Hibs Boy: The Life and Violent Times of Scotland's Most Notorious Football Hooligan

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In later seasons the information for the meeting point was often communicated by the use of party invitation cards that detailed the venue and time. They were one of the UK’s most notorious gangs of football casuals during the 80s and 90s – but some within the feared Capital City Service branched out from matchday brawling into serious organised crime. During the latter part of the 1990s, a split in their ranks caused by the formation of a nationwide hooligan firm made up of casuals from different teams and a general decline in football hooliganism in Scotland saw activity of the gang diminish.

The intention of this new mob was to cause trouble at any game they appeared at, regardless of who was playing, either in Scotland, England or abroad, such as during the 1998 World Cup in France. About 30 members of the CCS were said to work as doormen – and control of Edinburgh’s doors meant control of the city’s booming rave scene and drug culture. The author Irvine Welsh has included many references to the gang in his works with the most noted being the eponymous story in The Acid House collection and the novel Marabou Stork Nightmares. This mode of confrontation was still evident in 2011 for a match against Celtic in Edinburgh but with the added twist of taking place while the game was being played three miles away from the fight. I loved the derby in the 80s and 90s and as Chad said, there was nowt better than walking up ER after a win with 9,000 other Hearts fans.Officers said the older men had perhaps seen their own children grow up, got divorced or were seeking to recapture their lost youth by coming back to the casual world. I had a few run ins with them in the 80s and always found that one on one they always ran so fast i couldnt catch them.

For obvious reasons, I can't name him, or even the clubs he has played for, but I hope he managed to make his peace with the gangster, who is not someone you would want to mess with. Obviously, there are others out there who won’t hesitate to use violence against a Scotland player if they are paid enough. This led to their inclusion in a Home Office Affairs Committee investigation into football hooligan gangs activity in the UK in the early 1990s. During filming the director requested that the Hibs boys sing some CCS songs and chants and they complied much to his approval.It made grounds far safer places for normal people to go, because there were so many police brought in and the casuals had to find somewhere else to go to fight," he explains.