Soccer Thug (Christopher Wood, 1973)

 

At risk of demonizing the Confessions series even more than it has been, I have a growing suspicion that the Confessions books and films owe their existence to the James Moffatt/Richard Allen book ‘Skinhead’. In the 1970 Moffatt book, the protagonist Joe Hawkins gets a job working as a coal delivery assistant, which he and his co-worker use as an excuse to shag suburban housewives. This leads me to wonder if Confessions of a Window Cleaner author Christopher Wood read Skinhead, zoned in on that part of the Moffatt book, and thought there was the basis for a bestselling comedy book in there, as long as it was separated from all of the racial violence, rape and anti-Semitism that surrounded it. Keeping in mind that the ex-borstal boy Timothy Lea of the original Confessions of a Window Cleaner novel is much closer to Joe Hawkins than Robin Askwith's later interpretation of the role. Part of me hopes that isn't the case, since I'm handing Confessions detractors another reason to ‘detract’ here. Given Moffatt's well known anti-Semitism and frequent lashing out at the permissive society though, it would be supremely ironic if his writing had set into motion a sex comedy franchise made mainly by Jewish filmmakers. One suspects Moffatt would have needed a few Seagram's Hundred Pipers to get over that shock. Further evidence of the possible Moffatt influence on Confessions of a Window Cleaner is the existence of Soccer Thug, a 1973 book by Confessions author Christopher Wood, under the blokeish pen name 'Frank Clegg' that is very much chasing the Skinhead cash-cow.

This is your life Harold 'Striker' Rickards, it may not turn out how you want it to be...indeed Striker is one luckless little sod, who is introduced to us kicking a prison bed, causing more damage to his foot than the intended target. Striker has been sent down after being mistakenly identified as the youthful hooligan who viciously beat up a skinhead at a football game. Upon release Striker discovers his girlfriend Lynn has been having it away with Rantic, a blue eyed football hooligan who is also muscling in on Striker's gang of tearaways. Out of jealousy and revenge, Striker fucks Lynn behind a trailer at a funfair, undeterred by her protests or the elderly drunk pissing against the trailer "Striker watched the drops of urine dripping from the underside of the trailer and said nothing".

Worst still when Striker returns home he discovers his mum has been having it away with the TV repair man. Sending Striker into a jealous rage, you see Striker secretly wants to shag his own mother as well "Striker remembered how he had tried to pull her on to the bed when he was a child. He had always wanted to touch her breasts". The dude sure has his problems.

Striker is a proto punk, who gives every authority figure within earshot lip, regardless of the consequences to himself. Striker observes much of an ever changing Britain and likes little, from the prevalence of black bus drivers to the new, impersonal town centres that have been springing up "in the subways bearded hippies played guitars, gangs of youths beat up strangers and girls were occasionally assaulted. The man who designed the town centre had got a knighthood". All that meets with Striker's approval is football, birds, cars and aggro.

Wood does differ from the Moffatt model in several ways. Whereas Moffatt's policemen are always figures of upstanding decency, Wood's police are bent, bully boys out to frame and brutalize Striker. Wood has flashes of sympathy towards Striker, something Moffatt never had for his skinhead protagonists, especially when pitted against the thoroughly rotten Rantic. The 1970s being a time when a character like Striker could still be the hero, despite also being an incestuous, borderline rapist.

The mixture of sex comedy and yob-lit in Soccer Thug does make for an uneven, split personality book. One minute we're playing on the Moffatt side of violent hooliganism and a perverse eye for older women, made all the more perverse by it being aimed here at the main character's mother, by the main character. Then the next minute we're playing on the Confessions side of coitus interruptus humour and unflattering, but on the money, observations on working class life in the 1970s. A common criticism of the Confessions series is that they were punching down at working class characters and portraying them as sex crazed morons. This is mainly due to Christopher Wood himself coming from a privileged background and being an outside observer on working class Britain, but I think the fact that those movies and books connected so much with working class audiences back then, invalidates such criticism. The British working classes aren't fools, and know when they are being patronized, and when someone is merely keeping it real and telling it as it is. Which is equally true of Soccer Thug as it is the Confessions books.

In Soccer Thug, Wood seizes the opportunity to get a bit more serious than anything he wrote under the Timothy Lea alias. When we finally meet Striker's father, who is dying from cancer in hospital, Wood unexpectedly humanizes Striker, and you begin to realize why football is so important to him. It's a source of happier, childhood times with his father "I fished your hand out of your raincoat pocket so I could hold on to it. And now you are dying" and a way of living out the fantasy of being Sean Donnell, the soccer star he idolizes, who has the wealth, success and adulation that will never be Striker's. Donnell, likely based on George Best, is a young, Irish football dynamo whose adoption of the showbiz lifestyle… fancy cars, trendy boutiques and visits to fashionable hairdressers… doesn't sit well with his alpha male fan base. Who come to regard him as sexually suspect. The fans' chant for him, meant to be sung to the tune of Jesus Christ Superstar "Superdon, Superdon, How many goals have you scored so far", eventually getting corrupted to "Sean Donn-ell, Superstar, looks like a girl and he wears a bra". There's nothing like football when it comes to spreading tolerance and understanding to the masses.

In Soccer Thug, Wood seems to be trying to say something about the nature of hero worship and how that rarely works out well for the worshipper or the worshipped. Every bad decision Striker makes is born out of emulating Donnell. From putting a deposit down on a bike that he can't afford, merely because Donnell has one, to cheating on his girlfriend, because that's what soccer stars do, to stealing a car and taking it on a joyride whilst imagining he is Donnell "I'm Superdon, remember, I am immortal". In another Don wannabe moment, Striker attempts to get off with Suzie Rayburn, a posh bird who is looking for a bit of rough. Only for Striker to be shocked by her sexual frankness and coarse language, leading to the funniest line in the book "Striker had never realized that anybody who did not work at Woolworth's could behave like this". Alas, Suzie becomes another source of ill-advised adulation from Striker. Convinced she is his true love, Striker gets his heart broken when Suzie turns Judas in the company of her rich, snobby father, refusing to acknowledge she knows him, and even calling him at 'Oik' straight to his face.

Rantic is another character in Soccer Thug who suffers from hero worshiping the wrong person. His actions seemingly born out of disappointment that Striker wasn't the cold blooded hard man that Rantic expected him to be, and Rantic spends the rest of the book trying to step into the shoes of the man he'd wanted Striker to be. Everyone in this book is running from their real selves, and pretending to be something they are not. Which is especially true of Rantic, given the big revelation about him towards the end of the book "hating is less painful than loving".

Bumpy ride as Soccer Thug is, alternating between laugh out loud moments, genuine sadness and jolting violence, it's a combo that proves Christopher Wood was a far more diverse writer than he gets credit for. Even though the disparate elements of Soccer Thug do often feel like they are fighting against each other. It's not as mentally disturbed as the Moffatt books, but his influence means it's not the out and out comedy that the Confessions books were either. There is also allot of football action and banter here too, which does get tedious if that's not your bag and you'd prefer the emphasis to be on gratuitous sex and violence instead.

Soccer Thug did make me grateful that I've never given a rat's ass about football myself, all that lies down the route of football fandom is humiliation and disillusionment according to Wood. After reading Soccer Thug, I'm at an even greater loss as to why they call it the beautiful game.