’ll have it on the street. Make sure youse are all out,’ I told him.

We waited for a couple of minutes to give them time to mob up before going to the arranged rendezvous. But as we approached the side street that the Woodside was on we saw that fifteen NGE were standing around the door of the pub.

‘Come on if you want some,’ we shouted.

They didn’t seem keen and although the Woodside was packed to the gunwales only ten Thistle came out onto the street. I noticed the bald dude from before; he was carrying a spring cosh while his mates had bottles and chairs from the pub. We ran towards them, chanting ‘ICF, ICF,’ and almost immediately they backed off. The strange thing was that some of the regulars from the pub came out to help them and I remember being confronted by a guy in his forties, who was wielding a chair. But when the reality of the situation hit him he just threw the chair at me and when it missed he quickly backed off.