Free Football Crazy by Terry Ravenscroft, Ravenscroft Page A

instilling in them some good old-fashioned virtues. Has tha ever heard t' expression 'Clothes maketh the man', Donnelly?”
    “ Well obviously, Mr Price. I am a disciple of it.”
    Price produced the old photograph of Frogley Town and held it up so Donny could see it. “This is a photograph of t' Frogley team of 1935. It is our blueprint for t' future.” He looked with fondness at the photo. “Look at 'em! That's what tha calls a football team! A proper team, with proper shirts and proper shorts and a little right winger with bandy legs.” He slapped the photograph with the back of his hand, with a flourish. “This is exactly how I want to see t' present team turned out, Donnelly.”
    Donny looked at the photograph. Surely not? “Dressed like that, Mr Price?”
    “ Not only dressed, Donnelly. Their hair t' same as well. Cropped, with a fringe at t' front, just like in this photograph. Lined up like coconuts in a coconut shy! And droopy moustaches.”
    Donny could only imagine what sort of reception Price’s plan would get from the players and it wasn't 'Oh that's a good idea, Boss'. He decided the best way to handle it was to be a bit cagey. “Well I might be able to talk the lads into having a number one or number two, and maybe a droopy moustache at a pinch, but I can't see them going for the fringe, Mr Price. I mean....”
    But before the beleaguered manager could tell Price what he meant the club’s new owner butted in. “T' Manager too, if he insists on arguing with me!”
    Donny removed caginess from the menu immediately. “The lads are as good as on their way to the hairdressers, Mr Price.”

    Superintendent Screwer sat at his desk and brought all his thirty two years experience in the police force to bear on planning the best way to set about eliminating the Frogley football hooligan problem.
    If it had been left to him there wouldn't be a problem; there would be no such thing as football hooliganism. He would have stamped it out long ago, when it first raised its ugly, spotty, drunken, drug-crazed, face-dyed-in-the-club's-colours head. He could do it tomorrow, at a stroke. The way he would do it was simple. He would hang the next football fan who stepped out of line. Make an example of him.
    Screwer was a great believer in making examples of people. In his it was by far and away the best aid to efficient policing that man had come up with. As he was fond of saying, you didn't get too many of the locals in the Jerusalem area walking about carrying notices which read 'I am a Christian' once the Romans had started throwing them to the lions.
    He had no doubt at all that hanging the next football fan to step out of line would bring an end to the hooligan problem. Hang him, then tar and feather him, then draw and quarter him, or her, then lop off his or her head, then display each of the four quarters outside the main gates of Old Trafford, Anfield, Elland Road and St James's Park for a month, and use the head for a ball at the next FA Cup Final. You wouldn't have to do that too often before yobbish fans called a halt to their hooligan missile-throwing foul obscenity-chanting antics.
    Some time ago Screwer had in fact proposed his hanging theory in a letter to his Chief Constable. He received a letter back congratulating him on his astuteness and assuring him that his 'Neck Stretching Plan' would be put to the highest authority as a matter of urgency. But nothing had come of it. Screwer hadn't been surprised; nothing had come of his idea to clamp jay walkers either, after an initial favourable reaction from above.
    He looked at the notepad on his desk. It had one word written on it, in his firm but child-like scrawl. 'Citadel'. Yes, that's what the Frogley Town stadium would have to become if it were to be hooligan-proof; a stronghold, a fortress.
    The great thing about a citadel was that as well as keeping people out it could also keep people in, and that's what he knew he would have to do if he were to