And thank you for it VFTB
-this is really odd, sitting here at my desk remembering weird brawls from all those years ago! I was really just a young teenager so I wasn't exactly involved but I do remember some of these going off. I think the most smacked I ever got was by a copper up the Royal Oak versus Fulham in about 1980, just as everyone was squaring up across the Royal Oak some police ran down from above us with their truncheons out and I got laid out by one of them...I didn't even work out who had hit me until I'd got back up and had a look around. Got a smack in the face from a member of the Mansfield mob round the back of the New Road stand, I think the police were moving them off the Ealing Road because trouble was brewing and we ran straight into them coming the other way, right at the corner of Ealing Road and New Road - me with my f***ing Brentford scarf round my neck - not much point pretending we were anything except BFC at that point. I didn't offer anything back, there were two of us and about 40 of them....
*strokes chin* ah yes Southend I didn't like them either...but I remember them getting a good chasing across the Ealing Rd terrace one evening, was it maybe a league cup game? Early in the season I remember.
I don't recall to many times in those days when the opposition came up the Royal Oak. Millwall and Sheffield Utd I remember did, but Sheffield got kind of kicked out, they were spilling onto the pitch. Millwall, ahem, they didn't seem too concerned by the Brentford massive, they were by a good way the hardest looking firm I remember turning up in those days. Also didn't Plymouth appear once? I was at the Ealing Road end and I could see a little group singing and clapping just a little bit up behind the goal at the RO, I thought they must be the non-firm Royal Oak, there was quite an innocent little posse who used to sing and chant a bit there, but it was Plymouth I realised afterwards. The next thing I can remember was a column of what seemed like about 100 lads appearing over the corner from the New Road and falling onto them from above, it looked pretty short and straightforward from the other end....can't remember if Plymouth ended up on the pitch but they certainly stopped singing!
Aways - well now you're talking but I haven't got the time! But I
do remember getting saved by the New Road at Gillingham when the Gills firm had gone in the open end where I was with the official supporters club people and it was looking to get a bit unpleasant when it kicked off big time at the Gills end where the New Rd had gone and suddenly the Gills boys realised they were in the wrong place and started trying to get over the pitch to their home end...
Someone mentioned unofficials and I did go on one of them once, Bury away the friday before Christmas - madness, got dropped off at the Hanger Lane gyratory to walk home in heavy snow at 3.30 in the morning!
tut tut, no apostrophe and no capital Q for her majesty...
