Teen ‘hoodlums’

`Disgusting behaviour’bya party of teenage Celtic supporters was remarked upon bythe Observer of, November, 1961.

The fans were on a Glasgow-bound train whichhad stopped at Stirling Station one Saturday that month.

`Through theopenwindow ofa compartmenttheyoungsters, aged 15 to 17,shouted filthylanguageto people waiting on theopposite platform without any particular cause,’said the paper. One middle-aged Obanwoman , who was with her daughter, wasshockedand said she had never heard anything like it.

`The pity wasthere was not a railway policeman about to deal with these hoodlums.’

The paper also told how earlier in the day, inStirling’s main street, `moronic football fanatics could be seen making obscene gestures at girls who glanced at their coach as it passed through thetown. On the same day `similar savages’gotout of a privately-owned coachnear Dunblaneand started smashing beer bottles intoa field, endangering livestock likely to be later grazing there.

And Stirling wasn’ttheonly town where football supporters were behaving badly.

The paper said: `In Dundee onSaturday night, a drunk-mad mob ofCeltic fans ran riot, smashing bars, wrecking public houses and terrorising the city.Fifty people weretreated atthe city’s Royal Infirmary and25 arrests were made.”

Andthe Observer commented: `It’s time the complacencyinhigh places aboutthe adequacy of current penalties for football rowdyism was dispelled.’