"After The Match, The Game Begins"

"After The Match, The Game Begins"

Football is a passion for many. For some it is a Saturday in the pub followed by going to watch your team. For others, it's a family day out costing an arm and a leg. For some young lads, in their early to late teens at the start of the 80's, it became something altogether different.

Kenny McCall and John Robb came from different backgrounds. Kenny was a Dundee United FC fan and John a Dundee FC fan. Both lived for a Saturday and for going to watch their own team play, until a nationwide craze swept through the terraces of Dundee and the Football Casual arrived in the city. This book is their story of how two childhood friends that supported the city's two different teams would get together on a Saturday and join as one to defend the City's honour.

The above book is described by Amazon as follows:

""After The Match, The Game Begins" is the story of how two childhood mates grew up literally either side of the two closest football grounds in the UK and into one of the most feared firms in the country.

Growing up in Dundee as football crazy young boys they faced an early choice, Dundee United or Dundee FC.

Kenny McCall chose United and John Robb picked the dark blue of Dundee.

As they approached their teenage years a new youth phenomenon which had already began to appear on the football terraces of Britain, started to spread like wildfire throughout every town and city in Scotland and into Dundee.

The Casual was born.

Instead of becoming bitter rivals and sworn enemies they stood side by side in the one and only firm in the city which 'defended' both clubs. This is the true, honest and very unique story of the Dundee Utility thugs."

The opinions of people regarding Football Casuals are extreme and can bring passion to a head, but like it or not, they were part of the Football Culture of the late 70s to early 90s. This is the honest story of two local guys and how they were seized by a phenomenon and carried along for the ride. It's a local book by local writers about something that happened in our fine city.

Regardless of your viewpoint on Casuals and the infamous 'Dundee Utility', to voice your opinion on something you need to know all the facts and this books does just that. It gives you the facts as they happened. It is easy to condemn such books as these as glorifying 'football thugs' but this is the story of genuine Football fans caught up in a craze that swept the country. Read it before you judge them.

It's a warts and all account of what went on around the casual scene for years and many of the guys involved still go along to Tannadice and Dens today, a revelation giving the accusations always thrown at them that they 'were not football fans'.