Walking Down the Manny Road: Inside Bolton's Football Hooligan Gangs by Doug Mitchell

Author:Doug Mitchell [Mitchell, Doug]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781905769308
Publisher: Fort Publishing Ltd
Published: 2011-09-18T22:00:00+00:00

11

BRISTOL CITY

Much as I loved our run-ins with the foreign teams, it was equally pleasurable to stamp our authority on one of the more notorious English firms. Whereas certain mobs had managed to forge a reputation for themselves, others were still in the process of cementing their status and, throughout the mid 1980s, Bristol City’s City Service Firm were looking very promising indeed. They were holding their own against the likes of Millwall and Portsmouth, who were both top five firms at the time, and they were rapidly becoming known as a mob to watch out for.

Here is what one of our Great Lever lads has got to say about the CSF . . .

GLL

I was proper made up when I found out that we were going up against Bristol in the Freight Rover Trophy final in May 1986. I had heard about their battles with some of the teams down south and I knew they would be worthy opponents. We were playing them at Wembley and decided to remain completely trouble free until we were in London, as we didn’t want the Old Bill to get onto us before we arrived.

Leaving nothing to chance everything was planned out well in advance of the game. Some of the Tonge Moor lads had bought a load of train tickets using stolen credit cards, which meant that we didn’t have to worry about getting to the stadium. We had arranged to get the overnight train from Manchester Piccadilly, arriving in the capital at around 5.30 a.m. and giving us plenty of time before the game kicked off.

All was going well until a couple of the firm decided to kick off on a load of random black lads at Piccadilly Gardens bus station. I wasn’t there to see it but one of our lot ended up getting slashed and had to go to hospital. Our main boys weren’t best pleased and the other lads who had been involved in the confrontation got a right bollocking.

‘Save it for Bristol,’ they were told. ‘Are you trying to fuck this up before we’ve even set off? It’ll be a shit day for you if you bring it on top with the Old Bill and I get pulled because of you, you stupid cunts.’

Luckily, we were able to make it onto our train without anything else going off and before we knew it, we were well on our way to London. The journey down was just like any other trip to an away game. People were taking the piss out of one another, some of the firm were ballooning about how hard they were and others were reminiscing back to their previous battles with Bristol, all of which were well before my time.

We had seventy-odd lads with us and Bolton had managed to get itself together over the previous year, culminating in all the component firms coming together as one. Our numbers usually ranged from twenty-five to two hundred-plus and the Tonge Moor Stanley Boys were easily the worst of the lot.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.