Chapter 19 of "The Knock 'em Down Boys"
Rat, Sparky and S.T.A.B. arrive at the big time with the visit of Chelsea.
My best mate isn’t dead.
Though the head injuries he’s got, he could be bloody brain dead for all I know.
He doesn’t move.
He doesn’t blink or open his eyes at all.
Or at least I don’t think that he does, because with all of the bandages around his head, it’s hard to tell exactly. He is breathing though; at least his lungs are inflating with the help of a ventilator at his bedside, and the Doctors say that he is becoming stable.
The ventilator is a precaution, so the Doctors say. They think that Sparky would breathe by himself now, if they switched it off, but they aren’t sure, so they’re leaving it on for the time being.
Everyone is asking them about brain damage. I mean, someone put a hammer in his head. What are we all supposed to think?
Obviously the Doctors won’t commit to anything at this stage. They say they are confident that he is beginning to recover, but what his recovery will look like, they aren’t prepared to put their necks on the line about that.
They’re feeding him through a tube too, which I can barely look at. Because I can’t ever allow myself to think that this might be it for my best mate. That this might be his life from now on, fruit or vegetable puree squeezed into his stomach through a tube.
And what if he does come around? What if he’s not the Sparky that we know anymore? What if he’s barely human? What if he’s barely functioning? What if he’s barely worth even being alive?
I shut my eyes and think of Sparky at full strength: fit, strong, quick, disciplined, flowing with power. Seemingly invincible, smashing down anyone who challenges him.
I see this in slow motion.
His fists crunching into his opponents’ jaws – cheek bones and eye sockets shattering. Sparky poses for a second to gather his thoughts, flexing his muscles, surveying the battle scene. When he drives his forehead into another lad who comes rushing at him, and the lad’s nose capitulates under the pressure, I can see the lad’s blood in slow motion spurting out in an arc from his head. And just before it flies into my face, it splashes against the imaginary TV screen I am seeing this on, before the action moves to Sparky and the rest of us steaming forwards looking fucking amazing.
When I open my eyes, I remind myself that things weren’t quite like that, even if we did look good. Because real life, and real fighting, isn’t like a Frank Miller Graphic novel or movie, is it? No matter how stylish, how good looking or thrilling.
At least I hope it’s not.
Because at the end of the movie 300, it doesn’t matter how fit, or strong, or good looking, or noble or honourable the hero King Leonidas is – he is killed at the end by his enemies.
Gerard Butler might look the absolute best, just like the rest of his lads, but it makes no difference in the end.
They all die.
Well, apart from the one telling the story that is.
And even when they are dying, lying on the ground with their bodies broken, leaking out their lives into the sand, they are crawling towards each other for some final words, a final embrace before they die. And then, arms draped over each other, satisfied and painless expressions on their faces, they die the beautiful deaths they have dreamed of – warriors and brothers together.
But Dogga attacking Sparky from behind was hardly the battle of Thermopylae.
It wasn’t special, whatever way you tried to look at it.
It was just shit and I will need to tell you about it.
Only, not just yet.
Chapter 19
Chelsea – Home F.A. Cup – Saturday, February 22nd
“Chelsea at home,” said Ghandi calmly, “this is it. This is what we have been building up to. This is everything that we have worked for.”
We were all in The County Hotel, just behind The Town End.
We had squashed into a small room of the pub which we had made our own. The older lads were sitting around on stools which surrounded small tables. The Lads were downing pints of lager and eating crisps.
Our lads, the younger ones, were mostly standing up and looking a bit bored to be honest. We didn’t need to hear Ghandi’s talk to know how important today was. And we certainly didn’t need the drink either. Pseudo-Andreia I thought. Not a great sign and not our style. The drink would make them feel strong, whether they were or not.
I noticed that Ghandi and Scratch had pints of lager in front of them, but they were barely drinking it.
“Chelsea’ll come here expecting a walk over,” Scratch said to the lads. “We’ve had contact. We can choose where we meet them, and they’re happy to come to our choice of venue. That’s how we’re going to do them, because we will choose our ground.”
“So what’s our choice then?” Sparky interrupted the flow of the conversation.
Ghandi looked calmly at Sparky, “What would you suggest? You’ve made some pretty good decisions with your lads. Where would you stand against them?”
Sparky looked at me before returning Ghandi’s calm stare.
I nodded to him. I don’t know exactly why. I imagine it was some kind of I’m behind you, and so are these lads, whatever decision you make kind of nod. To reassure him and show him that no matter what, we had his back.
I think Sparky knew what that nod meant.
I think he always knew.
All of the lads, ours and Ghandi’s were looking at Sparky now.
“Well,” said Sparky, “they think it’ll be a walk over, right? Then let’s use that against them. Keep our numbers hidden. Not too hidden. They’ve got to think that there’ll be some sport in chasing us down. So we need to present them a mob about the same size as theirs. If they’re so confident, they’ll think they can turn us over for a bit of exercise.”
Ghandi was nodding and for whatever reason, Scratch was staring at me. But he was listening too.
“So, once we have them interested, then what?”
“We need a big turn out. Bigger than this. They’re Chelsea and they’ll bring numbers. Can you get anyone else?”
Ghandi nodded at Scratch who immediately started scrolling through his mobile. In a few moments he was talking to someone animatedly.
“We’ll get a few more,” said Ghandi. “Then what?”
“We choose an intersection. There needs to be a road with a dead end. That’s the trap. In front of the dead end, the road needs to stretch out a bit with an intersection going left and right from it. If we funnel Chelsea down here behind us, they’ll think they’ve got us. Position the rest of our lads either side of the intersection, but hidden, and as soon as Chelsea come belting past we can box them in. Outnumber them, and do them. As long as they take the bait, and the lads who are hidden stay quiet until the last minute, then we can at least match them. They’re better than us...”
“You what?” Scratch dropped his phone to his side aggressively.
I stepped in then, “They are. That’s just a fact and you know it. They’re class. But if this plan comes off, we can match them. And if we match them, we’re as good as them.”
I stared directly at Scratch when I said that and it felt good.
Sparky nodded to me as Ghandi stood up and spoke.
“We divide into three groups then. Sparky, your lads with me and some of my lads. Scratch, you take another group with the recruits you get from the phone calls, and Andy, Ghandi gestured at a quiet lad in the corner, you take the third group. I need someone I can trust.”
“We haven’t decided the road,” I said.
“What?” Ghandi was looking at me with venom in his eyes.
“He said we haven’t decided the road to act as the battleground.” Sparky covered me. “This is Rat’s plan. He knows what he’s talking about. Listen to him.”
Ghandi backed down and held all the lads back. “I’m all ears.”
“I reckon Gladys Street. It’s near enough for us to run there without getting too knackered. And it fits the description nicely. I’ve checked it out already.”
“Fine. Sparky, Rat, your lads’ll be with me. We’ve got to get them to follow us so we’ll need to put on a show during the game. Make sure they see us and give it some verbal. The rest of you, keep out of sight. There’s enough of us to tempt them. You know where you have to position yourselves near Gladys Street. Slip out before the end of the match, but do it in small groups. Don’t make it obvious, and get there early. You don’t make it, or you bottle it, we’ll get battered. Got it?”
The plan was clear and we left the County Hotel to take our places in The Town End.
I remember we were wearing thin jackets. Mine and Sparky’s were by Burberry. The other lads’ varied. Underneath we wore tight Fred Perry polo shirts in pastel colours.
The wind chill factor was at frostbite. Other people, shirts and scarfers, had wrapped themselves up with replica shirts on top of thick jackets and they were wearing hats.
We kept to our dress code, pulled our collars up, hunched our bodies over, stuffed our quickly numbing hands into our jeans’ pockets and glared at anyone who passed by and made eye contact. We hoped to God it wouldn’t slash down.
Ghandi and Scratch had dressed differently, and I made a mental note to think a bit differently next time. They were wearing long coats down to their knees: black parkas with fur trims around the fringes of their hoods. I noticed a small yellow label on the right shoulder of their jackets: Stone Island.
And they looked warm, too.
I knew what gear I would be buying next as I squeezed my hands in and out of fists just to keep the circulation going.
The game was as you’d expect.
We put up a fight, but a Chelsea reserve team ran out 3-0 winners without having to push too hard.
To a certain extent, the game was beside the point. Throughout the match, we bated the Chelsea lads in the uncovered Stratton Bank end. I can’t remember the kind of taunts we used; they probably weren’t the most sophisticated things you might say to wind someone up. But if you are aiming jibes and insults across a full football pitch they’re going to need to be short and to the point.
It wasn’t our style to act up like this and disrespect our competitors to such an extent. But if the plan was to work, we needed them to think we fancied ourselves, and that we fancied ourselves a bit too much, so that we needed to be taught a lesson.
If I’m honest, I think one or two of our lads enjoyed acting like clowns. It was different to the normal run of things.
I registered the lads leaving in small, insignificant groups. I didn’t think that they had been noticed. So that part of the plan was working.
As the game ended, we knew that our stewards would want to keep the Chelsea boys behind to avoid trouble. The ground would be surrounded by Police and there would be an escort for the majority of the Chelsea fans. But the ones who mattered would know what the coppers were up to.
Scratch had contacted one of their boys and told them to head off in small groups, meet up and we’d be waiting for them at The County Hotel.
We hung around The County Hotel, making sure that anyone who wanted to know it could see who we were. After three quarters of an hour, one of our spotters told us that there was a group of unfamiliar lads heading up Manchester road.
There were plenty of them and they meant business.
“We can’t let them catch up to us here,” I said to Ghandi. “We need to intercept them between Manny Road and here. Then we can lead them to Gladys Street.”
“What if they smell a Rat?” Ghandi wasn’t smiling at the joke.
“I expect that they will,” I said. “But by then, their blood will be up. They haven’t come all this way to go back to London without a story to tell, have they? Let’s just hope that our lads are in position and can handle this.”
“If this goes wrong, Chelsea will give us a proper pasting. There’ll be no prisoners.”
We all nodded, because we knew that Ghandi was right and headed off to meet them.
“There they are!”
Even with one eye, El Pigface could make out the Chelsea lads. It wasn’t that they were making a fuss, or shouting particularly loudly, or anything like that. They were just clearly a bunch of fighting lads. They looked serious and organised. They looked like us. I mean, me and Sparky’s lads. Serious and disciplined and ready.
We started to shout then - childish insults questioning their soft London manhoods. All that kind of rubbish.
We jumped around and gestured like the charged up little stereotypes of hoolies that we were clearly not. And it seemed to work, because we could see that they were getting riled. When we gave them the bird and ran, something snapped, and they started shouting insults back towards us. Maybe they weren’t as disciplined as I thought.
I remember thinking that they must have realised that we were leading them into some kind of trap. Why else would we shout, chant at, and then insult them – and then turn tail and scarper? They must have thought too that they hadn’t come all this way to be cagey, so what the hell. We were Swindon and they were Chelsea. Trap or no trap, they would spank us and teach us a lesson.
But we were S.T.A.B. and we had been practising. And, clearly, Chelsea hadn’t done their homework, because they obviously didn’t realise what we were capable of.
As we thought, Chelsea followed us. They followed us into the trap and we turned to face them. And just as we turned to face them, our lads came steaming in from behind.
We took our positions then, as the Chelsea boys psyched themselves up with Swindon lads surrounding them. Each of us protecting the man to his left, in two decent lines. Ready for them.
Ghandi and his lads stood next to us, but not like us, or truly with us. Me and Sparky knew that we stood out. And ready to take on Chelsea, we felt like something special. “For he today that sheds his blood with me shall be my brother,” is what Shakespeare has Henry the Fifth say before his well-inspired and outnumbered army beat the French.
And whether good old Harry actually said this is beside the point. Because that is exactly how we felt looking at each other right now. Me, Sparky and El Pigface, lining up to possibly get the kicking of our lives – and yet there was nowhere else that any of us would have preferred to have been. “We few, we happy few, we band of brothers.” Shakespeare had good old Harry say that too.
They came at us then.
And they were everything that we expected.
When they hit us, they hit us hard, with all their experience – and pushed us back.
We gave them as good as we got for the time it lasted. And then almost as quickly as it seemed to have started, it was over. However they had done it, the coppers had got wind of our plan and after a minute or so, arrived in force, arresting anyone who they could get their hands on Swindon or Chelsea.
As quickly as we could, we all disappeared – each man, or small group, looking after themselves and heading off in all directions to confuse the police.
The Sunday following the Chelsea match we were scrolling around on Facebook.
One of Chelsea’s lads had filmed our stand.
And one of the comments attached made the hair on the back of my neck stand up, “Fairplay to Swindon. We’d thought that it would be an exhibition match. That we would come along, knock a few heads together, and show another small town that Chelsea is the Top Firm – no problems and no question. We were wrong. You boys put up a good fight – with a good plan too. But be warned, we won’t underestimate you again – until next time.”
I couldn’t believe it. Chelsea had shown us some respect. Chelsea’s boys for Christ’s sake.
S.T.A.B had arrived. Everything that me and Sparky had worked for was here. We had respect. We were recognised. We had arrived.
And we had no idea that we were about to be torn apart in a way that one of us could never have seen coming.
And I should have.
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