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

by Chugg, Sandy

  The Tartan Army’s ‘anyone but England’ philosophy is also objectionable. Why do they get away with abusing our English cousins? The media would come down on Rangers fans like a ton of bricks if we spouted similar anthems of hate about the Republic of Ireland. But for some reason anti-English racism is acceptable in modern Scotland.

  When twenty-five of us got to Glasgow airport for our flight to Gothenburg the tension in the terminal building was palpable. The Tartan Army could tell by the way we were dressed and by our aggressive demeanour that we weren’t foot-soldiers. They knew right away who we were and what we were. We felt like gatecrashers at a wedding and they did their best to ignore us in the airport and on the plane. We didn’t give a fuck about getting the cold shoulder, especially after a few beers and some of Colombia’s finest.

  In Gothenburg we stayed at a floating hotel on the river, called The Ship, and once we had unpacked we went out on the town. The women were lovely, right at the top of the gene pool, and it may sound corny but they really did remind me of the blonde one from ABBA. The only problem was that they were obsessed by the Tartan Army and what they had on underneath their kilts. We were in a nightclub full of TA and the women swarmed around them like flies on shite. We didn’t get a look in, although we still had a good night fuelled by coke, ecstasy and beer.

  Despite the presence of the Tartan Army babe magnets one of our boys, Kinky Keek, did manage to pull. He got off with a highly attractive local woman, or at least she seemed to be a highly attractive woman. Some of the boys noticed that Keek’s bird had a very pronounced Adam’s apple and a rather square jaw. He got the third degree when he came back to the hotel the next morning with a big smile on his face.

  ‘How did you get on last night,’ we asked.

  ‘Aye fine. I done her up the arse,’ Keek replied.

  ‘Are you sure it wasn’t a ‘him’?’

  But he wouldn’t admit it, telling us only, ‘That she made me a cracking breakfast.’

  Keek had pulled a transsexual but it didn’t seem to worry him and I have heard that he keeps in touch with him/her by e-mail. It was the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

  Later that morning a few of us went out for a walk and found the ideal place in which to set up base camp. It was a combination of sex shop, bar, lap-dancing club and porno cinema, a very handy establishment if you ask me! When we went in we found Gags, a Hearts boy, trying to fend off a beautiful woman. But once again appearances proved to be deceptive because ‘she’ was also a transsexual; it must be a popular pastime in Sweden. My pal Swedgers and I had a look in the cinema, where three of Gothenburg’s dirty old men were wanking furiously as they watched a hardcore movie. The smell of stale spunk was nauseating.

  It really was a weird place. Swedgers heard loud, animal-like noises coming from behind a locked door. It turned out to be chickens clucking, with a man moaning in ecstasy. Could he really have been fucking hens? He shouted over the rest of us and we did our best to open the door to see what was really going on. But there was no handle, only a Yale lock, and we couldn’t get inside. It gave us a right good laugh though.

  About two hours before the game we mobbed up in a bar in Gothenburg’s main square. Some SNF had already been arrested for fighting but had been released and had now rejoined the main group in the bar. We needed them because a few minutes later a group of Swedish hooligans appeared, obviously spoiling for a fight. We didn’t hesitate. We weaved through the passing trams and the thousands of Scotland and Sweden fans to get at them. I have no idea to this day if our opponents were Black Army or locals but we scattered them, despite a volley of bottles being thrown at us.

  The cops were quickly on the scene and although I hid out in one of the many watering holes on the main square I was arrested along with one of the Hibs lads. We were taken to a nearby police station, which quickly filled up with more of our SNF colleagues. The cops informed us we were going to be strip-searched. ‘Shit,’ I thought, ‘they will find my drugs’ but I quickly calmed down when I realised I had none on me. I did, however, have something that was even worse: a nine-inch, black-mamba vibrator! I had forgotten all about buying it in the sex shop earlier that day. To add to my potential embarrassment, because of all the drinking and snorting, my dick had shrivelled to the size of an inverted belly button. When the Swedish cops who were doing the searches found the two very different appendages they had a right good laugh at my expense. I nearly died of shame; I would rather have faced fifty Black Army on my own than have gone through that embarrassment.

  I was held in a cell and peering out of the window I could see the old football ground and also the new Ulleval stadium, where Scotland and Sweden were playing the inaugural match. It was the only time during the trip that I gave any thought to the football; I had come to Gothenburg ticketless looking for drugs, drink, fighting and banter. My flight home was very soon after the final whistle and I was desperate for them to release me so that I could get to the airport on time. With five minutes left at the Ulleval I was ushered out of my cell and told to get a taxi to the airport. As we walked through the electric doors at the terminal building I was aware of a commotion at check-in.

  The Tartan Army were loudly singing, ‘If you hate the fucking English, clap your hands.’ Our pal, English Steve, understandably, didn’t take too kindly to their little ditty and told them, ‘I’m fucking English you know,’ and was met with foul-mouthed racist abuse for his troubles.

  Within seconds there were scuffles between the SNF and the Tartan Army, with a huge crate of beer on the terminal floor acting as a sort of no-man’s land between the two groups. It might not have escalated beyond a bit of pushing and shoving had not Rob Roy McGregor lit the touch paper. This huge red-haired cunt, wearing the full regalia of kilt, sporran and Glengarry, entered the fray. He challenged any of the SNF who fancied it to a square go. It was an invitation that one of our boys couldn’t resist.

  Whack! English Steve caught Rob Roy on the chin with a peach of a punch, sending him spinning to the floor. The touch-paper lit, fights broke out all over the place and although we were vastly outnumbered we smashed them to fuck, using the cans from the crate of beer as weapons. To me they just weren’t up for it, despite all their tough talk.

  Luckily for them the police arrived and split the two groups up, corralling us into a corner of the building, as far away as possible from the Tartan Army. There was peace for ten minutes and during the lull hundreds more of the kilt-wearing numpties arrived. Then out of nowhere they started chanting, ‘Baldy casual bastards,’ and at the same time moved menacingly towards us. They obviously reasoned that as we were now outnumbered by at least twenty-to-one they would have a chance. We were well up for it but by now the airport was flooded with cops and they managed to keep us apart.

  Of course, we got the blame for everything that happened. The pilot wouldn’t let us on the plane, claiming there was potential for violence in mid-air. The only one who flew out of Gothenburg that night was Carrick, who, by the simple expedient of turning his Harrington inside out to reveal the tartan lining, was able to sneak onto the plane. The rest of us had to go back on the overnight ferry, which took thirty hours, and had no bunks. It was nightmare journey, made worse because I had to fend off a very ugly Swedish schoolgirl with a moustache problem.

  We disembarked at Harwich, where we were separated from the other passengers and were then escorted to the railway station. Along the way the cops tried to goad us into a fight but we ignored them and when we reached London we got on a train for Glasgow.

  20

  THE SCOTTISH NATIONAL FIRM (3): THE ROAD TO SALOU AND THIRTEEN YEARS OF GRIEF

  Despite my initial misgivings the SNF had been a great experience. Apart from anything else it was a privilege to fight alongside real front-liners, to be in a firm that had no passengers. We had also been innovative, trail-blazers, taking it to two leading English mobs, in England, and giving a good account of ourselves. But we had no intention of resting
on our laurels so one night we put our heads together and came up with the idea of taking a mob to the 1998 World Cup in France, in which Scotland had been drawn to play Brazil, Norway and Morocco in the group stages. We knew Aberdeen were going, as were the Utility who would no doubt have Stoke’s Naughty Forty to back them up. There was no way we could miss the biggest party of them all.

  Little did we know that it would turn out to be the most hysterical media circus in the history of Scottish football violence. On a personal level it also made me the country’s most talked-about hooligan, a status I have been living with from that day on.

  Our first priority was to pull the numbers. Our cunning plan was to tie in the football violence with a holiday in Spain. Who could resist a week in the sun, with drink, drugs, women and a fight thrown in? The next item on the agenda was to decide which match, or matches, to target. Scotland’s first game was against Brazil, in Paris, which we concluded was too far away from Spain, as was the game in St Etienne with Morocco. That left the Norway tie, which was being played in Bordeaux, about nineteen hours from Salou by road. Halfway through the week we would take a coach to the stadium, do the business and then drive back to finish our holiday.

  We thought we had managed to keep our plans under wraps (although there had been an article in the Edinburgh Evening News about our expedition a few months earlier) but when we got to Glasgow airport for our flight to Reus we were immediately targeted by special branch. While we were having a quiet drink they took our names and addresses and asked where we were going. I just couldn’t work out how they had got onto us so quickly. It was only later that we found out there was a grass in the camp. However, despite the questioning we weren’t fazed. We thought we would be able to sneak over the border, do the business and get out undetected.

  There was real excitement on the plane. It was not only a lad’s holiday in the sun but also we had been in touch with both the ASC and the Utility, both of whom said they would trap in France. I was confident of a result. There were sixty of Scotland’s finest boys on that plane; a true elite.

  The first few days in Salou were great. We were boisterous and we certainly enjoyed ourselves but we kept a low profile. We watched in the pub as England played Tunisia and then enjoyed the running battles between the English mob and Arab immigrants after the game. But some boys were worried about what happened in the aftermath of that violence. The England boys who were arrested were named and shamed by the media and the worry was that if the same thing happened in Bordeaux some of us would lose our jobs. I didn’t think there would be much of a problem. The England violence involved thousands of lads while there were only sixty SNF. The media profile surely wouldn’t be as high. In addition we weren’t targeting either Norway fans or the locals; if it did go off it was likely to be our fellow Scottish thugs on the receiving end, which would be of less interest to the papers.

  We set out for Bordeaux early in the morning, planning to get there around six the following morning. A lot of the boys had been out all night partying and hadn’t slept a wink but they were so full of adrenalin (and coke) that it didn’t show. Every man jack of us was pumped up and raring to go; I had rarely felt such excitement on a FV expedition. All we had to do now was to keep out the way of the French police, which we all thought would be a piece of piss.

  The first sign that things might not go according to plan came at the border between Spain and France, where we were met by a hundred gendarmes, French soldiers and plain-clothes officers. An official from the French immigration service came onto the bus and demanded to see our passports. I took it upon myself to collect the passports, but deliberately held back eight of the fifty-eight I had just collected. There was great hilarity at some of the older passport photographs. One guy had an Eighties mullet and a moustache and looked like one of the Scousers from the Harry Enfield Show. He got some fucking stick. Within minutes Inspector Clouseau had come back onto the bus to demand the other eight passports. That was worrying. They seemed to know all about us: what time we had left Spain, our route, the bus we had hired, the number of boys.

  After the passports had been examined they sent us on our way and we got on the motorway for Bordeaux. As we got drunker and drunker, and higher and higher, our worries about the security operation began to fade. We reminisced about the old days and looked forward to writing a new chapter of infamy when we got to our destination.

  The sun came up. We were now within fifty miles of Bordeaux. We knew the Utility and Aberdeen were both in the city and that they were almost certain to front up. There was even the outside possibility of having it with those Tartan Army creeps if they stuck their noses in where they didn’t belong. Spirits and confidence were both high. The general consensus was that even if we did get stopped the police would simply take a few photographs and jot down our names before sending us on our way. This would be a day to remember.

  The expected pull did come. The coach was surrounded by a phalanx of police motorbikes and the driver was ordered to pull over. Although we had been expecting it there was still a feeling of dejection because we hadn’t managed to get to the centre of Bordeaux, where we could have split up and blended in with the hordes of Tartan Army and Norway scarfers. ‘Never mind,’ I thought, ‘once they have checked us out we’ll be on our way again.’

  We were on our way, but not to the centre of Bordeaux. To a fucking cop shop, where we were stuck in a holding pen complete with crash barriers. After that they took us inside to get processed and then marched us up a flight of stairs into a room with five cops. Strangely, one of the officers was wearing a cap and a scarf over his face, as if he was some kind of undercover operative. After answering the usual set of questions some of us had a category put next to our names: A for the least serious hooligan and C for the most serious. I was given a C, along with six other boys, including Fat McLeod, Carrick and Warren. Then we were put into another holding pen.

  It all clicked at that point: being stopped at the border by a task force encompassing three different agencies of government; the inspection of the passports, which showed they knew how many of us there were; taking us straight to the holding pens. They had known all about us, right from the start, and we were now ensnared in the biggest anti-hooligan operation of all time. We later found out that, in the wake of the England game, an emergency law had been passed the day before by the French parliament, authorising the police to stop and detain suspected hooligans.

  What we didn’t know at the time was that our detention had become a media sensation in Scotland. As we languished in the pen Martin Geissler of STV was outside with a camera crew reporting live for Scotland Today. The Scottish public – who had been labouring under the misapprehension that football violence was an English phenomenon – were being whipped into a frenzy. It wasn’t just us: several Aberdeen lads had been arrested and jailed in Paris, and they too had been named and shamed. The politicians responded, with Tony Blair proposing that a law should be introduced making it easier for hooligans to be sacked from their jobs.

  Meanwhile, in our holding pen, we still thought we would be set free and allowed to complete our journey to Bordeaux. After an hour, with no indication that we were going to be freed, tempers got frayed. Some of us rattled the crash barriers, others goaded the cops, then everyone started singing ‘We want food.’ Seconds later a squad of riot police appeared. With their body armour, helmets and long-handled batons, they looked like Robocop. There was a tense stand-off, and it seemed like we were on the verge of an ugly confrontation, but then a senior officer came on the scene and managed to defuse the situation.

  ‘You can’t hold us. We know our rights,’ we insisted.

  But he told us it was all legal and above board, thanks to the new law. He also said that we would be taken to a primary-school gym on the outskirts of Bordeaux, where we would be fed and then allowed to watch the game. After that a decision would be taken on what was to happen to us.

  Our ball was now well and truly burst.
Six months of planning and anticipation had been swept down the drain. Nor did we believe their assurances about watching the game or about a decision being taken on what to do with us after it. That was just to placate us and make us more manageable. We knew that in France you could be held without charge for days and we thought that’s what was going to happen.

  The riot police, the CRS – real naughty cunts with their batons, helmets and armour – herded us onto a bus. We were then given an escort that would have done Al Qaeda proud: six motorcyclists plus a vanload of riot police. The convoy swept through the centre of Bordeaux, taking us alongside the stadium where we passed the Tartan Army, some of whom booed while others clapped us. A few of the lads dropped their trousers and bared their arses as an insult, showing them that we hadn’t forgotten what happened in Gothenburg.

  We reached the outskirts of the city and drew up outside the primary school, just as we had been told. The place was teeming with riot cops and as we got off the bus we got that sinking feeling. We weren’t going to get food and we weren’t going to be watching the game either. Based on what had happened to the ICF in Marseille earlier in the 1990s they would probably single out a few boys and give them a hiding, probably on the pretext that we had started the trouble. Inside the school we were ushered past dozens more riot goons, which made us even more convinced we were going to be attacked.

  In the gym we all moved to the centre of the floor, psyching ourselves up for the onslaught we felt sure would follow. I was in a foul mood, having had a blazing row with one of our boys, Gary the Gimp, over a fag. As the minutes passed we got tenser and tenser, expecting the doors of the gym to open and a squad of Robocops to burst in. Then we heard footsteps and as they got closer we prepared to defend ourselves. When the door did swing open the cops made an entrance, but they were carrying trays wrapped in foil. It was chicken (or more likely rabbit) dinners! We were all fucking starving and the food cheered us up no end, as did the sight of a massive television being wheeled in for us to watch the game. The cops had been telling the truth after all. Scotland drew 1–1 with Norway, which meant there was still a chance we could qualify for the second stage if we managed to beat Morocco in the third and final group game. Some of us even thought of staying on for that game, which would have given us a great opportunity to fight Moroccan immigrants.