Amazon.co.uk Review
Martin King first went to see a football match in the early 1960s at
White Hart Lane. Immediately hooked, he soon became an avid Chelsea
fan, or as the title of his book suggests, a Hoolifan, as
over the years he became one of Chelsea's "top boys", a ringleader
in orchestrating the violence on the terraces and city streets which
made Chelsea so notorious throughout the 1970s and early 1980s.
This is a tough and compelling account of how, according to
King, football violence was and always has been, part of the fabric
of male, working-class life. Page after page describes the
adventures of King and the Chelsea fans as they follow Chelsea
across the country, taking "ends" (the area of the ground usually
reserved exclusively for the home team's fans) and engaging in
organised fights, often on a terrifying and brutal scale. There are
some wonderful sections on the vagaries of football fashion
throughout the 70s and 80s and the cameraderie which unites the
guild-like groups of fans is evoked with great skill. But King is
often too quick to hide behind claims that innocents were never hurt
in the violence he actively pursued and that the media has blown the
problem out of all proportion. Nevertheless Hoolifan raises
some uneasy and still unresolved questions about the nature of
football violence. --Jerry Brotton
Synopsis
The story of Martin King and his 30 years of involvement with
football hooliganism, particularly as a member of the notorious
Chelsea Headhunters. He describes the leading characters, famous
fights, planned ambushes and sets hooliganism in its social context.
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