No One Like Us, We Don't Care by Andrew Woods

Author:Andrew Woods
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781843584520
Publisher: John Blake Publishing
Published: 2011-01-03T16:00:00+00:00

29

WITHIN A STONE’S THROW – CHARLTON AND CRYSTAL PALACE

Who?

Some clubs are just too insignificant, aren’t they?

30

ROAD TO NOWHERE

The match against Swansea in February 2001 had been moved to an early kick-off, having been regarded by the authorities as another of our ‘potentially explosive’ games. They were right on that one. We hired a minibus. One of the lads had organised it with about 20 of us in it. We all chipped in and the hope, obviously, was that we were going to avoid the main police escort for as long as possible. We could do whatever we wanted, and all met up at the Elephant & Castle. Everyone was there with a crate under their arms, a couple of grams of charlie, and a few were carrying their weapons of choice – coshes, hammers, Stanley knives, Coke, beers, tools. Twenty Millwall. Some combination. We piled into the minibus and we were away, across London and on to the A4 leading all the way to the Severn Bridge.

We had probably been in the van for a couple of hours when we had a call that the Old Bill were pulling coaches over near the border. We made a decision that we were going to turn around. There were enough weapons on the bus to start a war. We told the driver to take the next exit and head back to Swindon, which was the biggest town we had passed. A couple more phone calls told us what was happening with the coaches. The police were looking for any reason to nick people and stop them going any further. They were pulling them all to pieces with sniffer dogs and full search teams. If the weaponry and drug sniffer dogs had come on our coach, they would have gone off their heads.

We arrived in Swindon, found a pub on the outskirts and spent the next couple of hours drinking and getting reports from the others who had made it by train. They told us that the Old Bill had them under wraps from start to finish. Inside the ground, it was a bit lively but there was no chance of getting at Swansea with the police presence. We were gutted we never got to Swansea but at least we had outmanoeuvred the Old Bill.

We stayed in Swindon and had a good drink-up until well into the night. A right unusual day, really. But maybe the police had a bit of intelligence or something that day. Fair play to them. Luckily for us, we had a bit of intelligence ourselves and, rather than risk any or all of us getting nicked, we U-turned to Swindon and had a right good laugh.

Thinking back, why no one suggested, ‘Let’s do all our cocaine now,’ I don’t know. Someone may have followed with, ‘Then let’s just throw the hammers, coshes and knives out the window.’ And finally someone could have said, ‘Then let’s just go there.’ I don’t know. But logic in a van filled with

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