Millwall old hooligan names City as the toughest firm

Millwall hooligan names the 'toughest firm' he's ever faced when 2,000 thugs were baying for his blood... and recalls his first football fight as an 13-year-old skin head... brawling beside his father
'Ginger Bob' was a leading hooligan with Millwall's feared 'Bushwackers' firm
Now 65, he's opened up about his time with the football gang in the 70s and 80

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/footb ... thugs.html


By TOM COTTERILL FOR MAILONLINE
PUBLISHED: 15:07, 23 April 2023 | UPDATED: 15:09, 23 April 2023

He was one of Millwall's most infamous football hooligans who joined the 'firm' at just 11 years of age - and got into his first bloody brawl on a train at 13.

The football fan nicknamed 'Ginger Bob' has revealed the 'hardest' gang of rival thugs he has ever faced - and the 'toughest bloke' he ever went toe-to-toe against.

The grizzled former football brute was a chief in the feared Millwall Bushwackers firm during the 1970s and 80s. He lived a life of violence throughout his teens into adulthood.

The gang would follow their beloved club around the country cheering them on - before battering rival groups in vicious punch-ups involving knives, broken bottles and baseball bats.

Now 65 and with some teeth missing, Ginger Bob has recounted the toughest firm he ever faced - which saw him surrounded by an army of 2,000 thugs.

Now 65, the grizzled former football brute was a chief in the feared Millwall Bushwackers firm during the 1970s and 80s. He appeared on James English's Anything Goes podcast

Bob has recounted the toughest firm he ever faced - which saw him surrounded by an army of 2,000 thugs. Pictured is a brawl between before the start of Chelsea's League Division Two promotion battle against Millwall at Stamford Bridge in 1988

Appearing on James English's Anything Goes podcast, the reformed hooligan said: 'I've got to give it to Cardiff City.
'Cardiff had an around 3-4,000-person-strong firm while Millwall - with around 300 - had nowhere to run. Some of my mates thought they were going to die.'

He wasn't part of that particular fight, as he said had to leave the grounds to avoid being arrested before it all kicked.

But he said the 'best' scrap he was ever involved in against the Welsh was on March 28, 1976, when Millwall faced Cardiff in Wales.

‘We had 300 firm they had 2,000,’ he says, with a beaming smile. ‘Some of our people were getting stabbed.

'One of my friends got captured by Cardiff and he was being beaten to death... so I've gone back into Cardiff's firm and pulled him along the floor.

‘People were attacking me but because of the adrenaline I managed to block them.
‘When we got back to the station, Cardiff's firm and the police were all laughing.'

Police told them all to get on an empty train to London, says Bob – but only 50 of the group did.
Keen for more bloodshed, Bob said he gave the rest of the firm a 'council of war' speech, ordering them to go back to Cardiff's baying mob and 'kick them'.

Now down to just 250 against 2,000 angry Welshmen, the groups went toe-to-toe again.
He recalled: ‘We kicked the gates in, ran riot, and smashed all the pubs up. The police had to come back and force us back.

‘That was 28th March 1976, the day before my 18th birthday – it was just like the Wild West.’

For decades, Millwall had a reputation as one of Britain's biggest hooligan factories, though the club - now eyeing a place in the Championship play-offs this season - has shrugged off its past.

It saw brutal smashes, including the infamous Kenilworth Road riot which saw bricks and bottles thrown, people brawling in the stands and pitch invasions as Millwall faced Luton Town in an FA Cup sixth round game in 1985.

The disorder led to authorities clamping down on football hooliganism.

But violence has continued to erupt on occasion. In 2002, hundreds of hooligans ran riot after Millwall lost a play-off to Birmingham City.

Violence between rival firms often spilled out into residential streets. Pictured is Dennis Midwinter, aged 35, showing a smashed up car damaged in a clash between Millwall fans after they invaded the pitch at nearby Luton Town's ground during an FA Cup match there in 1985

Bob claimed he joined Millwall's firm when he was just 11, having his first fight at 13. Pictured is a fan being pulled out of the crowd at the start FA Cup third round match between Arsenal and Millwall in January 1988

Bob said he started watching Millwall at the age of four, being taken to the matches by his father. Pictured are fans during a FA Cup quarter final match at The Den in London

Opening up on the Anything Goes podcast, Bob described how he had been watching Millwall at games from the age of four.

By the age of eight he was getting into fights at school, beating up a 'bully' three years older than him.

Three years later, he would witness his first hooligan 'tear up' as an 11-year-old 'skinhead'.

Recounting the brawl, he said: 'I was standing on the halfway line, still with me father then, and 50 big guys came in early from Bristol City, wearing leather jackets.

‘I went up to them and said "fellas don’t stand there, go up to the away end because the boys will be in". They turned around and said “F*** off you little w***er".'

A group of Millwall's founding hooligans soon charged the group like something out of 'Russell Crowe's Gladiator', he said.

'There were a couple of hundred of guys. Two of the younger guys, one of them put a glass in one guy’s face and another done one with a bottle. There was all blood running down the terraces.

‘But I did tell the guys don’t stand there because you’re going to get yourself in trouble. But when you’re a little kid, no-one is going to respect you. They think you’re just a mouthy little kid.'

At 13, Bob got into his first 'proper fight' during a fight with West Ham's Mile End mob where he said he faced off against hooligans armed with iron bars and pick axe handles. 'It was a massive fight,' he added.

By 15 he was running his own 'sub firm' of the Bushwackers, where he almost got his ‘head cut off’ by a man with an axe during a brawl against a rival gang.

‘Even if you’re going to get killed, you have to stand your ground and fight,’ he recalls, adding those who didn't would be ‘ostracized’ from the firm.

Hooligans would often come 'tooled up' - armed with weapons - to clashes. Pictured is a haul of some of the weapons seized by Scotland Yard during a clash between West Ham and Millwall in 1978 at Upton Park which saw 70 people arrested and six police officers hurt

Football hooliganism continued into the 1990s. Pictured is the scene after a fight following the match between Millwall and Derby in 1994, which saw hooligans turning over a car
Asked what happens if somebody runs, he added: 'If you run...you’ll get physically dealt with. You’re told from a young age this is something you don’t do. It’s like being in the Mafia.’

Two years later, Bob graduated to the premier league tier of senior hooligan royalty, remaining a feared leader and fighter into the late 70s and 80s, working as part of the Bushwackers' 'F-Troop' gang.

Bob claims to have fought countless people during his time with the firm. But he said the toughest opponent he ever faced was during a brawl with rival London firm, West Ham in 1989.

'One of their top fighters was a guy called Demolition Chris. He was 6ft 6in. He was wearing steel boots and a boiler suit,' Bob told James English's Anything Goes.

'It was a bit like the OK Corral and who gets in first in the gun fight. I’ve always had speed of hand. But I got my punch in first a big one on the chin and knocked him out in one punch.

‘He could have done me I could have done me but I just got in first and done him.’

In another clash against archrivals West Ham, he and 60 of his firm clashed with 300 hooligans, near New Cross Gate Station, in south-east London.

‘It was like Zulu,' he said. 'We all pulled out our baseball bats and as they got close we were just smashing them with baseball bats,'

In 2016, Bob appeared in a photoshoot alongside other former hooligans to document the men who terrorised the terraces in the dark days of English football hooliganism.

These striking images of former football firm members were taken by a photographer Simon Harsent, who travelled the country to document an age in British history.

Titled GBH or Great Brtain's Hooligans, Mr Harsent said he wanted to shed a different light on the notorious figures in the Beautiful Game.

'I'm not trying to glorify them or condemn them,' he added. 'These are portraits of people who chose one path in life and now have all turned their lives around.

'I'm sure, like everybody, they have done things they regret but the intention of the work wasn't to go looking for apologies or remorse, it was just simply to document these people.'

We should be very proud of ourselves. Having 4 to 1.

Makes you laugh and a bit embarrassing Always find these occasions are always vastly embellished When did Cardiff ever have a firm of 4000 ?
I have read a number of books over the years and been at some of the games mentioned I think i must have been asleep as did not see anything to the degree that is usually mentioned

Makes you laugh and a bit embarrassing Always find these occasions are always vastly embellished When did Cardiff ever have a firm of 4000 ?
I have read a number of books over the years and been at some of the games mentioned I think i must have been asleep as did not see anything to the degree that is usually mentioned

Agree with you, I used to stand on the bob bank and when we used to hear them singing when coming in from the grange end we used to say oh god school is out. although I have read some of the books on here like you I think a lot of it is exaggerated.

Although I have to admit that it did effect the number of people who attended matches, if you said you supported city you were classed as a hooligan so it was better to deny just like judas, that you did not go anymore, could of effected your job.

A mate of mine was in the play off game at Millwall when they lost to Birmingham. He said it was terrifying huge disorder the Police lost it in several areas police horses seriously injured and numerous officers hospitalised. He recounts locals emerging from their homes to join in. He had driven there having parked about a mile from the stadium his car was safe. It was a sif the lid had come off the area

A mate of mine was in the play off game at Millwall when they lost to Birmingham. He said it was terrifying huge disorder the Police lost it in several areas police horses seriously injured and numerous officers hospitalised. He recounts locals emerging from their homes to join in. He had driven there having parked about a mile from the stadium his car was safe. It was a sif the lid had come off the area

Makes you laugh and a bit embarrassing Always find these occasions are always vastly embellished When did Cardiff ever have a firm of 4000 ?
I have read a number of books over the years and been at some of the games mentioned I think i must have been asleep as did not see anything to the degree that is usually mentioned

I agree I was at that game in 1976 I think it was nil nil draw yes millwall did only have a small firm but the level of violence he’s talking about I never saw anything on that scale that day funny thing his he never mentions anything about the lads who where on that panorama documentary all those years ago

My brother read that, and said that 76 game was rough around the ground. Depends on personal experience at the time maybe..

It was bad day no doubt, mainly moving away from the ground. As they passed beneath the railway lines 90% of the Millwall fans missed the turn into Ninain Park Road and the aggravation spread out from there onwards. I never used to get involved but I was speaking to some I knew at the station later. They were still fighting with them in Sophia gardens. The police gradually got on top of it and were bringing them back into Cardiff central 5 or 6 at time. They were pretty much all bloodied and once they were up to about 50 in number they came across the tracks at those of us waiting for the train back to Bridgend. Fortunately the Swansea train pilled in just at that point. There must have been more police than fans but it didn't stop them. They were absolutely mental in those days. The away trip to Millwall in those years was an horrendous experience.

My brother read that, and said that 76 game was rough around the ground. Depends on personal experience at the time maybe..

Remember arriving at Cardiff central with my mate the same time as millwall they looked a horrible bunch they where rounded up and put on double decker buses and bused to the ground