Rangers and the Famous ICF: My Life With Scotland's Most-Feared Football Hooligan Gang (21 page)

Then a waiter decided to raise the stakes even higher. Charging out of the cafe he sprayed our faces with CS gas, which is certainly not the way to treat paying customers. Despite choking and spluttering from the gas I caught him on the side of the head with a neat punch, backing him off. It was at this point that our esteemed bus convener came on the scene. Before we got off the bus he had warned us to stay out of trouble and I thought we would get a right bollocking from him once the dust had settled. Not a bit of it. He picked up one of the round cafe tables and threw it through the cafe’s big plate-glass window. There must have been something in the air that day.

When that window went in we realised it was time to make ourselves scarce before the French Old Bill arrived. We legged it to the bus and told the driver in no uncertain terms to drive. However, before he could make a move the coach was surrounded by locals, making it impossible for us to get away. The police weren’t far behind and they frogmarched us off the bus and into an impromptu identity parade. I was the second-last person to get off and by the time I was on the pavement the arrest count was in double figures. With my eyes still streaming from the gas I knew I would be next and when the fat businessman I had been fighting turned up and identified me, my card was well and truly marked. I was slammed against the side of the bus, handcuffed and thrown into a police van.

Fourteen of us got lifted and with our coach as part of the convoy we were driven to the nearest police station and bundled into two holding cells. There was a great deal of confusion about what would happen next. Someone said that if we met the £1,000 cost of repairing the window we would be allowed to go on our way without being charged. Given there was a possible deal on the table Harky couldn’t understand why we were still in the cells.

‘What do you think we’re getting held for?’ he asked Robbo.

‘I don’t know Harky but I think they want us to play for their five-a-side team,’ Robbo replied.

It was a light-hearted moment in the midst of a very serious situation.

After some toing and froing it was agreed that eight of the arrestees would be released but that the six main protagonists – Harky, four of the Renfrew contingent and yours truly – would face charges. It was particularly hard on two of the Renfrew lot as they had been fast asleep the whole time we had been in Paris and hadn’t even got off the bus. The bus was allowed to go onto Marseille and before it left the boys had a whip round for us in case we were short of cash.

I was gutted. We had no chance of getting to the game. And in addition the cops told us they were about to launch a full investigation, which they said could lead to us facing very serious charges including assault with a deadly weapon, criminal damage and mobbing and rioting. Welcome to France! The police held us for twenty-four hours, interviewed us and then charged us with those three offences. We were told that we would be taken to court the next day, at which time the judge would decide whether or not to go ahead with the case. To be honest we feared the worst. Why would they hold us for two nights and then turn us loose?

During our second night in detention a cop told me that we were to be taken to a bail hostel. Like a mug I believed him but then, to my horror, we were driven at high speed in a police convoy, flashing blue lights and all, to our destination. It was way over the top, as was our accommodation for the night, a huge Barlinnie-like prison. We were hustled into a holding area with a massive cell, into which we were unceremoniously deposited. The cell was packed. I would say there were forty other guys in there, all of them either blacks or Muslims. By this point we had been given our money and jewellery back, which made us think it was a set-up. Our cellmates could rob us and the police would deny all knowledge.

The French criminals and the cops on guard did their best to intimidate us. None of us could understand a word they were saying but we knew it wasn’t ‘welcome to Paris’. We let them know in no uncertain terms that we wouldn’t be fucked with and despite the language barrier from French to Glaswegian they got the message loud and clear.

After the game kicked off in Marseille the cops kept us up to date with the score and when Rangers equalised the whole cell erupted. And I mean the whole cell. The French criminals were PSG fans and they had no love for their southern compatriots. We quickly worked out the consequences of getting a draw in Marseille: going into the last round of games it meant that if we beat CSKA Moscow and Bruges beat Marseille in Belgium we would be through to the final. It brightened our mood considerably despite a lingering doubt about whether Rangers would ban us.

The police made us sweat for another twelve hours before letting us go. Of course they never had any intention of taking us to court. We had been held for forty-eight hours – the legal maximum – just to piss us off and to make sure we missed the game. We eventually got back to Glasgow on the Friday night, after an overnight stay in the London borough of Hackney, where we were given a bed for the night by relatives of one of the Renfrew boys. His niece and nephew saw the funny side of our incarceration and painted an old bed sheet with the words, ‘The Paris six are innocent’. I kept it as a souvenir until quite recently.

It was a relief to get home after the European trip from hell. To make matters worse Rangers didn’t get to the final, mainly because of some right dodgy dealings involving the Marseille chairman. So we didn’t get to emulate Celtic, although I am still hopeful . . .

Our trip to Turin in November 1995 proved beyond all doubt that trouble has a habit of finding me, even when I am not part of an ICF mob. The consequences of that little escapade could have been life-threatening and although I can look back and laugh at what happened, it was far from a joke at the time.

As far as the football was concerned we were knackered. The Champions League draw had bracketed us in a very tough group with Steaua Bucharest, Borussia Dortmund and of course the Old Lady of Turin. This was our return with Juve, who had already trounced us 4–1 at Ibrox, and we had also lost away to the Romanian champions and then scraped a draw with Borussia at home. Even with Gazza and Laudrup in the side there were no European heroics that year.

Perhaps our non-existent prospects on the field prompted many ICF to give the trip a miss but whatever the reason we didn’t go out there as a mob. I did go, and as usual I travelled on the Shettleston Loyal bus, this time with a few of my other pals. The trip was long and wearisome, and the only highlight was being detained in the Alps by the
carabiniere.
When we were stopped and saw the police uniforms we immediately stashed our drugs in the luggage compartments, only for our hearts to sink when one of the cops came on with a sniffer dog. Luckily for us the stupid mutt didn’t find a thing, apart that is from one boy who had stuffed hash in his underpants. The dog went straight for him and he ended up being
the only cunt who was caught. The only consolation was that after being relieved of the drugs he was allowed to go on without being charged.

In Turin most of our day was spent drinking piss-poor Italian beer in the main square. There was no trouble, mainly because many Juventus fans lived outside the city and didn’t tend to travel in for midweek games. During the game I was in the middle tier of a three-tier stand and for the purposes of segregation there were empty sections to our left and right. It was surprising but even with 42,000 in attendance – including thousands of Rangers fans – the stadium was still half empty.

Despite our dismal form in the competition the mood among the Rangers support was jolly. I wanted to get some photos of the other Shettleston boys as a souvenir and I asked one of the Rangers fans to move so that I could get a good shot. He was a mean-looking dude, with a personality to match, and he didn’t budge an inch.

‘Come on mate. Want to get out of the road. Stop taking the piss. I just want to take a photo of the boys.’

My request fell on deaf ears. He just stood there, without saying a word.

I didn’t see the punch coming. It shocked me because I thought the Immoveable Object was there on his own but in fact he was one of a group of twelve. But nor did they realise there was a healthy contingent of Shettleston around me and in a split second one of my pals caught my assailant with a perfect haymaker, bursting his nose wide open. Within seconds a full-scale fist fight had broken out and although they were no mugs our superior numbers soon told and we chased them up the steep slopes of the stadium. During the fracas I noticed that they were certainly not run-of-the-mill Rangers scarfers; they were hard-looking guys, the type you wouldn’t want to cross. In the back of my mind there was a nagging doubt, a sixth sense almost. There would, I was sure, be repercussions of some kind, either in Turin or back in Scotland.

My premonitions were spot on. It turned out that we had smashed a gang of serious criminals from Paisley, a gang prominent in the underworld. Worse than that, it was their leader whose nose had been splattered by my pal. It didn’t take long for the rumours to start flying. We would be shot when we stepped off the bus in Shettleston; a top Glasgow gangster had been approached by the Paisley mob to gather information on me; a £100,000 bounty had been put on our heads.

To be honest I didn’t give a fuck. I was young, unmarried and had few responsibilities. I took the view that what is for you won’t go by you. I
wasn’t going to run and hide just because I had upset someone, major face or no major face. It turned out that the rumours were just that: rumours. Nothing came of them and life soon got back to normal. A few years later I even had a drink with the Paisley gang boss, him of the burst nose, and no mention was made of our little contretemps.

Amsterdam away in October 1996 was always going to be a big draw for Rangers scarfers and of course for the ICF. It is a great city, easy to get to, with numerous attractions and a vibrant night life. It was also a great time to be a bluenose. With players like Gascoigne, Laudrup, Gough, McCall, Goram and McCoist prominent we were on a run of eight titles in a row and would soon equal the nine achieved by the Great Unwashed. Although we had lost our first two games in the Champions League group stages we felt capable of winning anywhere with the players we had. Ajax, we reasoned, would be the start of our revival.

We had a great mob out for that trip, with the majority getting to Amsterdam the day before the game. Most of us stayed in hotels in the canal district with its ‘coffee’ shops, red-light district, strip clubs and sex shops. The night before the game Davie Carrick and I, and many other ICF, based ourselves in a small pool hall. There were a few minor altercations with ethnic minorities, who were trying to sell us every drug under the sun. Although stories reached us that Rangers fans were involved in fights across the city we didn’t see any trouble. The highlight of the evening, to my delight, was an impromptu Orange Walk around the canal district.

The next morning we plotted up in Hooters bar, which is close to the main railway station.
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Everyone was in a great mood, helped by the beer, dope from the coffee shops and generous snorts of cocaine, our new drug of choice. Then a local sidled up to us and said he could get us cheap ecstasy tablets at a bar which was close to Hooters. To get there we walked through a warren of back streets, past shops full of leather goods and bric-a-brac, most of them owned by immigrants from Holland’s former Asian colonies. We did the deal for the E and then walked back through those same narrow streets.

One of our boys couldn’t resist picking up a bargain. The problem was that he didn’t bother paying for it. It was the proverbial red rag to the bull. The owner, supported by his staff and other Asian shopkeepers, raced out and a battle royal kicked off. They were well tooled up with coshes and clubs and in the course of a very violent struggle several of our boys took sickening blows to the head. Harky came off worst of all. He got trapped in a shop doorway and his skin was badly gashed by one of the Asians.

Although we made it back to Hooters we had discovered that Amsterdam was a very lively place. And we hadn’t even met Ajax’s mob yet.

The reputation of the Ajax mob went before them. They were fearsome, as were the mobs attached to Feyenoord, Den Haag and PSV. In fact, not long before that game an arranged meet between two Dutch mobs had resulted in someone being stabbed to death. So we all knew what we were going up against. The problem was that for some in our group the aura generated by Ajax was overpowering, as we would soon discover.

There was no contact with Ajax beforehand but we knew they used the train station that serviced the new Amsterdam Arena. Our plan was to board one of the fabulous double-decker trains and get off at the stop before the stadium, in the hope that Ajax’s firm would be around. Sixty of us got on the train but only fifty were still there when we reached our destination. Clearly, some of our boys had lost their nerve and had stayed on the train. To our disappointment there were only Ajax scarfers in the vicinity and, like Celtic’s, they are peace loving, so we got no hassle.

We could see the Amsterdam Arena in the distance and decided to walk there, hoping that we might run into the opposition along the way. As we got closer there was still no sight of them so Whitey, one of our lads, approached a young Dutch dresser.

‘Where are your mob?’ he asked.

‘Follow me,’ the helpful young man replied.

He guided us towards the station that serviced the ground and as we approached it he suddenly got on his toes. We soon discovered why. There they were, larger than life. It was Ajax’s mob, two hundred and fifty of the cunts. No one said a word but you sensed a collective ‘shit’ and a sharp intake of breath from the forty of us who were left, another ten boys having shat it and fucked off. I was scared. I don’t mind admitting it. It certainly wasn’t for the faint hearted.

Ajax charged, running full pelt across a grassy recreational area. We tried to gee each other up: ‘Come on Rangers, let’s stand. Let’s do these
Dutch cunts.’ It was no use. We did our best, or at least half of us did. Faced with the reality of a mob that size, and with that rep, another twenty ICF panicked and ran. The boys who were left put up stern resistance but we got a right doing. Fair play to Ajax: when they put us down they didn’t kick us to fuck, which they could easily have done. As for the boys who melted away – some of them even before the going got tough – they pissed me off. It made me less likely to take one for the cause; when others aren’t as committed why should I risk my neck?