Honorary Members Of The Firm
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Now football (soccer) hooliganism is a wee bit of an amorphous thing.
Some is true and some is not.
A mass punch up inside a stadium is easy to confirm.
A mass punch up away from the stadium is much harder to establish as fact.
Me an my pal Gaz were members of Oldham Athletics ‘Chaddy Enders’ aka ‘The Chaddy Fusiliers’.
The ‘Chaddy Enders’ stood together in the Chadderton Road End of Boundary Park – home ground of Oldham Athletic.
We – The Chaddy Enders or, if you prefer, The Chaddy Fusiliers, fought many a pitched battle against rival supporters because….er…well….’because’ really. It was what we did.
Oldham Athletic – The Latics – are a little known English football (soccer) team.
We were founder members of the current English Premiership – arguably the finest football (soccer) league in the world – incidentally, I’m fed up already of this ‘football (soccer)’ shit so it is FOOTBALL. Ok?
After the glory days of pre WWI – and yes, that isn’t a typo – pre WWI, Oldham sank into the oblivion of the lower football leagues.
To be fair….most of their squad was wiped out at Mons in 1916 or 15 or 14 or 17 or when ever the hell Mons happened….
It took us 80 years + to get back into the top flight with your Manchester United’s and Chelsea’s and….er….why do we say teams in plural?…No idea.
Anyroad. We were THERE when the English Premier League began.
4 seasons later we weren’t. We were back down to a lower league and we still are.
Having said that, we are top of this lower league right now and promotion to The Championship is once more in our minds and dreams and hopes.
The Championship is one league down from The Premiership were Manchester United and Chelsea and Arsenal reside.
Anyroad…where was I? Oh yes. Football firms.
Oldham Athletic have a ‘firm’ called The Fine Young Casuals now…you can even find them on the interweb thingy on Google.
My mate Gaz donated £1,000 to Oldham Athletic – hardly in the class of Chelsea’s millions and Manchester United’s wage bill but, he GAVE.
http://www.oldhamathletic.co.uk/page/NewsUpdate/0,,10337~2125238,00.html
Gaz is the old bald one in’t middle….
As a result, on arrival at an ‘away’ game at Charlton Athletic in London last Saturday, Gaz, and by association, Dinners, were awarded the slightly dubious honour (or honor if you prefer) of Honourable (Honorable) membership of Oldham Athletics current hooligan ‘firm’.
Actually ‘Gaz’ had no idea…I was approached and accepted said membership on his behalf.
As he is considerably more ‘civilised’ than me he might have declined – that would have been a BAD thing…at the time…;-)
If this sounds slightly unbelievable I would point you in the direction of ‘Green Street’…a movie that implied that a Hobbit (in the form of Elijah Wood of Frodo Baggins fame) could become an English football hooligan.
You could, of course, choose to watch ‘The Football Factory’ instead which, whilst sadly concentrating on London teams, is at least more realistic.
Anyroad…. me and Gaz (in English)…or Gaz and I (If you’re posh) duly accepted this honour and are, at the age of 52, acknowleged members of a notorious football hooligan gang.
In our honour (or honor) please sing or chant after me…
“Oldham boys we are here whoooo-ohhhhh…whoooo-ohhhhh
Oldham boys we are here whoooo-ohhhhh…whoooo-ohhhhh
Oldham boys we are here
Too shag your women and drink your beer
Oh-whooo-ohhhhh-ohwhooo-ohhhhh”
or even…
“We are the boys who make no noise
and we’re only after c*nt
We’re the heroes of the night and we’d rather f*ck than fight
We’re the heroes of The Chaddy Fusiliers!”
mmmmm….suspiciously short of ‘fighting words’ methinks.
We did fight when we had to. We did, however, far prefer f*cking females in the ‘home teams’ town given half a chance.
The new lot…The Fine Young Casuals…have no idea.
Still.
We are quite chuffed. Well….Gaz would be too if he knew…;-)
Now tell the truth America.
Have you really got a bloody clue what I’m on about?
Thought not…;-)
Nite peeps
4D x
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Great post 4D, fun read. I don’t know the “Green Street” movie with Elijah Wood, but I remember a great movie by Alan Clarke (his last I think) that I saw when I was in college with Gary Oldman called “The Firm.”
I figure that you are either talking about football or the next Lord of the Rings movie. Am I close??
There’s another Lord of the Rings movie? Yay!!!!! Then again they are trying to make “The Hobbit,” but they are having a hard time keeping a director 🙂
I had heard that there was a hobbit movie coming out and it was going to be Peter J. directing. But then I heard he was out, then back again, then out again.
I looked it up on IMDB and it has Peter J. as the screenwriter and 2012 pre-production, so who knows.
I would love to see PJ direct. It would be a natural prequel…
Not a clue…:-)