1. Summary
“The next best thing to violence is sex”, Tommy states, and those are indeed the centres of his life; violence, casual sex, alcohol and drugs. He lives and breathes for the group of football casuals he is part of, but one action leads to another, and suddenly, when waking up in yet another random girl's bed, he is in over his head. His best friend Rod gets a girlfriend, there's rivalry in the group, and Tommy is tormented by horrible nightmares. Is Tommy really turning into one of the fascists his grandfather fought in the war, and is it really worth it?
2. Tommy Johnson
Tommy is an almost 30 years old male, a Chelsea fan and a football hooligan. He has, as far as we know, no other relatives than his grandfather, Bill Farrell, and no other friends than a group of football casuals - and his whole identity has its foundation in this group. He has a low-class job which we don't hear much about, no girlfriend, just random one night stands whenever he can find a girl who's up for it, and no plans or dreams for the future. He describes his life in a precise way when he states: “I'm just another bored male, approaching 30, in a dead-end job, who lives for the weekend. Casual sex, watered-down lager, heavily cut drugs. And occasionally kicking fuck out of someone.” Tommy is the typical hooligan; male, lower middle class, bored and ready to explode from the energy building up inside of him. He and his friend Rod have realised that their suburban lives will never bring them anything interesting or spectacular – and, what else you gonna do on a saturday? As the tagline of “The Football Factory” says. As Tommy gets some unpleasant nightmares, he slowly begins to doubt whether his lifestyle is satisfying or not, and when the day of the great clash with the rivals from Millwall finally dawns, he hesitates to go – he has a feeling that it will turn out ugly. It does, his nightmare comes true and he is beaten up so bad that he ends up in the