‘Fighting Millwall as Spurs hooligan was mad – people threw spears and bloke was impaled’

Reformed soccer hooligan Frank Portinari has told how a Boxing Day fixture between Tottenham and Millwall

erupted into vicious medieval warfare, with spectators armed with whatever was available

An admitted football hooligan has described the “craziest” day he has ever experienced in terms of crowd violence, during which individuals hurled “spears” at one another.

Frank Portinari, a native of North London, started cheering for the Spurs as a youngster during a heyday when the team was winning everything. However, after being observed “standing his ground” during a contentious altercation at Stoke, he quickly became friends with a hazardous subset of the team’s fan base.

By the time Frank was in his thirties, he was a prominent figure in a vicious gang that pursued the squad around the nation and into Europe. However, the most vicious moments of Frank’s soccer thug days occurred during a Second Division match against London rivals Millwall.

In a Boxing Day match, Spurs were drawn away from home against Millwall, who had been named by the BBC’s Panorama as the worst example of football violence.

“The previous night, I attended a Christmas party, and I departed at five in the morning,” Frank said with podcaster Dodge Woodall.

At eight in the morning, my friend Bill knocked on the door. I’m still half-p****d, too. I had completed

Bill had “borrowed” his work’s van, and filled it with shovels and pickaxes in anticipation of a major battle with the feared Millwall hooligans.

“I said ‘What’s the plan Bill?’ and he said ‘We’re going to drive down The Old Kent Road, we’re going to attack the Canterbury Arms.’ I said ‘Where is everybody else?’ But it was just us two.”

Bill’s crazy scheme may have been best served by the cops spotting the couple driving across London Bridge and telling them to change their plans for the day.

Nonetheless, the authorities were powerless to stop a substantial chunk of the violent mayhem that occurred throughout the match.

Frank remarked, “That was the craziest day I’ve ever had at football in this country.” “I witnessed a feller hurl a screwdriver at the cheek of another feller.” Individuals were using wooden fence and hitting and hurling it at one another.”

Even metal fences had been ripped apart and thrown like spears at one another.