Читать книгу One-Eyed Baz - The Story of Barrington 'Zulu' Patterson, One of Britain's Deadliest Men - Barrington Patterson & Cass Pennant - Страница 15

Todd: Even when we were still in small groups we would be chanting, ‘Zulus!’ when we were running into people. At that time, the football was still predominantly white.

Rupert: We were the first generation that went down there to St Andrew’s. I remember me and Barrington walking to the ground and suddenly realising we were surrounded by Villa. Barrington was at the front because at the time he was the most recognisable to the Villa fans; if he ever came into town he was always getting spotted by other firms. He had this almost mythical thing about him, so people were always wary of coming up to him because he would stand there toe-to-toe and have a row. So we’re walking up and Barrington’s gone, ‘There’s Lloydy,’ who was one of their top boys, and I’ve thought, Oh shit! Barrington looked round to me as if to say, ‘I’m going to swerve him – he’s my cousin!’

We would fight football fans on Saturdays and I always noticed the black skinhead. We got talking and started going down to the matches together. This was around the same time as black ska fans and white punks all started mixing together due to our common interests of fighting, music and football. Before then I’d had no interest in football. There were no black people down at the matches, apart from us Townies and the black skinhead. So we linked up, which was how the Zulus were formed.

I remember the first match I went to. I thought, Fucking hell, it’s just full of white people! You could count the black people on two bloody hands! But it was a good game and there was no trouble. We started going to watch football from then on and did so for years. The first game where I had a row was against Arsenal. I was outside the ground and I gave this guy a spinning hook kick. He just landed on his head and from that point all the fighting started.

The 82/83 season was when the Zulu thing started with Manchester City. We were all individuals. Even though I was from Handsworth, I came with the Townie lot; we had guys from Chelmsley Wood, which is a main place for skinheads. We had the little Acocks Green firm and the Sheldon firm. All different lads from different areas.

When people hear about the Zulus, they think it’s a black thing, but it’s always been a multiracial thing – a Birmingham City thing, and that’s how we’ll keep it. We used to just meet up at a couple of pubs via word of mouth. We’d go down to where Villa drank, give it to them down there and go back to our pub. Everybody always said that the city was divided between Blues and Villa, but it’s never been like that. It’s always been a Blues place. They used to come down to our manor and they’d get hammered and sent back out of town.

There are certain places in Birmingham that Villa won’t come, whereas Blues will go anywhere in town, like the Arcadia club. The same goes for the players: Blues players will go out anywhere in Birmingham but the Villa players won’t; they’ll probably go to places like Sutton Coldfield, but in Birmingham they’d get ‘clattered’.