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

what had happened to me until later. It turned out that one of the Rangers Youth had inadvertently hit me with a traffic cone while he was attacking the CSC. He denies it to this day even though I have reassured him there are no hard feelings.
    I decided not to wait for treatment but to go home and lie down on my own bed. However, when I woke up I not only had a pain in my mouth but also on my neck and, to make matters worse, I had a blinding headache. I had recently (and temporarily) split up with my wife so a pal drove me to Monklands hospital. They were too busy to see me so on we went on to the accident-and-emergency unit at Stobhill.
    I was seen pretty quickly at Stobhill and they took a precautionary X-ray, after which I was put in a neck brace and strapped to a trolley. I began to panic and asked the staff what was wrong. I was told there was a serious abnormality: an injury to one of my vertebrae, and that it might have moved. The worst-case scenario was that I might need a spinal operation, although they also said it could be an undiagnosed medical condition.
    For the next three hours I went through hell. All sorts of thoughts swirled around in my head. What would the effect be on my kids, my employment prospects and my already fragile marriage? And all because of a fight after the football. As usual a drunk was abusing the nurses and I said to him, ‘If I could get up I’d fucking strangle you.’
    I had another X-ray, after which I was made to do some exercises with my neck. They discovered I had a congenital vertebra defect, which had gone undetected. It wasn’t as bad as they thought and when the tests were completed I was discharged. I have never been so relieved in my life. As I made my way home I weighed up what had happened. It was another lesson about the hazards of being a hooligan and I couldn’t stop thinking about the effects that a serious injury could have on my sons. I also realised that one of the reasons for my temporary split with Kerrywas because of the football violence. Of course none of that put me off. I loved Rangers and I loved running with the ICF. Nothing was going to change that.

ASSAULT ON THE GALLOWGATE: MR BLUE’S STORY
     
    It is ironic that I was raised in the Gallowgate, which is without doubt the spiritual home of the Celtic support. Their shining city on a hill. It was always thronged with Celtic fans and Republican sympathisers before and after Old Firm games and was therefore a hard place for the ICF to go. Until that is one day, sometime in the mid-to-late Eighties, when we went there and fucking annihilated anyone who got in our way.
    What follows is Mr Blue’s experience of that fateful day.
    Looking back, going to Celtic Park was a weird situation in the 1980s. There are three main roads into Celtic Park from the city centre and Rangers, despite being the away team, dominated two of them. London Road was always a no-go for Celtic mainly because they would have to negotiate Bridgeton Cross, which was always a bridge too far due to Bridgeton being the predominant Rangers, Protestant and Loyalist area in Glasgow. Another entry point to the Piggery was through Duke Street, which has always been known as a Rangers area, however it wasn’t unusual to find Celtic fans wandering through en route to that dump, until of course the ICF came on the scene around 1983/84. For the rest of the Eighties, Duke Street became our domain, even on days when we weren’t playing at Parkhead. From 1983 until 1989 it was defended vigorously from many Celtic invasions. Quite often Celtic’s firm would ignore their opposition that day/night and try to get through Duke Street unscathed. It also wasn’t unusual for us to ignore our game in order to defend our ‘headquarters’. Being from Glasgow we looked down on everybody else in Scotland anyway and, to many of us, only Celtic mattered – so missing some games to get one over them wasn’t a problem.
    Whilst holding superiority on the