I didn't see the fight club thing about the dark days of football hooliganism, but I've been told it featured a piece about Scousers having a reputation for carrying Stanley knives.
This reminded me of an amusing story from those days, about 20 years ago in fact.
An Evertonian mate of mine loved to tell anyone who would listen, about how he used to carry a red toothbrush with the bristles cut off to the away matches, kept in his back pocket. This was to protect him in case he got in any bother.
"How could this help him"? I hear you ask.
He would then tell about the time he went to Boro. He had survived the carnage that was the walk back to the station after the game, until he was within sight of the station itself.
He was then surrounded by about a dozen of their boys asking him the time (which basically meant "are you a Scouser").
He knew he'd been sussed and instead of answering, he pulled the toothbrush out and waved it in their faces. It had the desired effect as they obviously thought it was one of them plastic disposable Stanley knives, and got out of the way pretty sharpish.
This bought him a few seconds, enabling him to run like hell to the station and the police waiting outside.
The lads came running after him shouting "The Scousers got a knife".
On showing it to the police, they pissed themselves laughing, and congratulated him on his initiative.
Well his mates were so impressed with this story, that when they played at OT a few weeks later, the toothbrush gang had increased in numbers to 4 or 5.
After the match they had the inevitable problem walking back to their Mini bus as a larger mob of Mancs sussed them out. (This was obviously before their mutual hatred of us made them kissing cousins).
As the Mancs were about to move in for the kill, out came the toothbrushes.
When one of the Mancs then pulled out a machete from the dephths of his long leather, you could say they felt pretty stupid, aswell as pretty scared as they ran like fuck towards a couple of police vans further up the road.
After this the toothbrush gang was reduced in numbers to just the one again.
A good idea though, while it lasted.
