Ex-football thug has no regrets for trouble on the terraces

Hibs' "king of the casuals" Andy Blance isn't here to talk about regrets.

He's not going to admit to mistakes or errors of judgement, make apologies or crave forgiveness.

He's not going to pretend that he's desperately sorry for the axe attack on a rival that left his victim's friends trying to hold his severed back together – injuries so horrific that they made a female police officer faint at the sight of them.

And in case anyone thought his notorious football gang of casuals – whose reign of terror reached a climax when a petrol bomb was thrown in Princes Street on a Saturday afternoon – had soured Scottish football with their love of violence, he'd like to point out that, actually, the likes of them were among the best things that could have happened to the game.

One thing Andy Blance doesn't do is apologies.

Instead, the man dubbed "Scotland's most notorious football hooligan" is sitting in the living room of his second-floor flat on a Fife council estate – a room dominated, bizarrely, by the largest grandfather clock imaginable, a chunky wooden chess set and a mock antique-style writing bureau. He's trying to explain just why football hooligans aren't all that bad. "We were fighting people that wanted to fight us," he shrugs simply. "There's a lot worse people in the world than football hooligans. There are rapists and murderers out there.

"But football hooligans get all the attention. Undoubtedly the police could spend their time and money much better than worrying about football hooligans."

Blance is a 42-year-old father of three boys – all Hibs daft. He's stocky, with a skinhead and countless tattoos, most in tribute to his beloved club, running the length of his arms and across his torso.

Today, he looks like any typical working bloke – indeed, he's just nipped off from a building job at a house he's helping renovate.

Until recently, however, he was one of the leading figures from the feared Hibs Capital City Service gang, a swaggering, bloodthirsty football terror squad who became notorious for spreading violence and fear, who would tease and taunt police, plot ambushes and senseless violence on rival gangs and stick two fingers up – and perhaps the occasional glass in the face – to some who happened to get in their way.

Now he's adding "writer" to a list of achievements which includes a criminal record of more than 50 offences. His book Hibs Boy – with a fawning foreword written by high-profile Hibs fan and friend, Trainspotting author Irvine Welsh, catalogues his life as a soccer casual, from February 1980 when, aged 15, he was arrested for the first time after scrapping with two Morton fans after a Hibs match, to the aftermath of that brutal axe attack which led to a five-year prison sentence.

It's a life story that he had hoped to present to his readers in person at a book signing at his local Waterstone's branch in Dunfermline next month.

Such is the powderkeg nature of his past, however, and the potential that some might turn up looking not for a signature but for a chance to challenge the author, that police have recommended it should be cancelled.

Blance, a one-time nightclub bouncer whose more recent business interests include running a suntan parlour and internet cafe, is slightly bemused that even now, when he insists he's left his hooligan days behind, his notoriety precedes him.

"Fact is, my first priority is to watch Hibs – I'm a normal Hibs fan and I don't ever miss a game," he insists.

"I know that writing this book I'm going to get more attention, but all that's finished anyway. Even if I wanted to go back to it I know I couldn't get involved."

Born in Edinburgh, raised over the Forth in Rosyth by his father – his mother left home when he was six – and now living in Inverkeithing, Blance's name has been linked with the scourge of Scottish football hooliganism since the eighties. He claims to be a passionate Hibs fan, but it appears what happened off the pitch was often more exciting for him than events on.

"I think I just liked the buzz of being involved with it all," he shrugs. "At the time it was the thing to do. It was like how in the sixties there were mods and rockers, in the seventies there were skinheads and punks. In the eighties, all that stuff was part of the culture, I was at that age to get into it, so I did. And it was a buzz. It was a gang of guys fighting another gang of guys and, yeah, it was about adrenalin and excitement.

"We were fighting with people who wanted to fight us.

"Maybe not so much with the petrol bomb, though," he adds. "But most of the time, that's how it was."

He's referring to a particularly notorious incident in which his CCS casuals gathered in the city centre, preparing to ambush a gang of the visiting ASC – Aberdeen Soccer Casuals.

The scene had been set in March 1985 when Aberdeen casuals pounced on their rivals in the shadow of Easter Road. Humiliated by the beating doled out to one of their number, Blance and his cohorts set about plotting revenge for their next Edinburgh meeting in October that year.

It turned out to be an episode that could have ended in tragedy when a petrol bomb was thrown at the Aberdeen gang, scattering terrified Saturday shoppers.

It's the one point where Blance concedes that his gang's violence overstepped the mark. "The petrol bomb was thrown and everyone scattered," he recalls. "It was the magnitude of it, it wasn't just some wee fizz and that was it. It was big. I look back on that and, yeah, totally, I think it was madness. Even the guy that did it probably thinks it was madness.

"But when I think of the violence I've seen and the real fights, then that petrol bomb wasn't as bad as walking down Paisley Road West, getting involved with Rangers casuals, Rangers fans . . ."

The walls of his Inverkeithing home are lined with Hibs memorabilia, various signed Hibs shirts, photographs, fridge magnets, scarves. The close outside his front door is framed, ceiling to floor, with green and white images and knick-knacks.

His passion for the team is obvious, yet at club official level the likes of Blance – who once sponsored winger John O'Neill – are scorned: "These people are animals, they are not real fans and we want nothing to do with them," former Hibs chairman Douglas Cromb once declared.

It's a twisted logic, but Blance retaliates by suggesting that he and his casual mates actually helped make Scottish football safer.

"It was all a game," he shrugs. "We all knew what we were doing – even the police regarded it as a game. They liked nothing better than running at us all with their batons. It was cat and mouse – they loved it too.

"But I honestly think we had a positive impact on the game," he adds. "It made grounds far safer places for normal people to go, because there were so many police brought in and the casuals had to find somewhere else to go to fight," he explains. "It meant people could walk down the road to the game and no-one would bother them. Joe Bloggs in the street is safe because we were all somewhere else.

"A lot of people would have to admit that the casuals made it safer for normal fans to actually go to the game."

Hibs Boy: The Life and Violent Times of Scotland's Most Notorious Football Hooligan, by Andy Blance, is published by Fort Publishing, price 9.99

'IF HIBS AND HEARTS MERGED MERCER WAS GOING TO GET HURT'

IT was perhaps one of the most controversial episodes in the rivalry between two clubs whose passion and pride go much deeper than the few miles that separate them.

When Hearts chairman Wallace Mercer dared to suggest that a combined Hearts-Hibs team would be a more logical rival to the force of Rangers and Celtic, Hibs fans reacted with fury.

None more so than the members of the Capital City Service.

Enraged by the thought that their club was about to be engulfed by their most loathed rivals, Andy Blance and his CCS cohorts set about plotting their next move.

That led to suggestions that the architect of the proposals, Wallace Mercer, could pay for his proposal in the most vile manner imaginable.

"It was talked about that if there was progress in that and if Hibs did go out of the game that he would get seriously hurt," admits Blance.

"The police got wind of it. A guard was put around Mercer's home.

"It wasn't just the casuals, it was everyone who felt strongly. People loved their club, there was huge passion and he was threatening that.

"It's nearly 20 years ago, but folk still feel strongly."

Blance also claims in the book that his links with CCS put him in association with leading Edinburgh gangland figures. One, he claims, asked him to use his football connections to "sort out" a Scotland international whose debts to the crime lord had escalated to six figures.

"I was to speak to him and put him right," adds Blance.