Service Crew: The Inside Story of Leeds United's Hooligan Gangs

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Many of the most shocking incidents in British football history have involved the hooligan followers of one Leeds United. On 11 May 1985 (the same day as the Bradford City stadium fire) a 14-year-old boy (Ian Hambridge) A Leeds fan attending his first ever game died at St Andrew's stadium when fans were pushed by police onto a wall which subsequently collapsed following crowd violence at a match between Birmingham City and Leeds United. Gall does a very thorough and detailed job in investigating Leeds United's hooligan element and produces a well written, in depth, more serious and less sensationalised account that varies from the usual 'run of the mill' hooligan (to doorman) autobiographies. Am a little embarrassed to admit that an old mate of mine used to belong and sent me a copy of a book all about them. For 40 years they have run riot across the country, punching their way to international notoriety - yet they have remained the most secretive of all mobs.

It was cold and wet and only 600-odd tickets had been made available but a few headed south to watch Leeds play in front of the smallest crowd of the season. He and his little party left the lads to go off and do their own thing on arrival, with the others settling in one of the pubs. We don’t share your credit card details with third-party sellers, and we don’t sell your information to others.

Same as Chelsea and Leeds to an extent - numbers game often wins the day when you swamp places and are accustomed to bully ups. The fighting between Birmingham City and Leeds United fans was described by Justice Popplewell as more like "the Battle of Agincourt than a football match".

Also chronicles the local rivalries with Bradford and Huddersfield as well as the infamous battles with Chelsea and West Ham. As standard all our t shirts are direct to garment printed and only vegan friendly inks and eco friendly packaging used.After that game we started to attract a lot of fans just there for the aggro and by 80/81 we were taking thousands even to places like OT and Goodison. The stories and accounts of what has gone down over the last 30-40 years are very well put down in words and the book is a great read to anybody who takes an interest in the casual culture, especially the stories from the lads who have been involved in the action in the early days and the 80's. Leeds is a highly cultured and cosmopolitan city streets ahead of Leicester(my home town) and frankly I feel safer here than in Leicester. Improvements to security in Elland Road as with all grounds in England have led to confrontations more usually taking place away from stadiums. What happened is, a lot of lads started going on the service trains to escape the [edited for content] from home fans and local plod that came with being herde on to specials and Wally Arnold coaches.

The point was, we had a massive away following which got bigger in inverse proportions to the clubs success.In all the years I've been watching Leicester I've never so much as been hit or anything simialr, despite walking through pitched battles on a number of occassions.