Extracts from Sligo Rovers 1970s Bootboys

[Andropov]

Ill post up a few extracts of a book currently being written that I got emailed recently.
It primarily deals with the history of the 1970s Bootboys from Sligo Rovers and their history in the League Of Ireland throughout that decade.

[Andropov]

. Legend Living legend( Teen-Titan ) by 1975.. His name and reputation in fact were known the length and breadth of the country, even in Dublin were most of the teenage hardmen of the era had heard of legendary Sligo bootboy " Seamie O'Boyle ". Niall Harrison( of Harrisons public house in the village of Cliffony in the north of the county of Sligo ) says that as he made his way up to Tolka Park as a twelve or thirteen years old teenager in April 1976 that he saw hundreds upon hundreds of " Aggro crazed " Dublin bootboys making their way up the streets toward the floodlighted ground. According to Harrison a huge group of these fearsome looking Dublin hardchaws had broke away from the hundreds walking up to the entrance gates and were painting a graffiti slogan on a wall which was inscribed with the sinister rubric " Seamie O'Boyle RIP ". The story speaks volumes about O'Boyle's reputational prowess during the period. The fearsome looking street thugs of Cabra/Phipsborough, out into Finglas, and further down into the centre of Dublin and into the north inner city were cognisant of the fact at that time( 1976 ) that there was a fearsome teenage tough from Sligo town who went by the name Seamie O'Boyle. So much so that they knew the legendary Sligo bootboy by his first and second name, and were in such awe of his brawling prowess and status as a hardman and bootboy that they berated him with street ribaldry to the extent that they emblazoned his name in huge painted scrawl on the walls outside of the football stadium where he and his crew of toughies would be fighting and rioting. Known in Dublin( Legend )The story is an interesting testimony to the strangeness of the period in that it affirms that the greatest bootboy and football thug firm in the land were operating out of a small town in the west of Ireland, and that they were so thuggishly powerfull that even the masses of teenage harchaws of the tough areas and inner city districts of Dublin city were in awe of them to the extent that they gathered in mass assemblage against them and painted threatening rubric in graffitti sprawl about them ? Also regarding the fact that Seamie O'Boyle's name was known at the time in Dublin and elsewhere, it is also true that leaving aside the large scale rioting of the period, that whenever small groups of fans came to the Sligo Showgrounds they would be harassed and subjected to verbal inneuedo by youths from the shed and word soon spread around the land that there was a bunch of thugs and bootboys following Sligo Rovers and that they were a fearsome bunch of hardchaws, led as they were by the menacing and thuggish " Seamie O'Boyle ". A good example of this was on a Sunday afternoon in January 1975 when Shamrock Rovers came to the Showgrounds and won a League match by 0-2. As was always the case there was a substantial number of Shamrock Rovers fans in the ground with a large cluster of as many as fifty seated in the Tracey Avenue pavilion in the afternoon sunshine of that winters day in 1975, a match in which Joe Logan played his very last ever game for Sligo Rovers. There were smaller groups of twos and threes scattered here and there around the ground and one such group was one of two teenagers that were stood to the left of and beside the players tunnell, which was of course located behind the goals at the road end of the small cramped Showgrounds of the period. The two lads who looked as if they were about seventeen or eighteen years of age were wearing green and white scarfs and drew the maledictive attention of the shed enders on them by virtue of their being stood where they were and by virtue of their shouting encouragment for the Shamrock Rovers players. Within a few minutes they were involved in a heated verbal altercation with Seamie O'Boyle, Brendan Costolloe, and several others. The fact that there was the concrete funnell of the players tunnell between them and the Sligo bootboys meant they felt safe enough to indulge in a bawling match with the lads but they werent long in disappearing when it was quickly rumoured that Seamie O'Boyle was coming from around the back of the stand at half time to " sort " the two of them. I can still remember to this very day how Frank Kennedy and others consoled them regarding the fierce verbal harassment to which they were being subjected, and how some of those same Sligo people told them that it was better for them to seek the refuge of the terraced area under the stand in the Tracey Avenue pavilion, where as many as three hundred or more fans were stood, which of course they did. During the heated twenty minute argument the two of them must have heard Seamie's name being mentioned by those in the crowd around them, and a woman who was sat on a wooden chair beside the tunnell called on him to lay off the two lads ? By such means it was quickly becoming known at the time, on a nation wide basis in fact, that there was a Sligo bootboy of repute who went by the name of " Seamie O'Boyle ". I remember how I saw the two of them at the corner of Churchill and Wolfe Tone Street amidst the dispersing crowds near Bill Ferrises shop after the match as I made my way home and how they shook hands with the two cos who had walked down the incline so as to gaurd them and how those same two cops stood there and observed them as they walked their way all the away down the street toward the train station. There is no doubt about it that when they got back to Dublin that they told people up there about the fearsome Sligo bootboys they had encountered. Insofar as Ireland is a small country of only a three or four million people I often wondered if they recognised any of rthe Sligo hardmen in Tolka Park at the two FAI Cup Semi Finals of April 1976 about a year or so after that ? Obviously they werent Bohemians fans ? But maybe curiousity got the better of them and went to those two matches looked on in awe and in fascinated gaze from the Tolka Park terrace, mesmerised as they may have been, at the sight of a hundred and fifty or so red and white bannered Sligo bootboys as they battled with iron bars against the hardchaws of the north side of the city, remarking to themselves as they revelled in the spectacle of it that they had met and had a lucky escape themselves from those same Sligo bootboys only a year or so previous to that when they got the train to Sligo from Dublin on a Sunday in January 1975, and were lucky to get out of the Showgrounds and even out of Sligo town in one piece ? Eamonn Dunbar also says that he once met a guy from Limerick city who told him that he went to every ground in every city and town in the League of Ireland to follow his team and that he never felt afraid in any of them - except for Sligo - where he told Eamonn that he used to be petrified at the very sight of the hordes of Sligo bootboys in their bleached denims, red socks, and brogues. Anthony Mitchell also says that he clearly recalls how Seamie O'Boyle's name and formidable reputation were well known in Dublin in the mid nineteeen seventies. Reputation of Seamie O'Boyle was known to the thousands of Dublin bootboys that packed the shed at Dalymount park for the big internationals( Legend ) Tony remarked that you could go to any of the big international matches of the 1975 to 1977 period at Dalymount Park and stand behind the shed end there and that any or indeed all of the Dublin bootboys that stood there had heard of the legendary Sligo bootboy and tough guy Seamie O'Boyle. The memory of it is fading in my mind now as 1978 is decades ago but one evening as we walked over the road from Summerhill College footie fanatic, MCR trialist, and Pearse Road man Johny Reidy, who was living in Dublin at the time, regaled us with stories about the craic and the jargon of the shed at Dalymount Park and I think I remember him saying that Seamie O'Boyles name was well known in Dublin at the time ? I remember Ciaran Scanlon saying the same at the time and how he remarked that it was strange and ironic that the most fearsome teenage tear-away in the country was not an urbanite from the big city of Dublin but a tough guy from Sligo, a small town in the west of Ireland ? The fact that as many as two hundred and fifty or more of the boarders in Summerhill College were conversant about Seamie's legendary deed and repute meant that his name was spread wide and far throughout the provinces even as far back as 1974 ? Indeed a Summerhill College boarder from that very period was the very son of Henry Gibson Steel, who was the President of Limerick FC soccer club at the time. The younger Steel undoubtably regaled and mesmerised scores or even hundreds of fascinated teenagers in Limerick when he retuned there on holidays with lore and legend about the fearsome Sligo bootboys and the legendary Seamie O'Boyle ?

[Andropov]

Fearlessness of Wasabsoloutely fearlessand was in awe of no man or men. In the 1975 League Cup Final riot in Limerick he battled against the notorious bootboys, thugs, and hardmen of that infamous city and bombed his way through them with massive clouts and headbutts, clearing huge swathes of them from in front of his path as he did so. In the April 1976 FAI Cup Semi Final epic night riots in Dublin he battled against hundreds of Dublin tough guys and hardmen, a good many of them of came from the notorious north inner city area. On the second night in fact he fought against the ten or twelve most feared street fighters in the city of Dublin when he engaged them in a vicious melee on the black and white tiled platform of Connolly Street train station and met them blow for blow as they lashed into each other with vicious kicks, massive headbutts, and mega-clouts powerfull enough to have bulldozed through walls of mass concrete. Coolness of Seamie was renowned as an ice cool customer and there are many examples of the same of which the following is one such. On the night of the second FAI Cup Semi Final crowd riot in Dublin he knew as he lingered in a pub near the corner of Talbot Street and Connolly Street in the city centre after the match that he was about to meet the hardest and most feared street fighters of Dublin city whom had been " brought in " to confront him when he went up onto the platform of Connolly Street railway station. Some of these guys were massively built and were known all over the sprawling city of Dublin as the hardest enforcers there were up there. In spite of that sobering fact he stood in that pub opposite Connolly Street station sipping a pint of Harp as cool as ice before making his way out the door, probably in the company of Ross Monaghan, Tony Gorman( ? ) and about about thirty others and walked across the street as the blue and cream CIE double decker buses rumbled past them in the dark of the April evening. Making their way up the escalator ( electric stairs ) Seamie, who was at the front of the group, battered his way through a huge phalanx of Dubs at the top of the escalator and then got involved in one of the most vicious gang fights seen in Dublin city in the nineteen seventies as he fought with up to ten or twelve " mega-heavies " on the blood stained black and white tiled platform. Several witnesses who saw it described it as an awesome battle as the rival " mega-hardmen " tore into each other with clouts powerfull enough to have bulldozed their way through walls of mass concrete, along with massive headbutts, and vicious kicks

[Andropov]

An even smaller demographic was in attendence for a Sunday afternoon League Cup encounter in September 1974 when the Gypsies lined out against Sligo Rovers at Dalymount Park whilst at the very same moment in time Dublin were playing against Galway in the All Ireland Football Final at Croke Park only a half a mile across the city. As the constant afternoon drone of the jet engines was heard overhead against the backdrop of noise which came over from the huge crowd of 70,000 in nearby Croke Park as few as a hundred or so fans watched the proceedings in an almost empty Dalymount Park. The number of Bohemians ultras or bootboys standing in the shed behind the goal in Dalymount that Sunday afternoon was probably no more than thirty or so such youths as nearly everyone of the thousands of Dublin bootboys and hardchaws that was in Dublin city at the time was in attendence at the All Ireland Football Final where most of them were in mass assemblage on the famed " Hill 16 " ? Glasgow Celtic bosses Jock Stein and Sean Fallon, who were present in the main stand in Dalymount that afternoon expressed complete disbelief that a crowd so small could be in attendence at a game of semi-professional football anywhere at a match in the islands of Ireland or Britain ? They remarked that even in the lower leagues in Scotland where small crowds were the norm there would still nonetheless be more substantial numbers of people than that which were in attendence in the tiny crowd that was in Dalymount Park on that Sunday afternoon of the 22nd of September of 1974 ? A photograph which appeared in the sports page of the Irish Independent of the next day and which was taken from behind the tramway end goal at Dalymount Park showed Davy Pugh and Kevin MacCool, wearing the Sligo Rovers away strip of all blue regalia of the period as they contested possesion with Bohemians players wearing black and red vertically striped jerseys. Behind them is the awesome and yawning mass of the steeply escalating Stalinist terrace of Dalymount Park and on that same terrace there seem to be no more than ten or fifteen or so spectators, nearly all of whom are sitting right up at the back of the terrace against the high wall there, as beneath them the incredible spectacle of an empty stadium evidences the smallness of the crowd culture of the League of Ireland football scene of the period. Sligo Rovers played in front of their lowest crowd of the nineteen seventies in a League match against Dubliners Shelbourne on the Sunday afternoon of November 3rd 1974 when only about 300 or so fans bothered to turn up to watch them be hammered 1-5 by their fellow strugglers in an interesting League encounter. The reason for the sparse attendence was in that there was a great entertainment and high scoring match shown on the British ITV networks Ulster Television programme " The Big Match " and that the programme was on the television at the same time that the afternoon League match kicked off in the Showgrounds. As many as a half a thousand floating supporters who may have been of a half hearted inclination to go out and watch the match in the Showgrounds that afternoon sat at home instead and watched the British ITV Big Match programme on the television in the comfort of their living rooms. In a reflection on the increasing standards of living and softly softly comfort to which people were becoming accustomed to in the nineteen seventies a small number of people didnt bother going out that afternoon because of the bitter cold and said so unashamedly, increasing softies that they were. The attendence itself in the Showgrounds on that dry and admittedly cold winters afternoon of 1974 was so small that there was an almost eerie atmosphere of dead silence in the ground. There wasnt a single spectator standing from the corner flag at the Jinks Avenue-Nazareth House angle to a point as far up the pitch as the corner flag at the Tracey Avenue-Knappagh Road angle, and back down to the managers dugout in front of the Tracey Avenue pavilion, difficult as that is to believe ? To walk around rectangular shaped three hundred and fifty or so yards of the entire ground astride the pitch and not to see a single spectator standing for as much of that same walk of maybe two hundred and thirty yards was a sight so surreal as to be unbelievable really ? Never before or since has a vestige of such sparseness or emptyness been seen in the Sligo Showgrounds for a League match. To follow the play as the teams gallavanted up and down the pitch against the back drop of a completely empty three foot high advertising hoarding the entire way around the small stadium, except for the small area in front of the shed is a memory so desolate that it made the Showgrounds that day seem like a cemetary in the pale relief of the weak winter afternoon light. Shelbourne stalwart Paddy Dunning, who split his head scoring, probably remembers it well enough but with the passage of time most people here in Sligo seem to have forgotten it ? 1974/75 players Davy Pugh, Kevin MacCool, and Joe logan have a vague recollection of it but even for them the memory of it is fading ? Yet in spite of the fierce criticism put on the abberrant and undoubtably thuggish Red Army bootboys that congregated in the shed as many as sixty or more of their number were among the small faithfull few that were gathered in the ground that afternoon. In fact I remember a highly volatile Seamie O'Boyle as I observed him occasionally from the sideline on the Tracey Avenue side near the dug out as he gave his usual boisterous and highly vocalised contribution to the dead and lifeless proceedings as he shouted and roared at the Shelbourne players and at the match officials and led the shed in the singing of " In Dublins Fair City ", " Silent Night ", " Wheres Your Father Referee ", and a good few other of the well known thug athems of the period. So it was for the smallest crowd to have ever been in attendence at a League of Ireland fixture in the Showgrounds in the nineteen seventies. Loyalty In what is a fair reflection on the loyalty of the fans of the period it is fair to say that the booyboy contingent which recieved so much critisism at the time on account of their loutish behaviour were also a redoubtably steadfast aspect of the small die-hard following that kept the club going at the time ? Had they not been there in such a large number, all sixty or so of them, on that dull and completely lifeless afternoon then the Showgrounds would have resembled a morgue for lack of atmosphere, melancholic enough as it was on the day ? Those of them that didnt climb over the walls so as to gatecrash the match also contributed to the clubs survival in that lean time in the winter of 1974 in the money they paid in at the gate. In a sense they were the very lifeblood of the small club in spite of their thuggish bootboy clobber, their singing of profanities, and their general blackgaurdism, which at the time was beginning to get a bad name for Sligo Rovers and a bad name for Sligo town in general. Regarding the tiny attendence of only three hundred or so fans for that Shelbourne match of Sunday November 3rd 1974, only a few weeks later, after a string of good results a massive crowd of 2,900 crammed into the Showgrounds to watch Sligo Rovers play against Athlone Town in the winter sunshine and brightness of the Sunday afternoon of January 29th 1975 ? Jim Gray in fact said that it was the biggest attendence at a match in the Showgrounds since five years previously in 1970 in his Sligo Champion match report of Febuary 3rd 1975, a report which made no mention of the scenes of riotous disorder which were witnessed in the Showgrounds and in the Bests car park and in the general town centre during and after the match ? Regarding the paltry attendences of the 1974/75 season and their fluctuating between three hundred, four hundred, five hundred and crowds of up to three times a greater number than that ? Difficult as it seems to believe the crowds at matches in the Showgrounds that season where occasionally more substantial than those attending games at Lourdes Stadium where Drogheada United were having a very good season. And the crowds were always more substantial than those watching matches in Dublin where attendences as small as a hundred and fifty or so were commonplace at the time for Home Farm and Shelbourne matches and where even Bohemians struggled to get as many as five hundred people to pay in at the the gate ? In fact the congregating of as many as sixty, seventy and even up to a hundred bootboys in the same shed behind the goal at the road end of the ground was really impessive on a national basis as the only few other grounds at the time that had similar type shed ends with small droves of bootboys to shore them up were at Bohemians, Cork Celtic, and a few other places ? In 1976/77 when Sligo Rovers won the Bass League the average home gate incresed to about 2000 but the more important fixtures pulled in huge crowds well in excess of that figure. Drogheada United, playing in the so called " dustbowl " of Lourdes Stadium suffered disasterously poor gates to the extent that crowds as small as 150 or 200 were occassionally commonplace, in spite of the fact that the population of that large and impressive Boyne estuary town was nearly 20,000 at the time ? Yet in spite of the lack of interest on Boyneside there was 2,900 people jammed into Lourdes Stadium when Drogheada United played Sligo Rovers in a League match in March of 1977 ? A photograph which appeared in either the Irish Press or the Evening Press of the following day could have been taken at any of the big stadiums in England the crowd scene was so dramatic in the backround ? Dundalks average home gate in 1974/75 was about 700 but the derby match with 25 mile distant Louth neighbours Drogheada United was gaurenteed to pull in as many as 2,500 or even more depending on the weather conditions on the day and on how well either of the two clubs was doing ? In the following 1975/76 season when Oriel Park outfit won the Bass League of Ireland championship the average gate went up to well over the 2000 mark with the more important fixtures pulling in 5000 plus and the last decisive game of the campaign against Cork Hibs being watched by a crowd well in excess of 8000. Another example of the almost incredible disparity between tiny almost pathetic attendences and somewhat massive crowds is seen in the following statistics from Cork city during the period ? In 1971 21,000 fans crammed into Flower Lodge in Cork to watch Cork Hibs play Finn Harps and for another match around the same time against Waterford. Yet only five years later in April 1977 and in the second last match of the 1976/77 season only 300 or so fans were in that same stadium to watch Sligo Rovers clinch a place in the UEFA Cup by virtue of their beating Alberts by 0-1 ? Of those 300 maybe half were from Sligo, including a large one hundred strong group of denim clad teenagers in red and white scarfs and banners that was shored up by the likes of Seamie O'Boyle, Anthony Kilfeather, Charlie Coyne, John Kerrigan, Mark Feeney, and other Red Army adolescent acylotes. An even more pathetically small attendence was in Turners Cross for the last game of the 1978/79 season when Dundalk won there on a lifeless Sunday afternoon to lift the Bass League title. According to the press reports from the day there was only 180 fans in the ground, and nearly every one of these people came from the three busloads of Dundalk supporters that had made the 220 mile journey to Cork for the important fixtiure which saw their team win the League. Those are a good example of the small scale crowd culture of the domestic soccer scene at the time. So the crowd trouble when it happened happened in the context of that much smaller demographic sub-culture. Hundreds of youths however, participated in the riots in Limerick in October 1975 and Dublin in April 1976 and these were seen by thousands of witnesses that were there as spectators. The Sligo Champion match report on the second FAI Cup Semi Final between Bohemians and Sligo Rovers in April of 1976 said that there were eight thousand spectators in attendence in Tolka Park that night ? Jim Gray, who wrote the report was not given to hyperbole or exaggerration. In July 1975 he truthfully stated in his match report on the Sligo Rovers-Glasgow Celtic friendly that there were three and a half thousand fans in the Showgrounds for the auspicious event. Other reporters would have been inclined to say five or six thousand or even seven thousand so as to make the occasion look more important so Mr Grays judgement in this regard is most impressive and extremely accurate ? Noel Dunne of the Irish Independent said in his match report of the next morning( Thursday April 15th 1976 ) that a " massive crowd " was present in Tolka Park so as to witness the worst scenes of crowd violence ever seen in the history of the country at a football match as once again the Sligo bootboys exceeded the demographic parameters of the fact that they came from the small town of Sligo by rioting in the greatest mass tumult ever seen in the country against hundreds upon hundreds of Dublin bootboys on the terrace of Tolka Park. This speculated attendence figure of eight thousand for that match means that as many as four or five thousand Dublin neutrals may have gone along to Tolka Park that night so as just to enthrall in the sectacle of the greatest bootboy and street thug mass battle ever seen in the history of the country at that time just out of the sheer curiousity of it ? Insofar as the thugs rioting at the Sligo Rovers matches were being spoken of in disbelief all over the country at the time theres a good possibility that that was in fact the case ? Who knows perhaps some of the curiousity seekers there that evening inclued youth culturists Bob Gelfdoff or Bono or the likes ? Teenagers from all over Dublin had heard of the Sligo bootboys and may have gone along just to observe the remarkable events that were happening on the terraces and in the streets after the match ? At the 1978 FAI Cup Final, the first ever football match in the south of Ireland in which there was crowd segregation and an elaborate Garda crowd control operation, about ten Sligo Rovers Red Army " heavies " rampaged their way through the Garda anti-riot phalanx. This was the largest attendence for a match in which the Red Army bootboys rioted and the spectacular terrace fight whilst brief and contained by the fifty or so riot cops who quelled it was seen by 12,000 with about as many as a thousand ot two thousand Dublin hardchaws there to witness it from the shed behind the goal as they chanted it on
THE BUSESThis was the main means of transportation for the bulk of Sligo Rovers fans attending the away matches with fleets of various sizes, depending on the occasion, ferrying the hundreds or even thousands of Red Army acoloytes to the distant stadia of the League of Ireland, usually on the 48 seater " Express " coaches of the period. Most of these were from the CIE fleet here in Sligo, but Paddy Gilmartin, Johnstone Carew, and Fureys ran buses on request as well. The CIE Express buses of the period were very modern and came in a red and orange as well as a cream coloured livery. They made Athlone in two hours, Dundalk in three hours, Limerick in about four and a half hours and Cork in about six hours. Seamie always rented from CIE, usually for about a hundred Pounds ( circa 1975 ) and he told me in 2009 that he used to make a handsome profit for himself as he could usually cram as many as seventy or more on board, with each of the lads paying three Pounds per seat. This left Seamie with a handsome profit for himself, which he said he usually spent on a few items of clobber or drink for himself or Mairead over the few weeks that passed after the last trip to an away match. The first bus ran by the teenager was to an FAI League Cup Semi Final in Ballybofay in November 1974. The Wednesday afternoon fixture at Finn Park was won 3-2 by Finn Harps and was played before a large crowd of about 1,500 fans. Seamie was only seventeen years of age at the time so he had a good sense of organisation for a young fellow, and the fact that he was able to pack the bus with as many as sixty or seventy other youths from the diffirent streets of the town is a testimony to his prowess as the leader of the pack and the respect and awe in which he was held by his teen peers. There was no trouble in Finn Park for that first trip by the Red Army but a shop was robbed in Ballyshannon on the way home when the entire mob of Red Army fans descended on the small outlet and robbed it blind. After this with Sligo Rovers beginning to win matches in the Billy Sinclair era more and more fans began to travel to the away matches and by 1975/76 as many as a thousand and even more were descending on grounds in Limerick, Dublin, Ballybofay, and other places for the football special and the day out. One of the more unusual aspects of the bus sub-culture was the sheer volume of fans and buses from Sligo that was going to the matches at the time ? Galway Rovers secretary Val Carty who witnessed the arrest of the " Unlucky Thirteen "( UNLUCKY THIRTEEN ) and was in Court the next day to see them arraigned said that he had heard there was " trouble " headed their way and that five fifty seater buses had been sourced by well known trouble makers from Sligo. Five buses equated to three or so hundred or more fans, an impressive fugure when its considered that some matches at the time, even in the bigger cities of Cork, Limerick, and Waterford were being watched by crowds as small as two or three hundred fans. In march 1977 a guy called Murray who wrote the football reports for the Evening Herald and did commentaries for RTE said that he never in his entire life saw anything like the volume of Sligo Rovers fans that descended by CIE Express bus on Drogheada for the third last game of the 1976/77 season, remarking as he did that as many as a thousand and even more Red Army acolytes must have made the long 140 mile road journey there from Sligo ? Another remark made was the disbelief at the sheer volume of thuggish looking Sligo bootboys and red and white scarfed street thugs that would be seen walking around the centre of a town before the kick off to one of these prestige matches ? People on their way from mass or out for a lunch time stroll to buy the Sunday World or whatever would come around the corner and unexpectantly walk into the path of a massive gang of as many as three or four hundred of the most fearsome looking bootboys ever seen. This was where Seamie O'Boyles bus of eighty or so hards had been joined by multitiudes of other hards that had made the journey up on other buses and had then clustered into a massive gang. Several fans remember this and how a regular bus with conventional types on board would also see as many twenty or thirty denim clad hardchaws come on board at Sligo and on arriving in wherever that it was they would join up with Seamie O'Boyle and other hardchaws so as to form a massive gang of urban thugs from the distant and unknown town of Sligo. Trains. Train trips were few but one exception was for the 1976 FAI Cup Semi Finals in Dublin against Bohemians. There was easily a thousand Sligo Rovers fans in Tolka park for both of these matches and the atmosphere they generated was fantastic in spite of the crowd rouble ? Because the only way to places such as Dundalk, Drogheada, Athlone, Cork, and Limerick was by road fleets of buses would descened on those places so as to bring the hordes of Red Army fans to them. For one trip to Drogheada in March of 1977 it is believed that as many as twenty or even thirty massive red and orange CIE Express buses made the journey from Sligo ? Here are some of the places visited where there were large Red Army travelling contingents from Sligo

Finn Harps v Sligo Rovers, League Cup Semi Final October 1974. Wednesday afternoon. Att 1,500 with about 500 from Sligo including about 100 bootboys

Finn Harps v Sligo Rovers, League Cup First Round Sunday afternoon. Att 2,200 with about 700 from Sligo including about 150 bootboys

Sligo Rovers v Drogheada United,League Cup Semi Final Wednesday night at Oriel Park under floodlights. Att 900 with about 450 from Sligo including 150 bootboys

Limerick v Sligo Rovers, League Cup Final Wednesday October 18th 1975. Att 4000 with about 800 from Sligo including about 150 bootboys

Finn Harps v Sligo Rovers, League Febuary 1977. Att 3000 with about 1,500 from Sligo including about 250 bootboys

Drogheada United, League March 1977. Att 2,900 with about 1,500 from Sligo including about 150 bootboys

Sligo Rovers v Drogheada United, FAI Cup Semi Final April 1978. Att 3,000 with about 1000 from Sligo including about 200 bootboys

Shamrock Rovers v Sligo Rovers, 1978 FAI Cup Final. Att 12,000 With about 3,500 from Sligo including about 350 bootboys

Athlone Town v Sligo Rovers, 1979 FAI Cup First Round. Att 1,500 with about 400 from Sligo including about 200 bootboys

In spite of all the travellling and the fierce reputation of the Sligo Rovers hordes of Red Army bootboys in only one place was serious damage done to the buses. In Limerick in 1975 nearly every bus had its windows smashed by angry missile throwers after the match, indeed Seamie O'Boyles bus came back to Sligo withouth a shred of glass. In Drogheada in March of 1977 about two buses had a few of their windows broke when a small number of local gurriurs did the damage with stones at half time. The most serious incident to ever have happened on a bus was when John Cogan was stabbed( reputedly by Charles Cawley ? ) coming back from a match in Athlone in early 1979

[Andropov]

SHOWGROUNDS CROWD RIOT OF SUNDAY AFTERNOON OF JANUARY 29th 1975
This was the first full scale crowd riot seen at the Sligo Showgrounds stadium since the nineteen sixties. The occasion was the visit of Athlone Town FC to play Sligo Rovers at the venue in a Bass League of Ireland match. The match was played in brilliant conditions of sunshine and calm. There were at least five hundred Athlone Town supporters in the ground - a huge number especially when it is considered that the average gate at a League of Ireland match at the time was about four hundred. Most of the Athlone supporters congregated on the terrace on the Tracey Avenue pavilion, and they generated a cup tie like atmosphere as they shouted in unison the incessant chant of Athlone clap clap clap. They were led by a fan with a European style air horn, a detail that is remembered by a number of people that were in the ground that afternoon. The Sligo Champion described the crowd in attendence at the match to have been the largest at the venue in five years. Indeed there was probably about two thousand five hundred spectators there ? In fact the ground was crammed to capacity, except for the north end of the Jinks Avenue side of the ground, and except for the railway end. Athlone skinheads. Behind the railway end goal there was hardly any spectators, except for about fifty Athlone fans, all of whom were teenagers, and all of whom were bootboys, clobbered up as they were in Bay City Roller attire of white waistjackets and parallels with tartan stripes. A good few of them were skinheads and most of them wearing shiny black Doc martin boots. They all had scarfs of blue and black draped around their necks. They were chanting " Athlone " as well but they could hardly be heard because the noise of their chanting was being drowned out by the deluge of sound coming from their fellow Athlonites in the Tracey Avenue pavilion to their right. The match progressed without incident with high flying Athlone looking like Inter Milan in their vertically striped black and blue jerseys, roared on by their own crowd, coming to dominate the play. In fact they won the match by 0-2. After about twenty or so minutes a sense of menace entered the air with the Sligo fans congregated as they were in the shed behind the road goal chanting obsceneties at the Athlone fans and shouting " Shite " ( pronounced " Shyte " ) everytime the chant Athlone went up. At half time one of the most incredible spectacles ever seen at an Irish soccer venue involving crowd tumult was witnessed when about three hundred Sligo fans from the shed completley vacated that stand and began a slow deliberate walk out into the barren patch of waste land that lay between Jinks Avenue and the advertising hoarding surrounding the actual pitch. This left the stadium looking virtually full, but with the shed comlpetely empty. This totally abberratonal sight, possibly never previously witnessed at a soccer venue in the country provoked amusement for most of the crowd, but it was with forboding that the fifty or so teenage Athlone supporters stacked on the slight grass embankment behind the goal witnesed it a the mob of Sligo thugs, numbering three hundred strong was now walking directly toward them. Crowd riot At first the Sligo bootboys merged into the smaller group of Athlone bootboys on the embankment and it looked as if there wouldent be any trouble ? This somewhat calm scene remained for about twenty or so minutes, but then trouble erupted with groups of Sligo bootboys assaulting the Athlone group. As well as this some of the mob in the massed ranks of home bootboys started shelling Athlone goalkeeper Mick O'Brien with rocks and stones. Referee John Carpenter stopped the play on more than one occasion as the more than two thousand spectators in the ground looked on in amazement. Eventually it was announced over the tannoy that Mr Carpeneter would in fact abandon the match if there was a continuation of the missile throwing incidents. At one stage the beseiged O'Brien had to come out and stand at the edge of his penalty box so as to evade the cascade of rocks and stones raining down around him. The swarthy John Rooney, who was about thirteen years old at the time threw a bottle which came down half way inside the penalty box. The fighting continued on the embankment in spite of the attempts of at least five or six cops to stop it and after about ten or so minutes of the same a small number of Athlone skinheads were seen being escorted down the sideline by one the stewarts Eddie MacKenna. Mr MacKenna was helping these lads away from the area as they had been subjected to severe assault and there was blood pumping down their faces and down their white apparrel. At this point some of the elder members of the Athlone fans who had congregated in the Tracey Avenue pavilion made their way up the part of the ground to where the trouble was happening but they were unable to effect the dramatic proceedings which were by now developing into a small scale riot ? As the full time whistle approached the five or six Gardai on duty had been reinforced by more cops who had driven out to the ground and they were able to push the Sligo mob back but there was more violence after the match in the town centre when hundreds of Red Army bootboys fought with the Athlone fans in the Bests car park in Adelaide Street where two of their buses had been parked Fighting in town centre after match There was fighting at the bus station and several of the buses carrying the Athlone fans had their windows smashed at the station and more had their windows put in over at Hyde Bridge, one of the exit routes out of the town for buses at that time in 1975 being the route over Lord Edward Street, across Wine Street, over Hyde Bridge, and up the Bridge Street, Thomas Street, and Pearse Road conduit. Paul Waters had a lucky escape in a melee at the bus station when he caught cornered by some of the Athlone skinheads and it looked like he was going to get a hammering ? He was rescued however by a gang of Sligo bootboys who waded into the Athlone fans who then were subjected to a ferocious kicking. In the Bests car park beside Adelaide Steet there was a massive gang fight between a huge number of Athlone and Sligo Rovers fans in which many of the Athlone fans brandished a chains and knifes ? Mairead O'Boyle( Nee Callaghan ) who had just started going with Seamie at the time was standing there in the bright sunshine of that January afternoon in 1975 and she remembers how a massive gang fight occured in the Bests car park when a virtual army of Red Army bootboys ran up from the traffic lights beside the Western Wholesale at the Lord Edward Street-Wine Street junction. Mairead said that she never in her life saw anything like the number of Sligo bootboys that came up the street from the Western Wholesale in the direction of and into the Bests car park where two coaches carrying Athlone fans were parked and ready to drive out of the car park. She said that as many as fifty or sixty Athlone hardchaws hid down beneath the level of the windows on one of these and then dis-embarked so as to participate in a huge gang fight with the Sligo hardchaws in the car park. She says that she can still remember the moment in the middle of the mass riot when Sean Coyle lifted up a huge road-sign and hurled it through one of the windows of one of the two Athlone buses that had been parked in the car park. Ken Loftus, the last bootboy in Sligo, says that he remembers that Sunday afternoon particularly well. He said it was a brilliant day, in spite of being in the month of January, and that he remembers how the Athlone hardchaws were marshalled out of the Showgrounds at the end of the match by being let out onto the steps at the back of Tracey Avenue, probably after they had climbed over the wall at the railway end of the ground ? He added that they beat up on two Red Army teenagers who had accidently walked into their path on their walk over toward the Bests car park. He added that he still knows these two guys to see in Sligo in spite of that event having happened way back in 1975 ? To this very day he dosent know their names but he remembers them both from that afternoon all those years ago ? He said that the Sligo bootboys then went on masse to the Bests car park in Adelaide Street where two of their buses were parked. Ken said that there was a mass melee in the car park which saw all of the windows in the two Athlone buses being put in by the Sligo fans. He added that the late Patsy MacLoughlin went around with a claw hammer and put in a good few of these windows whilst massive blows from the huge buckles on the belts of the Red Army bootboys were enough to shatter the glass on the rest of these windows with Sean Coyle deliveringa " Coup De Grace " with a massive road sign which he hurled with almost unbelievable violence through one of the bus windows. He added that there was also a vicious gang fight and remarked that Seamie O'Boyle looked like the toughest bootboy in the universe as he flattened everything in front of and around him with massive concussive clouts and vicious blows that had the Athlone hardchaws reeling from out of his path. Sean Coyle charged in Court for his role in the crowd riot Sean Coyle, who on the day was attired in bootboy apparell, in spite of his being twenty five years of age at the time, was arrested and charged for his role in leading the mass crowd riot. Evidence was given at a March 1975 sitting of Sligo District Court as to how Coyle had stoned the bus in the paking bay of Sean MacDermoot Station in Wolfe Tone Street, and then left the scene whereupon he re-appeared a few minutes later at the traffic lights at Wine Street whereupon he threw a road sign through the back window of the same coach. Coyle and a 16 years old teenager both received a hefty fine and were forced to pay ?102 each ( about EURO 800 each in the currency of 2009 ) for the offence. The bus belonged to a Carrick on Shannon based transport company called Flagline and the driver who gave evidence in court against Coyle and the 16 years old youth was a man by the name of John Keyes ? The RTE television news made a reference to the trouble on its evening bulletin of that same day but the national newspapers failed to report on the large scale crowd tumult in any of its editions of the following day. The only print media publicity afforded the large scale crowd riot was in the reporting of the conviction of Sean Coyle at the Sligo District Court in March 1975, two months after the spectacular event ? The case was in fact reported on in the Sligo Champion

DUNDALK/ORIEL PARK INCIDENT OF OCTOBER 8th 1975
This was for the FAI League Cup Semi Final of the 1975/76 season between Sligo Rovers and Drogheada United at the neutral venue of Oriel Park in Dundalk. The match kicked off before a crowd of about nine hundred spectators in the dark of night under the glare of the Oriel Park floodights at 7.30 pm on the Wednesday evening of October 8th 1975. Six fifty seat express coaches ferried about three hundred red and white bedecked Sligo Rovers fans to the north Leinster venue with them arriving in Dundalk at about half past five that evening, leaving the Sligo fans with about an hour and a half or so to ramble around the town centre. The firm were there with as many as seventy bovver boys having made the trip up on the bus hired by Seamie O'Boyle. They were joined up with by about a hundred other denim clad bovver booted Sligo teenagers who had made their way up on other coaches. This meant that there was about a hundred and fifty cider slugging Sligo thugs walking around Dundalk town centre in the dusk of an October evening before the shops actually closed at six o'clock. According to a good few of the lads Dundalk people were aghast at the sight of the Sligo mob, clobbered up as they were with ultra high lace shiny black Doc Martin boots and bleached half mast denim parallels, with a good few of them wearing waist length Harringtons as well as grey bovver crombies, and a good few of them with their heads shaved ( Patsy MacLoughlin was one such ), with the red and white striped Liverpool scarfs or the red black and white Manchester Uniteed scarfs of the period draped around their necks. According to Ken Loftus people stopped to stare at them on the street as if they had never seen the likes of them ? Mob As the mass mob made its way around the brightly lit Dundalk town centre they made their malevolent presence felt by drinking from glass cider flagons in the street and roaring and shouting abuse at passers by. A good few of the thugs spat in the faces of locals who happened to be walking past. Several local unsuspecting teenagers were disposessed of whatever change they were carrying in their pockets by the fearsome looking thugs as they walked unexpectently into groups of the Sligo gang who then preceeded to rob them. About fifty of the gang went into a small gaming arcade where they shot pool, played the slot machines and then went re grouped with the core of the gang and went to a chipper. About a hundred of the lads got chips in a takeaway with many of them then walking out without paying and then broke up into smaller groups wandering around the busy town centre, bustling as it was with hundreds of people going about their business. Brian Scanlon remembers that himself and the extremely thuggishly attired Gerry Farrell went into a somewhat glamourous looking hotel which had a colour television set on in the bar and that the management were so appalled at the sight of the Sligo bootboys that they put up the bar shutters and closed up. Theft. By far the most serious incident was when two of the gang, one of whom was the notorious Charles Cawley, went onto a jewellery shop and stole an item of jewellery. Meanwhile the word had spread around Dundalk that there was a " heavy gang " from Sligo roaming the streets, and some of the local hardmen began to appear in clusters on street corners so as to suss out the situation. Skirmishes in Dundalk town centre Ken Loftus said that there were scuffles with some of the locals and a small bit of fighting but they were easily seen off by a flurry of blows from the numberous Sligo thugs and after they had fled the scene they were not seen again untill the match, except from a distance whereby a small number of them attempted to throw stones at the Sligo mobsters. In 1976 Kevin MacGuinn told a great story about this sporadic fighting in Dundalk town centre before the match and he said at that time, when the memory of it was still fresh in his mind, that it whilst it was small in scale it was serious enough. He said that Seamie O'Boyle got into punch ups with a few of the locals, but he never had to " put the boot in " ( kick them in the balls ) as he was able to flatten them or send them recoiling from the fierce plethora of thumps and headbutts he hit them with. According to MacGuinn this was spectacular to look at as spectacle and by-standers and passers by were shocked by the sight of the same, happening as it was in the busy town centre at half past five in the evening as hundreds of people made their way up and down the pavements in the centre of what was one of the biggest towns in Ireland. MacGuinn confirms Loftuses account of it saying that O'Boyle and two or three more of the lads were able to see them off with thumps and headbutts. Kenneth Loftus says that after this mayhem in the town centre the Sligo " red army " then made its way out from the town centre and toward the direction of Oriel Park stadium, slugging from glass cider flagons as they made their way up the road. There was no singing or chanting untill they reached the stadium as they wanted to save their voices so they could drown out the Drog fans that would be there. Just before reaching the ground a mob of as many as a hundred or a hundred and fifty of the lads went into a pub and they drank there untill about a half an hour before kick off time. By now local cops were alert to the fact that there was a bunch of thugs roaming the streets of Dundalk and that there had been several acts of assault, affray, petty larceny, as well as a major act of theft from a jewellery shop committed by the same crew. Territorial victory in taking of shed by ignoring Stewarts attempts to marshall them At Oriel Park itself there was only two cops on duty and they were directing traffic outside the ground. On entering the floodlit stadium the firm were instructed by the two FAI employed stewarts to move to an area behind one of the goals but O'Boyle told them f--k off and barged his way through the men who were wearing the white stewarting coats of the period. At this point a mob of well over a hundred and fifty Sligo bootboys headed across the brilliantly illuminated ground and into the popular terrace stand which was located half way along the length of the pitch. The group was joined by another two hundred or so supporters, so as to form a huge cluster of as many as three or four hundred fans and they began to generate atmosphere by singing and chanting. In fact the area they were in now looked like a " small kop " and this was remarked on in the national newspaper reports on the match of the following day. ( Irish Independent and Irish Press, October 12th 1975 ). After a few minutes about sixty Drogheada United bootboys arrived in through a gate on the far side of the ground. They were the " Drogheada heavy gang " and they were tanked up on cider, and looked like a group of West Ham or Aston Villa supporters because of their denim attire and claret and blue scarfs. They had also been joined by as many as ten or twenty local Dundalk gurriurs who wanted to avenge the fact that several of the local hardmen from the town had been assaulted by the Sligo crew an hour or so earlier as the red army thugs had made their way around the town centre making trouble. These Dundalk fellas werent wearing any colours but humiliated and enraged by their being assaulted earlier in their own territory they were now aligning themselves with the Drogs mob so as to exact vengeance for what had happened. Several of them could be seen pointing over at the Sligo mob as they entered the ground with the Drogs fans. The Drogheada fans made their way to an area behind the goal and a few of their number came over to start trouble. Confrontation. It looked like there might be a crowd riot at this point but this was averted when the two cops and the two stewarts got between the two groups. Realising that serious trouble might be brewing Jamsie MacTiernan, the Rovers physio, who was on speaking terms with Seamie O'Boyle, and Rovers manager Billy Sinclair came out from the pitch and went up onto the terrace to try to plead with him not to start a crowd riot as the club would be banned from senior football ? This made good sense as the FAI had even gone as far as to threaten Sligo Rovers with closure of the Showgrounds little under a year before this. There was a tense stand off as the two groups of bootboys looked menacingly at each other from a distance of about fifty yards with O'Boyle warning the cops and MacTiernan that he and the boys would k--k the f--k out of the Drogheada mob if there was any provocation during the match and reminded the officials that the " shed " was theirs for the night. This " shed remark " remark was a direct reference to the fact that there was a " prestige value " in the taking of the shed end ( territorial prestige ) at any particular ground. So the capture of it by the lads before the kick off, by virtue of their barging past the stewarts who had ordered them to stand behind the goals was a victory of sorts for them as it put their morale high. Seamie flattens stick attacker As this parlay between MacTiernan, Sinclair, the officials and Seamie was happening there was witnessed one of the most spectacular incidents of the evening when a Drog thug armed with a stick ran at O'Boyle from the side and nearly caught him unawares. MacTiernan said that Seamie only saw his attacker at the very last second but deflected the downward blow of the stick as the Drog charged into him, and then gave the Drogheada gurriur the most unmercifull kicking he ever seen. Jamsie MacTiernan said that he never saw anything like the kicking that O'Boyle gave him after he battered him down onto the ground. He battered him down onto the ground and then destroyed him with kicks and sent him sprawling across the terrace. MacTiernan remarked that O'Boyle kicked him repeatedly in the balls and the head after he had flattened him ? With this the Drogheada crowd disbursed to an area behind the goal and there was no more trouble, except for a number of small incidents in the second half when Seamie on his own, is reputed to have made( ? ) a foraging run into the Droghead cluster. Seamie is reputed( ? ) to have actually walked over on his own and then gathered into a charge into the sixty or so Drogs banging a few heads together and flattening one of their number with kicks and thumps. This incident happened only at a point in the play when Sligo Rovers had established a good lead and as it happened the team won the match by 5-1. In fact throughout the second half the cluster of between three and five hundred or so Rovers fans crowded into the stand created an atmosphere akin to that seen at Anfield or Old Trafford with their waving of their red and white scarfs above their heads as their huge " Red Alert " banner swayed from side to side. Noel Dunne in the Irish Independent and Martin Meaghan in the Irish Press described this as a breath taking sight to behold, in their reporting on the match in the next days editions of the national newspapers, remarks completely understandable given that most of the domestic fixtures of that period were played out in virtually empty stadia before dead and lifeless crowds of only a few hundred fans. So whilst the mob of a hundred and fifty or so bootboys created a certain amount of mayhem in the town and at Oriel Park itself they also generated an atmosphere so fantastic that it was remarked about by the two most senior soccer writers of the period in the two most prestigious daily newspapers of that time. As the referee blew his final whistle the entire mob scaled the Oriel Park fencing and invaded the pitch. Hat trick hero Mick Leonard, who went on to play for Dunfermline in the Scottish League, was carried shoulder high off the pitch by the jubilant Sligo Rovers supporters. Brenndan O'Reilly in his report on the late night RTE Sports bulletin of that same night remarked about the fantastic atmosphere that had been generated by the six busloads of Sligo Rovers supporters that had made the trip to Dundalk, but without mentioning that there had been small incidents of crowd trouble in Dundalk and at the venue. In fact there was no mention of the aggro in any of the editions of the national newpapers of the next day. Arrests. At about eleven o'clock that night the six express buses left Dundalk for the return trip to Sligo, but it wasnt that straight forward for the bus carrying the heavy gang ? As the coaches were pulling out a the CIE station in the town a number of squad cars arrived into the station and several cops got out and ordered the driver to hold the bus where it was. A number of cops with batons climbed up onto the coach and told the driver that the bus would not be allowed to leave Dundalk untill an item of jewellery stolen by one of the gang earlier in the town centre had been recovered ? They also informed the driver that they would be arresting a number of those on board the coach. Several of the lads were taken off the coach and frisk searched, and Charles Cawley, and a guy called O'Grady were taken to Dundalk Garda station where they were questioned about the theft. At about 2 o'clock in the morning Cawley and O'Grady were released and allowed to re board the bus, the stolen item of jewellery never having been recovered. The bus, carrying as it was the greatest bunch of thugs in the country finally lumbered into Sligo at half past five in the morning of the next day. Jim Gaffney says he remembers it well as he had to be up for work a few hours later. Such were the menaces of travelling with the firm at the time

[pastradamus]

There's only one team and that Cork City my man! :D