Football Hooligans (Mammoth Books Book 155) by Nigel Cawthorne

Author:Nigel Cawthorne [Cawthorne, Nigel]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781849017671
Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group
Published: 2012-08-15T22:00:00+00:00

Holland

We were desperate for this match because we had been waiting for Holland to visit for some time. At club level we have had a few run-ins with the Dutch, something that goes back to the seventies, when we did the Feyenoord mob over there. I was much too young to remember that, but I do remember seeing the pictures on the telly, loads of Spurs lads coming back from Amsterdam after having the shit kicked out of them in 1981. Three lads were stabbed at that match, so as you can see we have every reason to hate those wankers, and this was a good chance to give them a good hiding on our own ground, especially as we had heard on the grapevine that their main mobs were coming over to set things up for Euro ’88. At that time there was loads of trouble at Dutch League games, and in particular with the mobs from Utrecht and Feyenoord. Both these clubs had links with firms in London and that’s how we got to hear about it. They were meant to be up for it and coming over to have a pop at us.

We would have liked to have got down to Liverpool Street Station in order to pick off any that had come in on the train from Harwich, but we didn’t have the time. Anyway, West Ham should have taken care of that, so we decided to meet up at Baker Street, as most of the Dutch would have to come through there at some time if they were using the train. Some of the lads were able to get into the centre of London early to do a bit of scouting and they told us that a mob of around forty Dutch had been taking the piss down Carnaby Street most of the afternoon. Nothing had really gone off but they were taking liberties, there were no other England lads around at all and our boys had the right hump.

By half five there were about thirty of us in the bar opposite the Baker Street tube station. A few other lads were obviously there to see if anything was going off – you recognize some of the faces, but who they supported, I wasn’t too sure. Word soon spread about what had happened in the daytime and the mood was starting to change, the old buzz was starting to kick in. Someone put forward the idea that we should move into the tube station to see who was coming through, and a total of around fifty blokes moved off. The Old Bill were all over the place and on every train that came through. Loads of England fans were also passing through the station; some joined us, others continued on, saying that they were going to wait at other stations and pubs along the way. Not one person said they had come across any kind of Dutch mob and we were seeing only the odd orange scarf.

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