TWENTY-FIVE YEARS AGO Friday August 19, 1994

Locals face football nightmare in Athens

Five Campbeltown Rangers supporters were the victims of Greek souvenir hunters last week – who attacked them with bottles.

The five were attacked during a nightmare visit to Athens to watch Rangers play AEK in the European Cup.

They believe the gang of around 20 thugs, who attacked them as they returned to their hotel in the early hours of last Thursday, were after their Rangers football tops.

Mr Charlie McIntyre, 31, of 34a Albyn Avenue, said: ‘I would say what they really wanted were the tops – our money wasn’t touched. If they had taken our money that would have been less degrading. I think if they wanted to they could have given us a real doing but they were after souvenirs.’

Mr McIntyre and his friend Mr Neil Campbell, 27, of 8a Saddell Street, had their tops torn off by the thugs.

The three others in the party were wearing t-shirts. But that didn’t stop Mr Ronnie Souden, 27, of Ralston Road, receiving a leg wound which needed five stitches and a nasty graze to his stomach.

Mr Souden managed to escape his attackers by jumping into a passing taxi.

Both Mr McIntyre and Mr Souden were taken to hospital by ambulance.

The two other members of the group, Campbell Sims, 21, of Ardnacraig Avenue, and Neil McCaig, 32, of 31 Meadows Avenue, managed to get away from their attackers without serious injury.

Mr McCaig was hit from behind with a bottle as he fended off two thugs.

The bottle-throwing thugs chased several members of the group through the maze of streets around the hotel. Mr McIntyre, wielding a plastic bag containing tins of beer, chased his attackers for several hundred yards in an attempt to get his shirt back.

It was only by shouting out to each other that the five Campbeltown men were able to find each other among the warren of streets surrounding the hotel.