As mad as it sounds, Glasgow once had a cricket hooligan problem that made it into the papers on a regular basis.
Cricket's often dubbed a 'gentleman's game', but that was far from the case when the city's first cricket club, Western (not be confused with the modern-day Partick club of the same name), was established back in 1829.
Looking back through the history books, it seems 'gentlemanly' conduct was in rather short supply when it came to the game of cricket here in Glasgow.
The Western Cricket Club was a popular entity in those days, boasting more than 80 members. In the years that followed, many more cricket clubs would from in Glasgow - and there the trouble began. Betting was rife in Glasgow's early cricket scene and crowd disorder was alarmingly common.
Games would be played at Glasgow Green and it was here that pitched battles would break out, depending on the results of the matches, between gangs of tooled up thugs known as 'keelies'. Wielding their sticks, cricket bats and knives, they were not the kind of people you looked at the wrong way.
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Artists' sketches from around the same time show gangs of youths at Glasgow Green ready to pick a fight (or a pocket) of rival cricket spectators.
The cricket hooligans even made their way into contemporary poetry. Published in 1835, 'The Pump' by Andrew Jackson MacGeorge, tells the story of a cricket match at Glasgow Green which descended into violence.
MacGeorge's poem describes how the keelies' impatience boiled over when one of the Western players, Robert 'Bob' Maxwell, failed to show up for the match.
Part of the short poem reads:
The time flew by – no sign of Bob – the crowd began to tire;
The Keelies, cheated of their fun, began to show their ire,
By launching at the hapless band a cloud of dogs and cats,
While some did cry “their castors ‘tile’ – or “brain them with their bats”
Cricket's popularity would decline in the latter half of the 19th century, as football and rugby took over. This of course did not put an end to hooliganism in Glasgow - the 'keelies' simply switched sport.
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