Tony Cottee opens up on time ICF hooligan stormed West Ham’s dressing room

Ex-West Ham forward Tony Cottee has revealed how a football hooligan stormed the team’s dressing room at a pre-season game and started giving the team a dressing down.

Speaking on the Under the Cosh podcast, Cottee lifted the lid on the tense moment and even disclosed that the culprit was eventually arrested after he read the riot act to an underperforming West Ham United side. The former Everton man told the tale from 1985 which began when West Ham were hammered at Leyton Orient in a pre-season that just wasn’t going right for the Irons.

“It was pre-season, but it wasn’t on tour, it was at Orient. We were old school first division and Orient were old school fourth division at the time. So we’ve gone there and we’ve lost 3-0 to Orient,” Cottee said.

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“Honestly bearing in mind we had our best ever season, me and Frank (McAvennie) got 54 goals between us, the pre-season was absolutely catastrophic. It was dreadful, we didn’t win a game, we couldn’t score, we were all over the place.”

However, things were about to get even worse than events on the pitch when a member of the club’s infamous Inter City Firm, known as the ‘ICF’, stormed the dressing room and began giving a dressing down for the ages. “John Lyall (West Ham manager) had just started to do his team-talk and all of a sudden this flipping door slams open and this big bloke comes in and he was f*****g huge, skinhead and all that, tatts and everything,” Cottee says.

“He was obviously one of the ICF, one of the proper West Ham boys and he started doing the team talk and John Lyall just sort of stepped out of the way and he went ‘Parksy (Phil Parkes) you’re too old, you can’t catch the ball anymore, Ray Stewart all you do is take penalties.

“He went through the whole team and got me and said ‘look at you, you’re a little midget’. He F*****g slaughtered everyone and went right through the whole team – even the subs, all the young kids (saying) ‘you’re not good enough to play for West Ham’.”

In a droll twist to the scary moment, Cottee disclosed that the then West Ham manager didn’t have much sympathy for his underachieving squad, adding: “John Lyall just let him rattle on and all of a sudden the police came in and grabbed hold of him, about four of them grabbed him and marched him out and then John Lyall stepped forward and went ‘he’s f*****g right isn’t he.'”

What do you think about Tony Cottee and West Ham’s unwelcome dressing room visitor? Let us know in the comments section below.

Asked if it was a set-up by the Hammers boss, Cottee insisted that it was a “proper fan” and that the “poor bloke got arrested” following his brief stint as acting West Ham boss. The story isn’t the first time the ICF have been in the spotlight, however.

The group was a notorious hooligan crew and were also known as seminal figures in the football hooliganism scene. Their ruthless members even left calling cards on their victims that read: “Congratulations, you have just met the ICF.”

Former gangster, Danny Woollard even claimed the ICF made Lenny McLean, known as Britain’s hardest man, run for his life. The firm were also said to be involved in 600 strong brawls and numerous other controversial incidents over the years.