30 Sep 09 Stoke’s Stenhousemuir tragedy

This is written with a great deal of regret, but much respect for the victims and their families. I know what we all agreed following that day, but this won’t lie down and so I am putting down in words my own understanding of that dreadful day. I saw too much myself to ever sleep soundly again and the nightmares don’t stop. Having said that I avoided the hunt-down and I know many say that was the worst part. Any who, like me, feel they want to exorcise the ghost of this incident, feel free to add your comments.

For Stenhousemuir fans, the infamous and disgusting massacre of Stoke fans at Ochilview Park, Stenhousemuir  should have spelled the start of prison life for thousands of them and the end of football in that town forever. But instead it is a secret epitaph for a violent day in Scotland’s deadliest city.

It has been ‘politically’ scrubbed from the pages of history to protect the guilty – or at least one guilty, but very famous, important and influential person. And circumstances aid and abet the real politic. Stenny fans won’t admit to it and Stoke fans remain scarred by it and constantly under threat of reprisal. Few will talk of the incident and many refuse to utter the name of the Scottish town at all.

The incident flared up around a minor friendly match. It was never officially sanctioned just randomly arranged at the last minute while Stoke were on a preseason tour in Scotland. In the years since, the clubs, the FA and the SFA have sought to distance themselves from the incident. They utilise the unofficial nature of the match to deny it ever happened at all.

But what they are all desperate to hide, ignore and put behind a wall of silence, tragically did happen.

The Ochilview gates where Stenny fans poured back into the ground with murderous intent

It was a cloudy non descript day. There were a few hundred Stoke supporters – football holidaymakers, following the Stoke City under 14 first eleven on their preseason tour. Not present that day were the hard-core Stoke fans, the so-called ‘Naughty Forty’ that, some years ago provided Stoke City with a sick, violent and frightening reputation. The victims were all normal people, guilty only of coming from Stoke.

But the terrible consequences have made Stenhousemuir, notorious to all unfortunate enough to witness the events of that day.

The violent rampage around the ground claimed victims from all walks of life The victimes, as far as the local dialect has it were ‘tekken oot’ by an armed ‘firm’ with egg-whisks and poison blowpipes. The slaughter was thought to have taken place over a five hour period.

The massacre was so brazen, that after the execution-style attacks, the Ochilview walls were gleaming red and the Stoke fan’s shirts, no longer distinctively white striped, were shredded and ripped off their bodies. Sadly, the initial victims became a disguised statistic to add to the further number of Stoke fans ‘tekken oot’ amongst the slums of Stenhousemuir in the terrifying ‘hunt-down’. Estimates ran to hundreds of people who were vilely ‘tekken oot’ in the hours that followed.

The walls of Ochilview were bathed in blood

It was sparked by the most innocuous of situations. An eleven-year-old boy from Talke Pits visiting Stenhousemuir with the North Staffs Creative Graffiti Society was wearing a Stoke top – the highly recognisable 1993 purple away shirt. In a local shop by the ground the young lad took issue that their oatcakes were small, cold and hard and looked like biscuits. Through this cultural misunderstanding the shop worker, a nasty, self-centred man, with an angry reputation shamed himself and Scotland forever. The boy left the shop only to be ‘tekken’ in a drive-by incident just outside ground. Stenny fans leaving the ground after the match saw it and urged on by the man in the shop returned to the ground with murderous intent.

The purple Stoke City away shirt as worn by the boy

Later that day, in an attempt to cover the heinous crime, it is said that victims were taken to a local park, doused in chip fat and set alight. Some reports say the blood-soaked guilty stood around the flames, warming their hands and singing Delilah in mocking voices.

Up to now, there is no publicly available evidence. Files have gone missing, Wikipedia pages are doctored and legal cases are shut down before they get to court. National newspapers are under a ‘public interest’ security banning order and victims families have had everything from threats, torture, bribery and hush money in the years since the incident.

There are people officially listed as ‘missing while on holiday’. But in the immediate aftermath the story nearly escaped. There were headlines, such as ones printed in the now banned “Stenny Sentinel” trying to whistle-blow the cover-up with the haunting headline “There’s No Stoke without Pyre”

And how and why has this crime been spirited away? You have to ask yourself who was the man in the shop? The architect of this heinous massacre. What person has the influence, the political power and ability to change history to protect himself. With a little thought it is obvious really isn’t it? It still disgusts and appalls us that he walks around respectable and free.

So there is the story. For all of you who were not there, that’s it. Now leave it be, move on and stop asking. It pains those of us who were there beyond words.

19 Sep 09 Rimmers v Wankstains at Stoke City

There has been a war raging amongst Stoke City fans since the very first day that Tony Pulis became manager and has been raging just as fiercely in his second stint in spite of promotion and a safe Premiership finish last season. The situation runs in parallel to the double tenure of Peter Coates as Chairman, having sold the club in 1998 and bought it back in 2006.

Two camps have formed; the Pulis Hating Wankstains (PHWs) and the Rimmers. Think of Gangs of New York, where the Dead Rabbits and The Bowery Boys conduct bloody warfare across the Five Points of New York. Here we have the PHWs at war with the Rimmers across the five towns of Stoke in the online battle ground of The Oatcake fans forum.

In the three years since Coates and Pulis have returned to run Stoke, the club have risen through the ranks of the Championship division, achieving automatic promotion and a 12th place finish in their debut season in the Premiership – against all sensible predictions. At the start of their second Premiership season, they have been described as beyond automatic consideration for relegation by no lesser authority than Alan Hansen.

But still the squabbling rages on about who said what and why. It really is something. Take a look at The Oatcake (Stoke’s legendary fans forum)

As a Stoke fan, I have to declare initial allegiance to the Wankstain camp, although I have witnessed, incontrovertibly the success of Stoke under Tony Pulis and while not an out and out rimmer, I am a convert of sorts – I certainly don’t refer to him as ‘Tiny Penis’, ‘Tony Thumpit’ or ‘Totally Pointless’ any more. I have made this public and eaten humble pie (although on the Oatcake, one is required to ‘eat your own arse’ in these situations and I can tell you that metaphorically, for me, sitting down is now a thing of the past).

The saga started back in 1997. Stoke moved to The Britannia Stadium, a brand new stadium on top of a hill overlooking the town of Stoke. We left behind The Victoria Ground where Sir Stanley Matthews had first stepped out to become the world’s first footballing super-star. I had seen Banks, Hurst and Hudson play for Stoke at the Victoria Ground, I had seen Pele, Eusabio, Best, Law, Charlton and many other play there. We also left behind Lou Macari, a popular manager and ‘one of the people’. But all that was history. The Vic was demolished to become, for all the world to see, a piece of waste land by the side of a ring-road – It’s like burying Skakespeare in a cess-pit with a tombstone inscribed “Wrote a bit”.

The Britannia was controversial from the start. The council had financed it and they owned it. The city’s other professional football club, Port Vale took umbrage and allegations of corruption and favouritism still bubble on a back-burner a dozen years later.

The driving force behind the move was local businessman and club owner (by majority), Peter Coates. Coates was the man who supplied the nation’s football fans with those stadium meat pies – not toxic, but only just. He took the money from them all and used it to run Stoke. When I say ‘run’ Stoke, back in 1997 Stoke was engaged in digging itself a hole. It dug itself into the lower reaches of the Championship. Then continued excavating its way into the third tier of English football. Coates either would not, or probably could not, invest in the club. A series of ridiculous management appointments just made matters worse and the public utterances from the club served to inflame fans who could still remember winning the League Cup, playing in Europe and having a team substantially filled with international and ex-international players.

But this was 1998. The club had sold Mark Stein, ‘The Golden One’. Other talented players hemorrhaged out of the club until every Stoke fan who ever wondered how much deterioration and lack of investment it would take before disintegration occurred, had their answer.  Following a 7-0 defeat to Birmingham, in the season that saw us relegated to the 1st Division, there was a mass pitch invasion by Stoke fans. And apart from an outpouring of utter disgust, frustration and pain, the focus of that protest was in the name of forcing Coates out of the club. I personally think that was the moment when Coates’ mind was made up to get out while his legs were still attached to his body. When Coates sold the club it was one of the most popularly welcomed events in the recent history of the SCFC. He sold Stoke City to some people from Iceland, although had he not, the club probably would have burrowed its way there all by itself. Stoke City were frozen out in so many respects.

The Icelandic purchase was driven by new manager Gudjon Throdarsson. The Ex National team manger of Iceland thought he could revive Stoke’s fortunes waking a sleeping giant and concurrently use it as a development tool for Icelandic players. Coates retained a ‘golden share’ and a place on the board. Locals were uneasy. This is a town where the BNP do well in local elections and I suspect some of the hostility was xenophobic. Many still look back on the Icelandic era negatively. It was a depressing time. Much of it was spent in the third tier of the league. With a mixture of bizarre and unpronounceable signings, progress was slow. All was not well, news of tension between the manager and board leaked out.

Nevertheless, Stoke were promoted to the Championship after a play-off final against Steve Coppell’s Brentford. And shortly after the play-off victory, the manager’s contract was not renewed. In place of Thordarsson, the ever-present Coates brought in a former target of his in Tony Pulis. (I have written Steve Cotterill out of history – I have decreed that he doesn’t actually exist). Pulis had managed in the lower leagues, collected a reputation for agricultural football and contrived to get into some messy career-threatening litigation with a former club. For a couple of years Pulis had been in the wilderness. The news of his appointment was not altogether welcomed. ‘Tony Who’ was roughly the reaction.

The football was basic. There were games where having gone 1-0 down he would refuse to chase the game, going for damage limitation instead. He infuriated tactically, but he proved immense in the transfer market. And having avoided relegation in his first season he consolidated the team as a safe Championship outfit.

However, after a couple of years, Pulis also fell out with the owners. The chairman at the time unleashed a tirade against Pulis and his lack of willingness to use overseas players and then fired him in favour of Dutchman, Johann Boskamp. I haven’t got the patience to dissect Boskamp’s spell at Stoke. We all wanted him to do well and we thought  we would get some Dutch Shexy Football, but we got another unsavoury falling out. Boskamp got upset, Director of Football, John Rudge, got gardening leave, the Icelandic owners got fed up and decided to sell up.

In fairness to the Icelandic owners, when you consider what they took over and what they sold on. They had their moments and they stopped the decline. They resurrected the club in a way that Coates had been incapable of doing at that time. Ultimately they provided money, stability and a promotion and they got out when they had taken it as far as they could. Stoke fans should all be grateful because without them, there is every chance Stoke would be where Southampton are now.

For every Stoke fan pleased to see the back of the Icelandic owners, there was at least one who became dismayed to learn that it was Coates who was buying the club back. The reaction was mixed but far from ecstatic. Coates was a known quantity and not much of it was good. It was correctly assumed by all that Coates would reappoint Pulis (who had moved on to manage Plymouth). The club’s most hated owner was back and he was about to appoint, what many considered to be, it’s most hated manger. Pulis was the man who never got relegated, or promoted (okay he did it once with Gillingham but they still fired him). He was the manager whose teams never let goals in and never scored either. He had an undisputed reputation for brute force and tedium. For many of us the whole thing was too horrible to contemplate.

But Coates had spent his time between ownership stints getting out of meat pies and into online gambling. Coates had built a £350Million fortune through his company Bet 365. He had money and was prepared to spend it. And Pulis was pursuaded to rejoin through the promise of a properly financed assault on the Premiership.  There were promises of a ‘war-chest’ of money to build the club. But Coates was a good businessman and was not going to throw money at a hapless cause. I think this is at the heart of the relationship between Coates and Pulis. Coates has money but Pulis is not going to waste it – Pulis is a value for money shopper and a pragmatic man. Certainly at the outset, the war-chest turned out to be more of an extended hire purchase contract as Stoke stretched the  loan system to its limits, operating a ‘try before you buy’ approach to players.

Meanwhile, although the finances of the club were changing, the tactics were not about to do the same. Stoke have built a solid reputation i.e they are a solid group, not to be messed with. Results were initially ground out, progress through the Championship was infuriating as the midfield players were all treated for whip-lash as the ball bypassed them from defence to attack 30 feet above the ground.

Nevertheless Pulis answered his critics with results. Within two seasons Stoke won automatic promotion to the Premiership. Since then Stoke have finished mid-table and they are not just making up the numbers. Pulis is the project architect and Coates the sponsor. I have now given up my claims to being a Pulis Hating Wankstain. The evidence it there; Pulis worked it out and saw something in this raw approach that was too subtle for me to spot. Stoke are the Premiership’s Dead Rabbits. The literal translation from the immigrant Irish who landed in New York comes from the Gaelic “Dead Ráibéad” meaning “men to be greatly feared” and that is about right. Sometimes it is uncompromising, sometimes it is ugly. But increasingly it is inventive, occasionally dazzling, but always it is hard fought and every bit of it is very welcome.

To this day Pulis still has his detractors, PHWs point to ugly tactics and lack of entertainment. But the argument about whether his style of football ‘works’ has been won. It does work and it probably provides a template for survival. Many other clubs with similar amounts to spend will compete but won’t survive.

So to all the Rimmers out there, you were right. Well done. But you make yourselves conspicuous by gloating and refusing to put the war behind you. It makes you … actually ‘rimmers’ is a good name really. Nevertheless, I do not accept that your faith in the Coates/Pulis revival was based on anything factual. Their respective first stints at Stoke was not the stuff of dreams. Coates presided over our worst period in over 150 years. And Pulis, being the sort of manager you employ to keep a bad team from getting relegated took any remaining shine off what was left of a once sparkling team.

But it worked. And as far as Pulis is concerned, he is absolutely the right man for the job. I am converted, thus far by the results and by Pulis’s developemnt. The spectacle is getting better and he is showing he can put a bit beauty into the beast he has built.

To the PHWs. Eat your own arse. Pulis has proven you wrong. And no matter how critical you are, the football gets better by the season and so far, so do the results. He’s at Stoke, Stoke are in the Premiership, live with it. Isn’t that what we all wanted?