Rangers and the Famous ICF: My Life With Scotland's Most-Feared Football Hooligan Gang (30 page)

Bridgeton was our next stop and someone had the bright idea that because Thistle were at home to Morton we could take on the North Glasgow Express instead. So we headed up to Maryhill and plotted up in their pub, the Pewter Pot, which the old-school ICF had attacked a couple of times in the past. Maybe it would be third-time lucky. Although we managed to contact both Thistle and Morton neither of them were interested in a dash.

In some ways it had been a wasted day but it started something that hadn’t been seen in a long time: a smaller, younger, highly enthusiastic Rangers mob on
the prowl. That’s how the Youth came about and over the next few years we would have it with a number of firms, including Aberdeen, Airdrie and of course the CSC, with whom we had several run-ins.

The Celtic encounters were always the most enjoyable. In November 2005 we lost 3–0 at Celtic Park but a few hours later around forty ICF, a mixture of old guard and Youth, smashed a sorry CSC outside a city-centre boozer. This came after eighty of us had gone onto their patch with the aim of running amok, only to be frustrated when the Old Bill turned up, which meant that we had to split, with a lot of lads calling it a day and going home.

Another good dash with Celtic came when a lot of our main faces were away at a stag do near the end of season 2005/06 and we had drawn at Celtic Park. When we headed back into town the Celtic mob quickly realised that we had been weakened by the main faces being absent, which made them keener than usual to meet up. After a few hours it was game on and a decent-sized firm with a mixture of old school and Youth took them apart, pushing them back into the Gallowgate. Job done!

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On 19 August 2006 Rangers were playing Hearts at Ibrox while Aberdeen were in Paisley to take on St Mirren. So we arranged to meet a busload of ASC in a field beside the Abbots Inch pub in Renfrew. We pulled a good mob that morning and plotted up in another boozer in Renfrew. But as time passed the Sheep were on the phone to say that not enough of them had travelled. Because it was getting close to kickoff the older lads among us either headed for Ibrox or for the city centre. They obviously thought that the prospects of FV were now remote if not non-existent.

That left eighteen of the ICF Youth plus two young boys from Hearts. We decided to phone our Aberdeen contact back and say that we would come to them. So here we have twenty young lads nowhere near Ibrox on the day of a game, jailbaiting ourselves up. But we just had to have a go. Our main problem was that getting to where Aberdeen were without getting caught by the Old Bill was a difficult task. Luckily, a few of the lads knew the area so we jumped on a service bus that took us to an industrial estate, where we got off. After walking through a residential area we were just two minutes from the ASC boozer.

The ASC boy was phoned again and told we would be there in a few minutes.

‘Get your mob outside,’ he was instructed.

I don’t think they believed we would come because as we turned a corner there was an Aberdeen lad standing in the middle of the road. The look of surprise on his face was priceless. He ran round the corner, back to their pub. When we got
there we fully expected the ASC to be waiting for us on the street but there were only a few of them there. Fair play, they had a go but they were no match for the twenty of us. The rest of their mob meantime were happy to lob bottles and glasses at us from the doorway of the pub, while others pelted us from the beer garden.

Some quick thinking was needed and so one of our boys shouted ‘The Old Bill are coming.’ We ran up the road and the boy who had shouted the warning told us he was only joking; it was his way of enticing the ASC out of the pub. It worked. After hearing the police were on the scene more of them piled out. That was our opportunity. We steamed into the newcomers and smashed them.

As it happened no Old Bill turned up and we headed into the city centre for a well-earned drink. We came away from that fight with a feeling that we had got a result. You can only fight what is in front of you. I don’t understand why the Sheep didn’t empty the pub and take us on mob-to-mob because it would have made it a better dash. Maybe they thought we wouldn’t come to Paisley when Rangers were playing at home. Who knows? Whatever their reasons were they made a cunt of it that day. We did well and any row against Aberdeen is a result.

My first encounter with Kerry, my wife-to-be, was bizarre. We met in that well-known footballers haunt, Victoria’s nightclub, in Glasgow’s Sauchiehall Street, in July 1997. I was lucky to be there. I had been drinking in McKinlay’s snooker club in Shettleston that night when one of my pals said he could get me into Victoria’s because he knew the bouncer. That was the starting pistol for a mad rush to my house to put on clean shirts and good shoes. Actually, despite our best efforts, the four of us still looked like an accident in a charity shop due to the un-ironed shirts and ill-fitting footwear.

‘Victoria’s?’ I asked myself. ‘We’ve got no fucking chance.’

True to his word, however, my mate had a word with the bouncer and in we went. I wasn’t at my most confident. My shirt was like a concertina and I was more than a little embarrassed by my appearance. It was while I was admiring myself in front of one of Victoria’s many mirrors that I bumped into Kerry.

‘You don’t need to look in the mirror. You’re looking good,’ was my instant chat-up line.

‘It’s a pity you didn’t look in the mirror before you came out. Your shirt is a state,’ she retorted, quick as a flash.

One of my pals heard our exchange and he put his tuppence-worth in.

‘You can’t speak to him like that. He’s Sandy Chugg, the top man in the ICF.’

‘I don’t care who he is. I’ll say what I think.’

I remember being impressed by her frankness. Although as far as first encounters go it was hardly the stuff of a Mills and Boon novel.

I went home alone and didn’t think much about what had happened. Then, the following week, someone arranged a blind date for Kerry and me. The look on our faces when we realised who we would be dating was priceless. Despite our inauspicious start we got on well that night. We
both like to speak our minds and we also discovered there was a definite attraction. We started courting and before long it developed into a serious relationship.

Our next problem was one faced by many people in the divided West of Scotland: religion. Kerry is a Catholic and I am a Protestant and a committed Loyalist. I also profoundly disagree with everything the Roman Catholic Church stands for. That does not mean I hate individual Roman Catholics. My nieces and nephews are Catholics and avid Celtic fans and I often help them to get match tickets. In addition, some of my pals are Irish Republicans and while I hate their politics I don’t hate them. In fact, they are very nice people and have turned out to be staunch friends, as I have noted elsewhere in this book.

When it came time for us to get married the ceremony was in St John’s in Barrhead, which is a Roman Catholic church. Given my principles I thought that I might be struck by lightning when I walked into the place! Despite my misgivings I did it because of the love I have for my wife and also out of gratitude for the support her family gave me after the SNF debacle in Salou. The compromise was that my children would be brought up as Protestants. I wasn’t about to repeat the mistake my brother Christopher made. His kids were brought up Catholic and they support Celtic (although I love them both dearly). The only cloud over our big day was that some of my Loyalist friends refused to go into St John’s, preferring to stand outside until the ceremony was finished. That said most of my ICF and Loyalist friends did go into the church.

Marriage didn’t change my lifestyle when it came to football, something that Kerry could never understand. She could never work out what drew me to violence and the casual culture although, in the early days at least, she found the scene intriguing. Over the years her attitude changed, simply because my love for Rangers and football violence meant that I put those things ahead of her and my family. I am not proud to admit it. I should have been a better husband and father and football and the violence that goes with it should have taken much more of a back seat.

Even today Kerry is still of the view that I put the ICF first, especially when, as she calls it, I go into ‘robot’ mode. She thinks I still have something to prove. But being such a prominent member of the mob makes it very hard for me to walk away. I will always be known as ‘Sandy from the ICF’ and, let’s face it, I was a casual before we met, so she knew what she was getting into. That said I believe things have been getting better in the last few years although Kerry insists that I could do more around the
house. I am still trying to find the right balance, and I admit that at times it can be a real struggle, but we are both making a real effort to make it work and that surely is the main thing.

She is a devoted mother and our three wonderful children are a great credit to her dedication and hard work. She hates the fact that police come to our door, as any mother would, and she doesn’t want her children to get the idea that what I do is normal. Given some of the things we have been through I daresay some other couples would have been divorced by now. But there is a deep-rooted love there that has kept us together and long may it last.

Drugs have got me into more trouble than football violence ever did. I have spent fortunes on pills and powders of every description and using them has cost me several jobs; good jobs at that, jobs that could have set me up for life. My worst experience with drugs came when I was eighteen and trying desperately to fund an ecstasy habit: I was caught dealing LSD, ecstasy and Temazepam. I copped a three-year sentence and was sent to Glasgow’s notorious Barlinnie prison.

The conviction is not something I am proud of and of course it had serious consequences: I lost a great job as a welder in the shipyards and it also put paid to my long-term aim of becoming a Royal Marine. Further down the road I was denied the chance to join my sister in Canada. Another problem is that the conviction is never spent. It was for more than two-and-a-half years and sentences of that length are never wiped from your record. That youthful indiscretion will follow me to my grave. Worst of all however is that drugs cut me off from my family, both physically and psychologically. My nearest and dearest paid the price for my drug use and that is unforgiveable.

I wasn’t the only football hooligan who was heavily into drugs. Most boys in most mobs were. In what I would call the second generation of casuals – the mid-to-late 1990s – alcohol and cocaine were the drugs of choice. That was true in both Scotland and England; Chelsea, for example, were always partial to a bit of whistle, as they call Colombia’s finest.

It was inevitable that as a working-class boy from the east end I would get into drugs of one kind or another. Given the poverty and deprivation in that part of the city – which goes back for generations – the people who live there have always been inclined to find solace in mind-altering substances. It is hard to get away from drugs in the east end: they are as easy to get a hold of as drink or cigarettes; in fact probably easier given that there are no age restrictions on street corners. I was actually a latecomer
to the scene. I smoked my first cannabis joint at sixteen, whereas by that age most of my contemporaries were already well into stronger drugs, like heroin and LSD.

Cocaine was virtually unknown at that time in my part of Glasgow; it was a rich man’s drug, costing £50 a gram, a small fortune to most east-enders. But then, in the early 1990s, after the ecstasy craze died down, the supply of cocaine increased and the price plummeted. I didn’t need to be asked twice. I got right into it. Despite what the authorities will have you believe it had some beneficial effects. For one thing it helped me to stay sober. I have never been much of a drinker; I just can’t hold it that well, which is a major disadvantage when you are a member of a pub-loving mob like the ICF. Cocaine helped me drink more and it stopped me getting paralytic. It also gives you much more confidence in social situations, helping you to interact with people, again helpful in a gang scenario in which large groups of people coming together is the norm.

At least that’s how it was in the early days. With long-term use I started to become paranoid and I got into the habit of shutting myself away to snort on my own. In splendid isolation, and with a brain befuddled by coke, I would twitch constantly at the blinds; the slightest noise made me think that people were coming to get me. I often felt suicidal, especially when the cocaine was mixed with alcohol. I frequently cut myself off from my family and I have lost count of the number of family events I fucked up by being on a binge or coming down from one. And if by chance I did manage to attend an event I would be depressed and make everyone’s life a total fucking misery.

When I started snorting coke was a social thing. I would have a few lines at the weekend and maybe one day through the week as well. Soon, that wasn’t enough. Before long I was at it every day. In fact I was snorting so much of the white powder that I could have got a job as a test pilot for Hoover. At the peak of my habit I was going through a quarter (seven grams) a day. That is the equivalent of twenty big lines. Surprisingly, I was still able to work, but I lost a succession of jobs because of the coke. It was also expensive. Some weeks I would spend £600 on my habit. The money came from a variety of sources: some from my wages; some from introducing buyers to dealers; while some was payment-in-kind through debt collection for shady characters.

In my fifteen or so years as a user I tried everything to get off the coke, including various forms of counselling. I had to do something, partly because of the heavy price I was paying in terms of my mental and
physical health but mainly because of the effect it had on my wife and family. Nothing I tried, however, had the desired effect and from time to time I still fell off the wagon. It is only in the last few years, as I neared forty, that I got a grip on it. I am older and wiser and of course I have three young children and a host of other responsibilities, including helping to run a boys’ football team. At the time of writing I am delighted to say that I have been clean for six months.