Brotherhood of football hooligans

Pete Dunham: [Matt and Pete are sitting at a food vendor stall, reading a newspaper the morning after the Birmingham game/fight] Fuckin' journos. Look at this.

[he slaps the paper]

Pete Dunham: West Ham wins 3-nil in a blindin' performance, and our little scrap makes the headline. Bloody muckrakers.

Matt Buckner: So, what is this?

Pete Dunham: Bollocks journo bullshit.

Matt Buckner: No, no, this, the GSE.

Pete Dunham: [whispering] Shhh! Lower it, son!

Matt Buckner: What are you guys, like, an organized political movement or something?

Pete Dunham: No, mate. We're a firm. You never heard of a firm in the States?

Matt Buckner: No.

Pete Dunham: All right. Every football team in Europe's got a firm. Some have two.

[Matt gives him a blank look]

Pete Dunham: Christ, I forgot how clueless you Yanks are. All you've seen of us is the stadium riots on TV, innit? Come on.

[they get up and walk away from the stall]

Pete Dunham: See, West Ham football is mediocre. But our firm is top-notch, and everyone knows it. The GSE: Green Street Elite. Arsenal... great football, shit firm... the Gooners. Tottenham... shit football, and a shit firm... the Yids, they're called. I actually put their main lad through a phone box window the other day.

Matt Buckner: [Matt looks down at the newspaper] What about Millwall?

Pete Dunham: Ah, Millwall. Where to even fucking begin with Millwall. Millwall and West Ham firms hate each other, more than any other firms by far.

Matt Buckner: Sorta like the Yankees and the Red Sox.

Pete Dunham: More like the Israelis and the Palestinians.

[Matt laughs]

Pete Dunham: We haven't played Millwall in ten years. Their top boy's this geezer named Tommy Hatcher. 'Orrible ol' cunt. Back in the Major's day, Tommy's son was killed in a scrap. After that, he went completely mental. Lost the plot.

Matt Buckner: Well, who's the Major?

Pete Dunham: Ah, the Major. Quite a legend 'round here. He ran the GSE in the Nineties, when I was comin' up. Hardest bastard you ever saw. They say we kinda lost our way when he left. But believe me, my boys are bringin' the ol' GSE reputation right back.

Matt Buckner: So basically, firms are gangs?

Pete Dunham: Kind of... but we're a far cry from all that Bloods and Crips bullshit. I mean shootin' a machine gun out of a movin' car at an 8 year old girl, that's just cowardly. See, we might be into fightin' an all that... but it's more about reputation. Humiliatin' another mob in a row, doin' somethin' the other firms get to hear and talk about - like a Yank in his first fight battering one of Birmingham's main lads.