Naughty - the story of a football hooligan gang by Mark Chester

Author:Mark Chester [Chester, Mark]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: soccer
Publisher: Category C Publishing
Published: 2011-04-10T22:00:00+00:00

The following pre-season, 1987/88, the youngsters, still in their mid-teens, were about fifteen in number when, on a rainy Friday night before a pre-season friendly at home to Derby County, a dozen strangers appeared in town. They were in the same spot where the youngsters had been accosted on their first visit against Millwall. The initial reaction was that these lads were Derby and everyone was buzzing at the thought of a row with lads of their own age, so they took it to them. It transpired that they were not Derby but local lads from Newcastle, down in Stoke to settle a score with the Trent Vale youths, some of whom were in the Under-Fives number that night. A couple of the Stafford lads went over and began to calm the situation down, suggesting that they should all get together on a match day and, although they may have had issues with the Trent Vale lads in the past, they could see the potential.

By the time Stoke played their first home game that season, against Middlesbrough, there were about twenty lads in town from Newcastle, the same number from Stafford and Trent Vale and another twenty from other parts of the City. Some Asians had just opened Hustlers, a pool hall on the first floor of an old building overlooking a junction that away supporters had to cross from the station to the ground. This was to be the headquarters of Stoke’s Under-Fives, many of whom could not get served in the pubs. (Everybody tried to get served in Charlie Browns, which was Stoke’s main pub, but all failed except, ironically, the smallest and youngest looking member of the group. He had just been drinking coke in a cafe and was still chewing on ice cubes when he entered the bar. The landlord adhered to the formalities and asked, ‘Are you eighteen?’ The youngster replied, ‘Ice cubes.’ He had thought that the landlord had asked what he was eating. This totally fazed the landlord, who served him a pint of lager as fast as he could to get away from the little nutcase. ) From the outside, Hustlers looked derelict, but behind its blacked-out windows would always be about twenty lads, chatting on the window sill, their eyes scanning the street.

By coincidence, on the day that the Under-Fives finally became a mob that could be taken seriously for its numbers, even establishing their own haunt, fifty Middlesbrough appeared. They crossed the junction tentatively, pushing up close to one another for some security, their heads swivelling in all directions looking for danger. Their mistake was that they were only looking at eye level. How were they to know that sixty eager Under-Fives had spotted them from the first floor of a ramshackle building less than twenty yards away. The Middlesbrough firm were dressed in baggy jeans, moccasins and brightly coloured T-shirts. They all looked mid twenties to mid thirties. A fair few moustaches and curly mullets amongst them as well as the archetypal pie men.

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