Forums Forums Wirral History : Chasing the Past Wirral Pubs Past & Present 338 New Dock Hotel (Blood Tub)

You can always tell how good your mob's going to be by the amount of young ones who turn up. Judging by the contingent of Juniors gathered outside The Tub's off-licence, aggressively smoking Number Six and flicking baby fringes out of their eyes, we're going to have a fook of a good crew today. I let on to Billy Powell and a couple of the other little urchins and head on inside The Dock public house, Ilchester Square, Birkenhead, locally known as The Bloodtub, there to meet with the esteemed gentlemen of The Pack.

The Pack are Tranmere Rovers' away crew and a splendid bunch they are, too. Today I shall be joining them in an excursion to Wrexham for one of the biggest dates in the footballing calendar. Today is the First Round Proper of the F.A. Cup, a time for every ramshackle club from Hartlepool to Exeter to start harbouring dreams of brief encounters with the giants of soccer. Hereford against Newcastle. Colchester against Leeds. Every year the Cup throws up an unlikely combination and every year one of the underdogs forces an upset. Who knows what might happen if we got drawn against Tottenham or Villa or someone? Certain mayhem.

But let's not get too misty-eyed about the Romance of the Cup. While most of us can work up an impressive frenzy for a scrambled equaliser at Rochdale, we don't follow Tranmere for their progressive, free-flowing football. Our satisfaction comes from earning our rep as the nastiest little crew in the Third, and for us the magic of the F.A. Cup is that it never fails to deliver the ag. The First Round in particular always means trouble. Whether it's Hyde United or Leek Town, everyone's mobbed up for the Cup.

Even Wrexham. I've seldom known a game so eagerly anticipated as this local spat with despised woollyback foes, Wrexham. They hate us with the proper, decent, resentful fury of a serf who loathes his oppressor, but we just hold them in contempt as an underclass - a Birmo-wearing, feather-barnetted sub-species who pronounce the 'W' in their name when they're trying to leg you. It can be hairy, sometimes, being outnumbered by hordes of inbreds in places like Mansfield, but there's nothing more calming than hearing them speak. There's no way you can be hurt by someone who calls you 'youth', and when Wrexham come charging at you, arms stretched out as wide as they'll go, screaming 'Wuh-reck-sem' at full, red-faced force, you know you're going to have a laugh. We thought we'd lost them for good when they gained promotion last season, leaving us with only Chester and Crewe for local grudge games. But here we are. Back again to torment them. There's going to be murder. So it's worth the excursion to Birkenhead North just to meet up with the crew, even though I could've just got on at Neston. None of them really know where I live, other than it's out of town - not even Elvis - but I could've easy made up an excuse for jumping on there. But that's not the point - not all of it, anyway. You want to be there, in the thick, from the o£

It's just gone eleven when I step into The Tub, but some of the heads look like they've been here hours. Surveying the pub I immediately feel a rush of pride - this mob'd give anyone a run for their money. Marty O'Connor, shaven ginger bullet-head nodding to The Stranglers on the jukey. Baby Millan, fresh-faced Stanley merchant, joking with a couple of Saturday girls from Park Hampers. Eddie Spark and John Godden arguing with Batesy about Secret Affair and The Glory Boys. Elvis, shockingly thin, greets me with his irony-laden grin, eyes screwed up, looking like a technicolor Bryan Ferry in his livid purple box leather. Flicking and blowing at his monstrous plum-dyed wedge, Elvis beckons me to the bar.

'A'right, Carty. State of Batesy rowing about the fucken Mods. Even fucken Wrexham are wearing parkas these days. Fucken beauts.'

Elvis and I are perhaps the most fashion-obsessed of The Pack, which is a pretty fooking well-dressed crew by anybody's standards. Most of us have wedges or side-partings and wear Samba or Stan Smith trainies, Lois jeans and cardigans. One or two of the older lads have still got BeeGee centre-parts and sheepies, but that's expected of blokes in their twenties. They like to take the piss out of us lot freezing to death in rainlashed away ends, but they've seen the way the girls flock around us wherever we go. We look the part, and everyone knows it. One time, Marty O'Connor brought a can of blue spray paint to the match and offered to spray our lips and fingers blue.

'What's the fucken problem?' he cackled, when we all started running from the drifting aerosol jet. 'It's Adidas paint. For that latest Odgie frozen look!'

Odgie. Marty favours the New Skin look. One minute Slaughter And The Dogs were asking where all the Boot Boys went, next thing we've got Sham 69 and a new breed of skinheads. It's pretty big with the diehard mob from the North End who still see Birkenhead as an old dockers' community. This crew hate Scousers, a prejudice not weakened by the latest bouts of trouble between Liverpool and Tranmere. It's doing everyone's swedes in that the Scousers still see us as Wools, no matter that we dress the same as them. Marty and Eddie Spark and a lot of the older lads can't understand why we want to look like Odgies. They'd prefer us all to be boneheads. I don't mind a few skins in The Pack, they always look evil, but our whole identity, the whole point of The Pack and the reason we've got this rep, is that we look and behave like no one else in this Division.

They haven't got a clue in the Third. Liverpool started the wedgehead look last season and, with us being so nearby, Tranmere soon had our own little mob. There's only really Stockport and Fulham who are on the case and even with them it's only a dozen, twenty boys at the most. But it's the ultimate going to places like Chesterfield dressed like this. They're a race apart. They clock the haircuts and they're straight on to us. The ritual never varies. There's always loads of them, tattooed up and shifters to a man. They wait outside the station and when we get off the train, about sixty of us, no noise, no scarves, they start walking round the forecourt with their hands on their hips, making these sort of girlie whooping noises. They really think that because we haven't got borstal tatts and three scarves each that we're going to be easy. And that we'll be cross that they don't like our gear. It's maximum joy, every time when we run in and pure give it to them. Their faces are too much. They do not know what is going on, and when the blades come out ... well, they're older and wiser by the time the sun sets. Tranmere are the only crew in the Third who go away by train and we're the only ones who use Stanleys - as Chesterfield and all the other knobheads now know.

'Make 'em leave 'em behind!'

'You what?'

'Serious. Make 'em take 'em off and leave 'em behind the bar. Can't be going to Wrexhan1 with fucken parkas on board. Make a holy fucken show of us.'

Elvis laughs.

'You tell 'em!'

We just get halves at Elvis' behest and stop by Batesy's table to josh him about his attire.

'Come 'ead, Batesy! Let's see it!'

'You wha'?'

'Come on, open wide!'

I lunge for his mouth. Batesy recoils.

'Koff, you beaus! fook's goin' on?'

Elvis is doubled up, laughing. I put one arm around Batesy and grip his lower lip with my thumb and forefinger.

'Come 'ead! We just wanna see your tats! Where is it? MO-D, isn't it? Fuckenell, Batesy, thought you was meant to be the Ace Face!'

Batesy grins. For all that he's a bit of a dullard he's got respect, he's a ferocious fighter and it's only lately that I've felt entitled to join in the piss-taking - not just with him, but generally. Batesy's in good spirits and tells us that some of the Legends, Casey and Ally Quinn and some of the older Woodchurch heads are considering coming out of retirement for this one, such is the lure of the Cup. Batesy's lack of guile is in no way disguised by his various speech impediments. Although he has the stutter pretty much under control, he can't distinguish between th, v and f sounds, and, worse, has a babyish inability to pronounce his r sounds. Thus did Port Fale wun like wabbits outside the Ficky Lodge back in August.

It transpires that The Tub has been open all night and Batesy launches into a highly involved and highly unlikely sounding tale casting himself and Ally Quinn as tireless Lotharios in a twos-up with Toothless Elsa, one of The Tub's glamorous barmaids. We all laugh raucously, neither believing Batesy's tale nor caring whether it's true. There's a brilliant atmos. Everyone knows it. Today is going to be an epic.

Me and Elvis stand by the door sipping our halves, watching all the little ones congregate outside the station. They look smart, miniature scals in cords, trainies and Adidas windcheaters. There's some good little ruckers there. Billy Powell's only about fourteen but he's been very useful on more than one occasion. Most of the Junior Squad - mainly the rats from the Ford and the Woodchurch - will get on at Upton. So with the firm we've already got here and allowing for a few to get on at Bidston, we're looking good for a crew of eighty-plus on the ten past twelve which should well be enough to do Wrexham - even on F.A. Cup day.

Already on board the train is Damien O'Connor, Marty's kid brother. He's walking up and down the coaches with an empty sweet jar, cadging bits of drink off the older lads for his now-traditional Pack Punch. So far in the jar he's got Carlsberg Special Brew, Bacardi, vodka, Scotch and, lending the concoction a thick, sickly density, a full can of Coke.

'Any contributions, gents?'

'You lot should lay off the ale,' says Elvis.

He's a fooking downer when he's like this, Elvis. When he feels like drinking it's cool, Jim Morrison liked a drink, name me one great artist -great- artist who didn't benefit from some form of consciousness-enhancing stimulus, blah, blah, blah. But when he's off the plonk, all boozers are cubbies, makes you sluggish, blunts your instinct for danger, etc etc etc. This common sense, incidentally, coming from the first boy I ever saw cut somebody, temple to top lip, with a Stanley craft knife. He's a loony, Elvis, but that's all part of his appeal.

'You'll be fucken useless by Wrexham.'

He might well say that, but some of us actually need a drink before games like this. The butterflies are already jumping and we're only just past Bidston. Elvis stands up, scrawny and completely arse-free even in the snuggest of Lois and delves inside his jacket.

'In fact .. .'

He pulls out a little paper wrap. I notice a drop of blood on his finger tip where he's nicked himself. I keep telling him to retract the blade when he's carrying- it causes havoc with the lining of your jacket. He unwraps the whizz.

'C'mere.'

Damien holds out the sweet jar while Elvis carefully tips half the wrap of pinkish powder into the vicious black mix. He whips out his Stanley and, much to the amusement of everyone around us, stirs the liquid to a frothy foment and hands it back to little Damien.

'If you're going to be mad you may as well know what you're doing.'

Damien grins and slopes away to the corner of the coach, where he tries to wedge himself in firmly enough to get a good slug of punch without the jolting of the train sending it all over him. He smacks his lips and winces comically. Elvis passes me the speed. I avoid the bloody bit where his cut finger's been dabbing.

'D'you see the Whistle Test?'

'Nar. Fucken fell asleep in me chair, waiting.'

Elvis leans forward, eyes alive with his own special madness.

'Ah, I can't believe you missed it, man. Joy Division. Completely out there. Curtis, man ...'

I nod my understanding, even though I didn't see this latest performance. Elvis and I saw Joy Division playing an Amnesty benefit at Eric's back in May. We'd mainly gone to see Kleenex and The Raincoats, all-girl bands who, Trots or not, might have been pleased to know that their record sleeves provided handshank fodder for many a lonely adolescent. But it was Joy Division who blew us away. Ian Curtis threw so much angst and demented energy into his show that he collapsed after four or five songs. They couldn't have been on stage more than half an hour, but it was completely stunning. And they just kept getting better. Just a couple of months ago we went to the Futurama in Leeds and, out of a line-up which included Soft Cell, The Human League, Echo And The Bunnymen and Ua, it was Joy Division that slayed us. Elvis and I often talk about a suicide pact played out to 'New Dawn Fades'.

Everyone cranes forward as the train pulls in at Upton, hoping for a good crew to supplement the fine mob already on board. Some sight awaits us. It's not just the usual urchins and robbers we were expecting, who're pushing forward on the platform, but a full-scale crew of Woody, too. There's some real heads there, Hardy, Kev The Man, Christy Byatt in a green beret, all pogoing madly and swatting each other with rolled-up newspapers. Hardy's wearing an eyepatch, which looks sound, even though there's fook all wrong with his minces far as I know. And there's a lad with a crutch, putting on a bit of a limp. A crutch or a couple of arms in slings always looks boss mixed up in the main body of the crew. I reckon that there's easy thirty of them, a comical sight next to the handful of silent ice-skaters who'll get off at Shotton for Deeside Leisure Centre. I push my way to the window for a better look and am immediately taken over by a woozy affection for the vast redbrick tower blocks of the Ford Estate on one side of the tracks and the stark white blocks of the Woodchurch on the other. Not for the first time do I find my butterflies replaced by a heady euphoria. I grab Damien.

'Give us a go on that before these swats get on.'

I take a slug of Damien's magic potion and lick my lips. I know that something's going to happen today and I know that I'm going to be right in there. More often than not I'll just go with the flow at aways, doing the minimum expected. I never run, obviously, but I'm not one for sticking my neck out too much, either. It's to do with protocol. There are people like Marty and John Godden who you look to to start the rows and, while there are times when you think they might be dragging their heels a bit, they're the Boys. It's up to them. I'm ever conscious of the fact that this is only the start of my third season with The Pack and I'm only just getting to be accepted. Sometimes, though, I can't help myself, I get this headrush, this mad adrenalin surge just comes over me, a delirious, fierce, loyal pride in The Pack. I feel like I'd do anything for them.

I can feel it now as the train jerks to a halt and I lick the residue grains of sulphate from my teeth. I'm going to make sure that everyone knows who I am today, not least these Woodchurch names getting on now. I nod to individuals I know to let on to, but who aren't regulars. The fantasy of the Cup and the fact that it's Wrexham has brought all kinds out. It's one hell of a crew, and I belong right here with the best of them.

Two lads we know from Eric's and the tunnel bus come and stand by Elvis and me. When I say we know them, all we ever say to each other is 'A'right'. Don't even know their names. We always call them The Spics, because they look a tad Latino. Portuguese, Elvis decided one night after too much homegrown at a Cabaret Voltaire gig. That was about the last time we really tried to talk to them. They're not actively unfriendly, Just silent - and quite psychotic in an o£ Danny Allen, a Scouse lad who came to live on the Nocky last summer, comes and joins the company.

'A'right, Paul.' He always calls me by my proper name, Danny, probably on account of having had to come into the office on official business one time. It's only a job to me, but it spooks the public. They think they'll never get out alive.

'Howdy, Danny. Cracker mob, eh?'

'Too fucken right, lad. These'd see off Liverpool, these would.'

He's always a bit wary about being from Liverpool and, since all the trouble started again, over-compensates by running the Odgies down at any opportunity. He's alright, though. Bit of a shithouse. I tried to get everyone calling him Danny Jekyll - he was always hiding - but it never caught on.