Читать книгу One-Eyed Baz - The Story of Barrington 'Zulu' Patterson, One of Britain's Deadliest Men - Barrington Patterson & Cass Pennant - Страница 14

Rupert: I remember when we were playing Arsenal; we’d just come off the bus and we were walking up towards the ground. We had a little set-to with some Arsenal fans but the funny thing about the story was that they’d come running up behind us, Barrington’s done a roundhouse, knocked the geezer out and one of the lads that was with us started rifling through his pockets!

That was about ’82. The big turning point was when we started getting the lads from Birmingham town, the Townies, going to Birmingham football games. Mickey Francis wrote about it in his book, Guvnors. Man City, who were called the Cool Cats at the time, came walking past McDonald’s in the centre. We’d already had word, because in those days there were no mobile phones so we always had spies out. Some of the lads have come along and said, ‘City are here and they’re walking through the shopping centre.’

Todd: In those days, it was individual firms on every corner; sometimes it would get a bit frisky and we’d interact with them and get shirty, ending up having a fight if one person had a problem with someone else from another firm. This was before the Zulus, when we were generally fighting with the Apex who were Birmingham’s City’s firm at the time, along with other local firms.

Rupert: A lot of the time when we’d come uptown, we brought a lot of attention to ourselves. We were young and we all came from different parts of Birmingham, so at the time some of us were Villa, some of us were West Brom, but we weren’t that interested in football.

Todd: At the time, I don’t think we really cared about the football; we were more into violence and raising money. We got into the football violence because the fans would have to come through New Street station and the first people they got to before they found the Apex were us – the Townies.

Rupert: When Man City came walking through, it was the first time I’d ever seen a black firm come into Birmingham. We just swamped ’em. Those that didn’t get away got slapped. They try to make out that they came back later and did us, but they didn’t because we were there till 11 o’clock at night on the ramp. They got smashed. A few weeks later, we played Everton; they came through and there was this Rasta on the floor, the police had him and pulled his locks out! Now Everton appeared from out of nowhere and chased a few lads around the corner: guess who was there? They were running into it so fast that they got it big-time, they got the worst beatings. Barrington was always there, he was always involved. After Man City and Everton, the other teams that came through were Tottenham and Millwall.

The last time I went to Man City was about five years ago, on the anniversary of the 1982 formation of the Zulus. A big firm of us went up there and took their main fucking pub.

We met up with a black guy called Fanny, originally from Birmingham but now living in Manchester, who supports Man City. There were no rows before the match but afterwards it kicked off quite a bit. We later heard from Fanny that Man City admitted no firm had ever gone there and taken them on like we did – not even Man United.