As true aber­don­ian and worked in Edin­burgh for years and went to loads of matches - in both ends - you talk off the fights and crews but realy being a sup­porter would be fun.

ps was left in Edin­burgh when 11 when cousin was arrested for fight­ing at Waver­ley in 1981 nae good.

You never hear of the girl crews and we were there week in week out and fought like men when needed.

That last sen­tence just screams Sunday sup­ple­ment fea­ture, doesn’t it?

I’ve never read any­thing about female casu­als, whether in terms of fash­ion or vio­lence, and the only ref­er­ence I can dig up, on the exhaus­tive Foot­ball Research Organ­i­sa­tion UK web­site, is to a 1998 pam­phlet from Leices­ter University’s Sir Norman Chester Centre for Foot­ball Research titled Fact­sheet 9: A His­tory of Female Foot­ball Fans.

The only prob­lem is, if I pitch the piece, and some­one goes for it, I’ll have to actu­ally talk to some lady hooli­gans. Scary. Very scary.

Iain Hume capped Tranmere’s win in a six-​goal thriller against 10-man Sheffield Wednes­day at Pren­ton Park.

Calvin Zola headed a Ryan Taylor cross home to put Rovers ahead and Mike Jack­son added a second soon after.

Steve MacLean pulled one back and though Taylor scored a penalty when Guy Branston brought down Hume, Guy­lain Ndumbu-​Nsungu made it 3-2 at the break.

Hume made it 4-2 with a deflected effort and Branston’s was dis­missed for an appar­ent elbow on Eugene Dadi.

Nice one!

Can anyone explain why the Rovers always do so much better in the second half, in terms of both matches and the season?

Pre­sum­ably the latter is down to the boost pro­vided by the semi-​traditional FA Cup run, but every time I see them play they skit­ter about like head­less chick­ens in the first half, then run out for the second like some sort of crack squad of tac­ti­cal ninjas. Or something.

Yes, I am post­ing about foot­ball. Please do not adjust your browser. Normal ser­vice will resume tomorrow.

The UK has had it’s fair share of fashion-​led sub­cul­tures. Arguably, this ten­dency dates to the 18th and 19th Cen­tury dandies, who either rev­elled in the stric­tures of ‘correct’ attire, or plumped for flam­boy­ant, deca­dent dress, with a hint of gender con­fu­sion thrown in for good measure.

By the latter half of the 20th Cen­tury, the sar­to­r­ial descen­dents of Beau Brum­mel and his ilk came in waves. 1950s Teds res­ur­rected the Edwar­dian drape coats that gave them their name (a look revived in the 70s, fil­tered through Glam, or in its orig­i­nal form). The 1960s belonged to Mods, who mor­phed into Skin- and Suede­heads, and saw their sharp-​suited tastes per­re­nially revived. Even Punk, what­ever the pro­tag­o­nists might say about DIY, post-​Winter of Dis­con­tent rage and anar­chy, was a fash­ion move­ment first and fore­most: just ask Vivi­enne West­wood and Mal­colm MacLaren.

All these modes share common traits, regard­less of the aes­thetic - the clothes had to be expen­sive, they had to be osten­ta­tious, they had to be immac­u­late, and they had to be worn first by work­ing class young men. Given the high rate of fash­ion churn between the post-​war period and the 1970s, it’s per­haps a sur­prise that the last great rev­o­lu­tion in mens cloth­ing was sparked some­time in 1977 and holds fast to this day - the Foot­ball Casual.

I think this has some­thing to do with the brand. Where a Mod might wear any suit, as long as it adhered to the con­ven­tions of Ital­ian tai­lor­ing, a Casual can’t wear any old tennis shirt: only Sergio Tachinni would do, or Fila, or Lacoste.

At the risk of offend­ing some very scary hooli­gans who live in London, Casual began on Mersey­side. First, when scal­lies from on and around the Scot­land Road in Liv­er­pool merged ele­ments of Punk style with shades of David Bowie’s proto-​glam, plus an odd attach­ment to drain­pipe jeans and, of course, the wedge hair­cut. Then a little later - 1978-9 - scally sup­port­ers of Liv­er­pool FC found them­selves at a loose end in French and Ital­ian city cen­tres, thanks to their club’s Euro­pean suc­cesses, and took the oppor­tu­nity to acquire (or, more accu­rately, steal) sports- and causal-​wear they knew fellow and rival sup­port­ers back home had no chance of finding.

Despite shifts in pop­u­lar­ity over time, the brands favoured by the first casu­als are those seen on every British high street today, whether it’s the Euro­pean away match makes - Kappa, Lacoste, Ellesse, Sergio Tac­chini - or brands adopted more recently - Burberry, Stone Island, Acquas­cu­tum - and not just on foot­ball fans. The seem­ingly per­ma­nent fetish for the early model Adidas train­ers that can be seen on the feet of every­one from floppy-​fringed indie kids to per­fectly respectable middle-​aged men began with the early Casual pref­er­ence for Sambas, swiftly fol­lowed by Stan Smiths. That nice shower-​proof cagoule you have in the wardrobe dates to Casual anoraks, orig­i­nally worn over Pringle or Slazenger sweaters, often by Kappa, some­times by Patrick. Admit­tedly, you don’t see many folk sport­ing Inega, Fior­ruci or Lois nowa­days, but they’re the excep­tions that prove the rule.

This sar­to­r­ial longevity is down to the brands, as much as it is to the endur­ing (admit­tedly dis­taste­ful) glam­our of the well-​turned-​out foot­ball hooli­gan. To be a dandy, Mod, Punk or Skin involves an atten­tion to detail shared by the Casual, but thanks to brand­ing, that atten­tion to detail can be reduced to a basic list of cloth­ing man­u­fac­tur­ers, rather than, to take Mods as an exam­ple, an in-​depth under­stand­ing of the proper number of cuff-​buttons and an eye for the cor­rect width of tie. Of course, any old Casu­als read­ing will dis­agree, as will their Burberry-​capped and track­suited con­tem­po­rary fol­low­ers, and they can rea­son­ably cite the subtle dif­fer­ences of Casual attire from foot­ball club to foot­ball club (the London loy­alty to Farah, say, or the short-​lived fad for deer­stalker hats in the North of Eng­land) but the fact remains that Casual was the first brand-​led fash­ion move­ment to take hold in the UK, and it is brand­ing that has made it last.

In case you’re won­der­ing, when I got up this morn­ing I put on a Sergio Tac­chini sweater (in navy blue and red with white piping - mmmn!), dark grey cords and Diadora train­ers. Hence this post.

Before you leave a com­ment on this post, please note that sec­tar­ian insults and attempts to arrange fights will not be tol­er­ated and if nec­es­sary reported to your inter­net ser­vice provider.