ENGLISH FOOTBALL HOOLIGANISM has been a topic that’s been explored and discussed for the guts of five decades. 

Hooliganism in the country was at its worst through the 1970s and 1980s and has resulted in tragic events, like the Heysel disaster in 1985. 

But throughout the 1990s, English football and its leagues have cleaned up their act. 

Since the birth of the Premier League, the casual football violence in the streets has been on a steady decline and the stands have become safer spaces for the everyday fan. 

But what happens when the former football hooligans, many of whom had received banning orders from grounds, join forces and form their own political group? 

In the fourth and penultimate episode of The 42’s exclusive podcast series On the Right Wing, Enda Coll explores the role that former football hooligans played in the establishment and rise of the right-wing group The English Defence League. 

With Professor Jon Garland from the University of Surrey, they track the birth of the group, and the overlap between those involved in the group and in football firms.

Plus Matt Slater, senior football news reporter with The Athletic, joins to discuss the improvement in fan behaviour through the 1990s and beyond, before resurgent fears that antisocial behaviour was on the rise in the post-Covid seasons. 

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