Roaring Roy showed attackers a Lion heart
A FOOTBALL fan reportedly yelled “f**k you, I’m Millwall” as he single-handedly took on the three knife-wielding London terror attackers with nothing more than his fists.
Roy Larner has been hailed a hero, with a petition launched for him to be awarded the George Cross medal for his actions in the Black and Blue steakhouse on Saturday night.
In fighting back, the 47-year-old Millwall fan gave dozens of others who were in the Borough Market restaurant the chance to escape.
Now out of the intensive care ward of St Thomas’ Hospital, where he was treated for knife wounds all over his body including his neck, the father of one has told The Sun how he reacted when the killers burst into the restaurant shouting “Islam, Islam” and “This is for Allah”.
“Like an idiot,” he told the newspaper, “I shouted back at them. I thought, ‘I need to take the p**s out of these b ****** s’.
“I took a few steps towards them and said, ‘F**k you, I’m Millwall’. So they started attacking me.
“I stood in front of them trying to fight them off. Everyone else ran to the back. I was on my own against all three of them – that’s why I got hurt so much.
“It was just me, trying to grab them with my bare hands and hold on. I was swinging.
“I got stabbed and sliced eight times.
“They got me in my head, chest and both hands. There was blood everywhere.
Luckily, none of the blows were straight at me or I’d be dead.”
Mr Larner, from Peckham, south-east London, said the attackers eventually “ran out of the pub and legged it”.
Despite his injuries, he said he followed them outside.
“It wasn’t until I was in a police car that I realised I was in a bad way,” he said.
“I’d been sliced up all over. “I didn’t think of my safety at the time. I’d had four or five pints – nothing major.”
Mr Larner’s actions have won him a huge following on social media, where he has been called “The Lion of London Bridge”, a reference to Millwall Football Club’s nickname, the Lions.
Fans of the south London club have long prided themselves on their refusal to duck a fight.
Mr Larner’s bravery, however, seems suddenly to have made Millwall fans popular.
On Good Morning Britain, presenter Piers Morgan, a fan of rival London club Arsenal, told viewers: “Millwall fans get a very bad rap, a lot of it very deserved, but there are times when you really want a lot of Millwall fans, and that was one of them.”