The first recorded incidence of the pariah that is football hooliganism was in the early days of the game. Back then the game was played between, both pitch and players, rival villages or ends of town. They played rough and their legacy is the red card that is still in use today. The supporters would on occassion take a passing player
¹ from the opposition to one side cut off his head and use it to replace the pigs head used at the kickoff.

In the French trenches in 1915 a friendly game was played between the German and British Allies. The score has unfortunately not been recorded for posterity. But the generals were a bit upset that the men where not waiting for their turkey by carefully cleaning their guns, so causing the longest recorded pitch invasion in history by restarting the war and keeping digging up the hallowed turf of northern France and Flanders for almost another 3 years. Eventually this act of football hooliganism was stopped on the 11th of November, 1918 at 11 am.

Once the rules were introduced and ratified by the various football associations the bloodbath of football holigans died down for a bit only to resurface at the first FA Cup to be held at Wembley. At that cup the h2g2 Historical Society's Ancestors had
arranged to re-enact that historic match between Yorkshire and Lancaster now referred to as the War of the Roses. However before the match could get properly under way a football hooligan invaded the pitch on a white horse and encouraged everybody to return to the terraces. He later claimed to be a policeman on crowd control duty, a
story which is the accepted truth even to this day.

However the modern day hooligan does not quite have the finese or endurance of our forefathers, maybe as the game has got soft so have the holigans that man the
terraces. Or maybe they are waiting to see what they can really do in the new all seater
environment of the top stadia today. But in the words of Sir Francis Drake the victim
of the only recorded bowling ² green attempted invasion when the
Spanish attempted to upset his careful delivery "The game will go on".