The perfect cultural storm for anyone who was into music, fashion and football | OneFootball

Just under two years ago, England were beaten at Wembley.

A review into the disorder at the Euro 2020 final (tournament delayed by a year due to Covid), found “ticketless, drunken and drugged-up thugs” stormed the stadium.

Football, fashion and music have always been intertwined in my life. From first going to football in the early seventies, when every council estate had a gang, and graffiti was daubed across buses, bus shelters, and anywhere else to publicly demonstrate how tough / mental your local group was.

A great documentary made in the early seventies, interviewed Newcastle youngsters and a sociologist professor from Durham University analysed the situation. I have searched for it online but cannot track it down. Though it did do the rounds on social media before being brought down. I believe it is archived in the BFI, If anyone can track it down well worth a watch.

I remember as a kid watching the F Troop Millwall documentary on BBC Panorama and thinking the surgical masks worn at a game were just mad, but pure theatre.

After witnessing grown men (probably sixteen or seventeen year olds at the time) having organised fights on our estate in real life, my older brothers peripheral, and me and my young mates simply way back as observers, this was growing up in the seventies.

Fashion in the seventies was well dubious, the music nothing notable in my opinion, but Punk was just around the corner for me as a ten year old. Throw into the mix the arrival of Thatcher to power in 1979 and we have the perfect cultural storm for anyone who was into music, fashion and football.

As the social violence of the seventies evolved into the football hooliganism of the eighties, which the media revelled in, the Thatcherite Tory party had their target. Working class lads from council estates who had morphed from seventies boot boys to casuals.

At this point, me and a few mates who were punks would go to games and gigs together whenever possible. We would meet to discuss music politics and football on a Sunday and take cuttings of football related violence from the Sunday morning rags that our parents bought.

Trainers, sports-wear, pringle jumpers and floppy haircuts arrived and some of my mates embraced the casual look, but some of us punks started to cut our own style path. Still drinking, laughing and going to games together, standing in the Gallowgate, some with 45s purchased earlier in the day. Watching Billy Whitehurst and George “Rambo” Riley.

I had an article published on The Mag where I mentioned fashion and this sort of excused Anthony Gordon, as it related to our / his age being in our twenties.

Well, the eighties were my teenage years, but by the time we reached the nineties we were well and truly in the rave scene and well into our twenties. The era of House music was with us and the disco biscuits arrived. Seats in the Milburn stand. Walking up to the game on a Wednesday night (away supporters were still housed in the terracing of the West stand paddock below us at the time I think) one lad has pushed a “cheeky half” in another lad’s mouth and by half time he is dancing to the chanting of the crowd, and he can’t remember what game he is at, never mind the score. The smell of poppers being passed around taking me right back to Thursday nights in Rockshots, dance music merging with punk sensibilities through Joy Division and the Happy Mondays, we had moved upstairs from the Punk Bier Keller at this point, to the Gay / Dance scene.

What happens next over the late nineties we have Britpop and the shock horror of Man City supporters being filmed inside a stadium rolling up joints at half time for a smoke as their team is so rubbish, they need to be stoned to endure it. The Media in full attack mode for the lads caught on film.

So, we move on and in recent years I witness lads snorting lines before games. No big deal, I think. However, it is news in the media as stories of cocaine and football evolve.

A few years back my son asks me as we queue to get into Stamford Bridge, why there are police dogs for us away supporters? How do I explain that to an eight year old, who is seeing sniffer dogs for the first time at a football match. This is growing up in the twenties I suppose.

“Yes, cannabis is dangerous, but no more than other perfectly legal drugs. It’s time for a rethink, and the Tory party – the funkiest, most jiving party on Earth – is where it’s happening.” – Boris Johnson

“Middle-class cokeheads” are driving crime across the UK, “Their habit is feeding a war on our streets driving misery and crime across our country and beyond” – Tory leader at the time, Boris Johnson.

Well would you believe it? Mainstream media portraying us football supporters as drugged up thugs when the reality is that football and football supporters are just one of the many facets that make up our complex society.