Name: Football's Fight Club
Genre: Documentary
Released: 2002-04-30
Duration: 1 h
Rating: 7.2
Cast: Nick Malinowski, Jay Allan, Peter Brookes

British TV Channel 4 showed this in 2002 as a two parter. In essence it's a history of the British football hooligan from the 1970s to the 1990s, an attempt via some confirmed hooligans to explain why they did (do) it, and how certain events over the years made them feel and to evaluate their roles in the tribal warfare under the football banner.

As a snapshot of the eras involved it's superb.

The 1970s sections are all about boot boys with flares and sideburns, then the skinheads with crombie's and doctor martin boots. This is the birth of the football special, cheap train travel on ramshackle units packed to the rafters with boozy footie fans, which ultimately was a nightmare for the British Transport Police. This was a time when hooligan hordes tried to take the home end of the team they were visiting, one-upmanship with flares, a scarf and a size ten boot.

To the 1980s and taking the home end no longer mattered, now it was a case of taking the main pub of your rivals, the town centre even! But you had to look good, expensive designer gear started to become the rage, where as one Aberdeen interviewee states, they wanted to fight and look good doing it! But there were isolated deaths that stated to crop up, serious maiming's, a sign that things were going further than the hooligans ever envisaged, that their codes of conduct - which all the interviewees stand up to say is gospel - was no longer being adhered to.

Thatcher is in power, the miners are in turmoil and fighting the police, this as football riots began to jostle for the headlines in the tabloid press. More deaths and tragedies, as Birmingham, Bradford and Heysel shock authorities and stun a nation proud of its sporting heritage - the hooligans offer thoughts, though you may not like what you hear. Undercover police operations get short shrift, though strangely the (admittedly small) successes that some of these operations achieved isn't even mentioned.

Then the rave scene, a two year love in that baffled some hooligans, but elsewhere brought other warring factions together. Yet it wouldn't be long before one guy would ring another guy and arrange a good rucking, designer violence was back with a punch to the face and a shake of the hand! To the horror scenes in Sweden and Dublin, to all seater stadiums, and Euro 96 when football came home - - but Marseille was just around the corner and it felt like football violence had gone full circle...

It's a fascinating documentary, both amateurish and insightful. It induces revulsion and a clinical thought process, sadness and surprise, but always riveting as it tackles a subject that few out of the hooligan circle of things understand. While the sound-track is a veritable feast of punk and new wave tracks that the kids of the 70s and 80s are sure to love. Anyone interested in the subject to hand needs to track this documentary down. 8/10

The documentary is a form of non-fiction storytelling that aims to present factual information, insights, and perspectives on real-world subjects, events, issues, or people. Documentaries can cover a wide range of topics, including history, science, culture, social issues, nature, biographies, and more.

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Football's Fight Club

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