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24 MAGNIFICENT


This is the story from one older Torcida member. We somehow managed to make him talk about the trip to Belgrade for the game between Crvena Zvezda (Red Star) and Hajduk in 1984. They don't talk much - but its talked about them a lot, because of that enjoy in reading this exclusive text...

At that time the stories from 70's were active in the city, mostly about terrible stuff that happened on away games in Belgrade and it was sort of a tradition when you arrive at the strain station to spread around and that everyone walks in different directions, but this time 24 of us decided to stay together, whatever happens - happens (besides that someone brought some kind of cables and that was a good weapon). 60-70 people from Split went by train, and on the way nothing special or unusual happened, besides normal stuff in Knin. On our arrival in Belgrade, 24 of us walked towards hotel Palace where Hajduk's players were, and on the way we saw the leader of Grobari (Partizan supporters...he was in contact with Maslo, so we knew who he was) Pampi. We kept his distance behind us, so we didn't feel like chasing him. So on the way to the hotel, we come across a group of Zvezda supporters that stood near some phone boots, and they were talking and fighting with the air, showing off their moves, as if they talked in between themselves 'how they're gonna kick the shit out of hajduk supporters'. There were about 10 or 15 of them and we didn't want to attack them at first, but when we saw them showing off we just got pissed off so we started running towards them, they stood there all confused because they didn't expect to be attacked in their own city. Back then there were not many attacks on home fans in their own city, so they were all shocked and didn't run away in time, and when they finally realized what was happening, it was too late for them: we kicked the shit out of them, while some of them started to run... It was a funny scene when one of them ran behind some convenient store, and there Jerry welcomed him with a punch in the face. We took their scarves and continued towards the hotel. We saw the players, we asked them for the tickets, but we didn't get nothing so we just moved on. So the scene was, whenever you stumble across a group of Red Star supporters, just attack! We searched for them around the city, and later on around the stadium, expecting to get them there, and we did; just before the stadium, there was a group that was going our way on one intersection, so we thought that they all gathered around just for us. We all noticed the number of them, and when we thought of firing a rocket, we saw that their number were not as high as we first thought, and that we are pretty even in numbers. Once again we started running towards them, and they just ran away, everyone except for this fat guy who had a lot of scarves on him and didn't manage to run, so we just gave him a few punches and took his scarves. After we attacked several groups, we all went behind Partizan stadium and the police got there pretty quickly so from southern sector we went towards the northern thinking that the police won't hassle us there, but they were going directly towards us. So what are we going to do now? They will know who we are because of our accents. So one of the guys said that we're Red Star supporters from Split. We all grabbed our heads, thinking that won't work, but strangely it did. Then one of the cops told us: "We've heard that there was a group of Hajduk supporters from Split and they are attacking and bashing Red Star supporters, so don't come across them", and we were like, "No, we won't, they are our neighbors from our city". So when we realized that even police knew about us, we all got on the bus and went to the other part of the city - Vravara or Vozdovac (?), for which we've heard that it is a tough suburb. We would put on Red Star scarves that we collected earlier and thats how we would get to other Red Star supporters easier, before attacking them. We got in the stadium with our Red Star scarves on and Hajduk supporters on our sector thought "Great, here are Red Star supporters on our sector, and now there will be trouble" (Back then supporters were located on the same sector as the normal people. When Red Star supporters started chanting "You'll get beaten up", we all took out their scarves and started singing "You already got beaten up", and they all were in shock. Ten minutes before the end of the game we all got out to get on the train on time. We could have waited until the end and go with a train that was scheduled later on, but because of all the troubles we did that day, we were expecting a revenge. We didn't come across no one on our way to the train station, but we had the rocket prepared anyway. In Knin we all took out Red Star scarves and started showing them of to them, and one guy (that was working on the station), asked us "did you fight with them?", and Jerry replied "not with them, but on them", the guy just put a smile on his face. In Split there was a huge surprise when we arrived in the morning with Red Star scarves, a lot of people were asking "What is this, Red Star supporters are coming?". 

By: older Torcida fan
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