Hooligans We all walked determinedly down the wet, charcoal-grey streets, flanked by the debilitated Victorian terraces. The sky was dark and the clouds black and menacing

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Javed

Hooligans

We all walked determinedly down the wet, charcoal-grey streets, flanked by the debilitated Victorian terraces. The sky was dark and the clouds black and menacing, threatening to let rip torrents of rain. Out of the score of people there, none of us spoke, heads faced only one way; forwards, jaws locked in a semipermanent grimace, concentrating on nothing more than marching. Slowly, a magnificent white dome, seeming very out of place among the ancient red bricks and grey concrete, emerged in the distance from behind the terraced houses, and as we trudged on towards it, all signs of residence petered out, and we were left standing in a clearance next to a run-down factory. The River Thames ran just a few feet from where we were standing; a dark green, opaque serpent of water.

We had come to an abandoned part of Canary Wharf, somewhere quiet and secluded, just as agreed.

I pulled up the collars of my coat, and blew into my cupped hands, but it did little against the cold. I felt a hand land on my shoulder. I turned and looked at a severely pockmarked face with small squinty eyes, barely visible under the messy jungle of hair. I smiled and nodded at the man. ‘Do you think they’ll be here, Jim?’ I asked.

‘Definitely. Them Millwall guys might be dumb, violent and dirty cheaters, but I’ve never heard of them backing out of a good old fight,’ he replied. He was right of course. Jim was always right. You never lasted very long as a ‘gang’ leader if you were always getting things wrong. Jim never liked the idea of us being called a gang. He said it was too low class, too amateurish. So we all settled on being called an ‘organization’. The West Ham Organization…

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I had been involved with all this for just a few months, but already I had seen enough violence and blood to see me through the rest of my life. During every game, we went to watch the Hammers play. We all went together, all twenty of us, and cheered for our team until we had no breath left, shouting and encouraging our players as if their failure meant our death. But as soon as the matches ended, our minds were set on something else. Finding a suitably quiet street, we hung around in search of trouble.

We looked out ...

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