Chapter 17 of 'The Knock 'em Down Boys'

The Oxford boys, Dogga and The Fish, take the piss after The Wolves incident.

Chapter 17

Dogga and The Fish take the piss

On the Monday night after the Wolves game, I was sitting with Sparky and we were looking at Facebook.

One of the Swindon lads had recorded what happened in the subway underpass, and it was clear for anyone to see. Our boys had covered some of theirs in a sticky mixture of flames: trousers, trainers, heads, necks and faces.

And in a subway underpass, once you’re on fire, there aren’t many ways to put yourself out, are there?

It was funny, because on the day we had heard shouting and screaming when the bombs hit their marks, but we were too keyed up to really take it in. Adrenalin was rushing through our bodies, and when the buzz takes over, you’re not entirely aware of everything.

But watching it back like this, sitting on my best mate’s bed, I could hear the screams – loud and clear.

There were lads in serious pain, and serious trouble. Their screams modulated in pitch, moving higher and higher, reflecting the severity of their wounds and whether the petrol mixture was scorching their faces, burning the insides of their mouths or melting their eyes.

I know that sounds pretty dramatic, but how do I know what damage Scratch’s mixture could do – especially when it stuck to a person.

Ghandi was clearly proud of what we had done.

His posts made it clear. As far as he was concerned, we’d outthought and not outfought the Wolves, and that was a result in his book.

But Sparky and me, we weren’t convinced. After all, we hadn’t really tested ourselves physically, relying on weapons and surprise more than anything.

I had to admit, a part of me admired the strategic way Ghandi had predicted how the Wolves would try to take us on, and how he had turned their plan to our advantage and used it against them.

I told Sparky about Sun Tzu and his two-thousand-year-old military manual designed to teach generals how to outwit, and defeat, their opponents. He said that:

Victory belongs to the side

 That scores most

 In the temple of calculations

 Before battle.

Defeat belongs to the side

That scores least

In the temple of calculations

Before battle.

Ultimate excellence lies

Not in winning

Every battle

But in defeating the enemy

Without ever fighting.

         

We had clearly outthought the Wolves, and their piss throwing had seriously crossed a line.

We barely had any injuries to our lads either, save some clothes most of us chucked away because of their urine stink.

We had won just as Sun Tzu would have advised – without really fighting.

But still we weren’t sure. We were in it for the fighting, and this didn’t feel right.

The return posts from the Wolves lads were savage. They were swearing revenge, and writing in detail about what they were going to do to us next time we met. We had a new enemy, and there was no doubt about that.

But we weren’t happy, Sparky and me. The Wolves thing just didn’t feel right, whether I turned to Sun Tzu to help me look at it positively or not.

Word gets around in football circles, especially on the internet, and it didn’t take long for other firms to start to comment on the action. Some were impressed, we’d raised the stakes. Some weren’t. I was fascinated for a while by comment after comment after comment scrolling in.

About the time I was about to give up reading, one of the comments caught my eye:

Chicken-shits! What can anyone expect from Swindon scum.

The Oxford boys.

         

Though they hadn’t signed the message off with their names, it was pretty obvious that Dogga and The Fish had seen Ghandi’s upload and were tapping away at their keyboard, hoping to damage our reputation.

Sparky looked at the post, saying nothing for a while.

“They’re saying what others are thinking,” he said after a few more moments.

“Maybe,” I said, “but you know that’s from Dogga and his arsewipe. And we can’t let them get away with that.”

Sparky nodded, “But the fact is, they’ve seen what they’ve seen. And they’re not the only ones. And, we’re not all that happy with it either, are we?”

“Yeah, but we can’t let Dogga and his bunch of jokers present us like that.”

“We don’t have a choice. We took part. The video is there. Anyone who wants to will use it against us.”

I turned to the computer and decided to reply to the Poxford boys:

Nice to hear from you Dogga. You must be out of hiding now then. I hope that you’ve cleaned up after shitting yourself at the thought of us Swindon lads paying you a visit.

After a few seconds of blank space with the cursor flickering, Dogga responded:

Now then Rat (it must be you). Has Sparky still got his hand firmly up your arse you puppet? I bet you’re with him now, and he’s telling you what to write. We would look forward to you coming up here, so we could slap you down. Toe to toe though, no weapons or bombs tut-tut-tut...

Sparky shoved me aside and took over:

You can’t slap us down, at your place, or ours. You’ve never even had a go at The County Ground, and to be honest, we’d only come to your place for the exercise. You’re not in our league, and you know it. You’rejust an exhibition match for us. We’ve got real lads to test ourselves against – not you clowns.

    

We looked as the screen. It remained a flickering cursor. Dogga was obviously thinking. And that’s how it stayed for a while, until finally a short message appeared in capital letters:

PETROL BOMBS 1 – WOLVES 0. SWINDON = SHIT!

         

I logged off then.

Dogga and his lot were all talk and he’d just keep baiting me if we continued to play his game.

I couldn’t help thinking that the videos Ghandi had uploaded had damaged us. It wasn’t our style, even if we briefly appeared in the video. And parasites like Dogga and The Fish were jumping all over it.

Perhaps we needed to do something special, something that would make everyone, except the Wolves, forget that last upload?

What we did next had everyone talking about us.

And some of the talk was for the right reasons.

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