Football non-related violence
After watching The Firm (the Gary Oldman one, not the midget scientologists version) my year at school became obsessed with gang violence and the playground was soon divided into two factions, the OCB (Outer City Beefers) and The Establishment (E Army). The OCB had the numbers but the Establishment were game, up for it toe-to-toe, and regularly had the OCB on the run (I was E Army, can’t you tell?).
Every lunchtime gang warfare would erupt with very carefully planned attacks, all-out punch-ups, and of course the deadly bundle. The fights were mostly in good spirit and didn’t cause much injury other than the odd ruptured knacker-sack or severe dead-arm, but they did lead to one of the most talked about nights of violence Surrey has ever seen; ‘The Battle Of Pyrford Woods’. On Halloween 1993 the gangs met down a notoriously rough ‘private’ housing estate and had it out with fireworks, stand-and-clamp bars, eggs, flour, the lot. It was vicious and went on for hours. Tactics such as ‘garden hopping’ were employed to get positional advantage, and plastic drainpipes were adapted into makeshift firework launchers. How nobody was deafened, blinded, serevley burnt or injured is anybodies guess, and the fact that nobody was arrested shows the cunning nature of the gangs leaders by arranging the fight well away from any football ground, and in fact match-day. Even though it went off ‘big-time’ we weren’t interrupted at all by the Woking constabulary, despite around 30 armed and dangerous youths running amok. This either pays credit to the grudging respect the old bill had for us at the time, or their complete inadequacy.
You decide.
I like to think that this story is retold in Fullbrook School’s playgrounds to this day.
But it probably isn’t.
(franks, Thu 16 Mar 2006, 0:37, Reply)