England : Confessions of a soccer thug: Notorious Gremlin refuses to say sorry for his mindless and violent past - 30/09/2013Source : http://www.chroniclelive.co.uk
Tyneside's notorious football hooligan Mark Mennim has revealed he hates the game as much as it hates himTyneside's most notorious hooligan today lifts the lid on his lifetime of football violence.
Speaking exclusively to the Chronicle, Mark Mennim has opened up for the first time about life at the centre of Newcastle’s notorious football ‘firms’.
The 52-year-old convicted criminal reveals he doesn’t even like football and tells how his addiction to match-day fighting cost him his family, landed him in jail, and came close to ending his life.
But the soccer yob also confessed he never wanted to leave behind the violence which leaves Newcastle United fans across the globe hanging their heads in shame.
He said: “It was my life. We were all mates together, all comrades fighting together and we have been all over England and Europe.
“I have never liked football and I never will. I’ve had more fun paying my council tax, but I just loved the fighting.
“I was fighting for my city and I was proud of it. I have done two jail sentences, I’ve been to court on numerous occasions, done community work and probation and spent thousands on fines, but it never put me off.”
Mennim is one of around 40 hooligans past and present who tell their stories in a new book charting the history of football violence in Newcastle over the last 45 years.
Entitled NME, From the Bender Squad to the Gremlins, Inside Newcastle’s Football Hooligan Firm, the book, penned by Mennim with Steve Wraith and Stuart Wheatman, aims to set the record straight about Tyneside’s firms.
Mennim tells how he became hooked on violence at an early age.
“I lived in the east end and everybody did it,” he said, “It was a different society back then. It was just part of life. On a Saturday everyone went to the match.
“I first got into football at nine when I went with a few of my mates. The game didn’t really interest me. I tried a few times to get into it but I found it boring and just wanted to be somewhere else.
“The crowd interested me though. The singing between the fans and the passion for their club and city struck a chord with me. Then in my teens I witnessed the violence and I was hooked from then on and started to follow it on every occasion.”
By the age of 12 Mennim was determined to get into the famous firm of the day, The Bender Squad, who were known to get drunk before matches then look for fights.
Mennim’s disinterest in the game itself meant he often used to go ‘scouting’ for the older lads looking for away supporters outside the ground.
“I hated football and preferred Newcastle to get beat if I’m honest because you always seemed to get more fights after a defeat,” said Mennim. “We would look for stickers on cars and vans that may say the vehicle was bought in Manchester for instance and we’d log that and go back to it after the match as it was probably going to have a few ‘aways’ in it.”
Mennim was accepted into the Bender Squad’s fold. And with this firm, and later the notorious Gremlins, he travelled the country looking for fights.
“I never got scared. You don’t think you are going to get killed,” he said. “You just get this amazing rush. It’s exciting.
“I have never used a weapon. I have used tables and chairs. But I have never stabbed anyone and I have never used a knife. I have been in a few incidents where people have been really hurt and I was a bit worried. But I have never felt guilty, and you could never run away.”
Mennim, from Byker, Newcastle, was so hooked on violence nothing else mattered. Relationships came and went, and even after becoming a father he couldn’t give up.
Not long after the birth of his daughter Mennim was jailed for carrying a knife when he travelled down to London in 1987 for a Spurs game, something he claims was a ‘fit-up’.
Following his release 18 months later he tried to go straight for the sake of his family, and stayed away from football and fighting for two seasons.
But the pull was too strong. And when he returned to violence, his partner of 12 years left him, taking his three-year-old girl with her.
Losing his daughter through hooliganism is his only regret.
“I was getting locked up every other week. I have lost a lot of girlfriends through it,” he explained. “I was with my daughter’s mother for about 12 years and she stuck with us. When my daughter was born I tried. And I stopped for two seasons and I kept away.
“I got back into football in 1991. I was running a pub in Westerhope and I met a few of the Gremlins when they came in. I went to an England match with them, and that’s when I got the buzz back.
“I have lost a lot. I do regret losing my daughter, I have not seen her since she was three and she’s 25 now. All she knows about me is that I’m a football hooligan.”
Many of Mennim’s ‘comrades’ from the 80s and 90s gave up the violence when they settled down and had families.
But he found it impossible to quit, and said he has only stopped now because of his ill health.
“I never grew up. A lot of them settled down but I never did,” he said. “I have only ‘retired’ now because I have had two heart attacks. I would still be doing it if I could. It never leaves you.”
And he said CCTV cameras, mobile phone technology and new policing methods would make it impossible to do what the Bender Squad, the Gremlins, and the NME did back in their hey day.
“It was different days back then,” said Mennim. “There was no CCTV, no mobiles phones and the police didn’t have the football intelligence unit that they have now.
“It’s finished now. Back then as long as you didn’t get arrested on the day you were fine. But now the police just sit back and get it all on CCTV then they put your door in days later and you are in court, then you have a banning order
“There are a lot of keyboard warriors now. They all give the big ’un on Facebook but they would never come up here and fight. They talk the talk but they can’t walk the walk.”
Fanzine editor, actor and promoter, Steve Wraith has wanted to write a book exploring the history of Newcastle’s hooligan firms for more than 15 years.
But having maintained a silence for decades members declined the first invitations, and it is only now that they felt the time was right to speak.
NME, From the Bender Squad to the Gremlins, attempts to cover every major event in the world of Newcastle football violence over the last five decades.
Steve says the book does not aim to glamorise violence, but to document this part of Tyneside’s history.
He said: “This is an honest account. There are a lot of false stories out there and a lot of the lads have thought it was about time we set the record straight. It is a social history of something that has been part of our city for the last 45 years.”
The book is released on October 31.
Yesterday at 6:28 pm by UFW Maltchickers
