Former West Ham striker Tony Cottee has shared a shocking incident from 1985, where a hooligan barged into the team’s dressing room during a pre-season match to berate the players for their performance.
Recounting the story on the Undr the Cosh podcast, Cottee described the intense situation that unfolded after a disappointing 3-0 loss to Leyton Orient. Despite what would later become a stunning season for him and team-mate Frank McAvennie, scoring a combined total of 54 goals, the Hammers’ pre-season was proving disastrous.
“It was pre-season, but it wasn’t on tour, it was at Orient. We were old school first division and Orient were old school fourth division at the time. So we’ve gone there and we’ve lost 3-0 to Orient,” Cottee said.
He continued, detailing the abysmal run of form: “Honestly bearing in mind we had our best ever season, me and Frank (McAvennie) got 54 goals between us, the pre-season was absolutely catastrophic. It was dreadful, we didn’t win a game, we couldn’t score, we were all over the place.”
The situation then escalated when a member of West Ham’s notorious Inter City Firm, the ‘ICF’, made an unwelcome entrance into the changing room. Cottee vividly remembered the moment: “John Lyall (West Ham manager) had just started to do his team-talk and all of a sudden this flipping door slams open and this big bloke comes in and he was f*****g huge, skinhead and all that, tatts and everything,” reports the Daily Star.
“He was obviously one of the ICF, one of the proper West Ham boys and he started doing the team talk and John Lyall just sort of stepped out of the way and he went ‘Parksy (Phil Parkes) you’re too old, you can’t catch the ball anymore, Ray Stewart all you do is take penalties’.
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“He went through the whole team and got me and said ‘look at you, you’re a little midget’. He f*****g slaughtered everyone and went right through the whole team – even the subs, all the young kids (saying) ‘you’re not good enough to play for West Ham’.”
In a droll twist to the scary moment, Cottee disclosed that the then West Ham manager didn’t have much sympathy for his underachieving squad, adding: “John Lyall just let him rattle on and all of a sudden the police came in and grabbed hold of him, about four of them grabbed him and marched him out and then John Lyall stepped forward and went ‘he’s f*****g right isn’t he’.”
When questioned about whether a set-up by the Hammers’ gaffer had transpired, Cottee staunchly stood by his claim that a “proper fan” was involved and lamented how the “poor bloke got arrested”, following a brief impersonation of the West Ham manager. This tale is nothing new when it comes to the attention shone on the ICF though.
The infamous group, who had a huge reputation in the football hooliganism sphere, was notorious for its ruthlessness, with members notorious for leaving distinctive calling cards on their victims, labelled: “Congratulations, you have just met the ICF.”
Its reputation even contributed to former gangster Danny Woollard alleging the ICF had sent Lenny McLean, known as Britain’s hardest man, fleeing in fear. Rumours circulated that the crew frequently participated in large-scale brawls numbering in the hundreds, among various other controversial incidents throughout their existence.
