Edinburgh picture captures grim moment 80s hooligans…

Edinburgh picture captures grim moment 80s hooligans battle it out on notorious bridge

The Bridge of Doom has been synonymous with Hibernian casuals, the Capital City Service (CCS), for decades.

During the '80s the CCS and Bradley Welsh’s led ‘CCS Baby Crew’ were notorious for getting into fights with opposition supporters over the infamous structure, which connects Bothwell Street with Albion Terrace just off Easter Road.

Officially known as the Crawford Bridge, the narrow crossing leads to Hibs' Easter Road Stadium and is one of only a small handful of available routes for home and away supporters travelling to the ground on foot from the city centre.

At the height of football hooliganism in the 1980s, the bridge, which Hibs fans nicknamed the Bridge of Doom, became a prime spot for pitched battles between casuals.

A photo has now resurfaced online on the Facebook page Dressers which is connected to a book of the same name that covers “80s Lads Culture, One-Upmanship, Football, Fashion and Music".

The startling image appears to show Hibernian’s CCS fighting on the ‘Bridge of Doom’ with the Aberdeen Soccer Casuals (ASC) and some concerned police officers.

Those looking at the picture sourced from Dressers will notice that the bridge and its surrounding area has not changed all that much in 40 years.

The image is still very much recognisable with residential tenements and flats continuing to dominate the area today.

Some of those commenting on the picture have been recalling a time when the bridge was a real blackspot for football-related violence.

One person said: “Remember the day we relegated Hibs [in the] late '90s, coming over that bridge was mayhem and fighting all the way up Leith walk".

Meanwhile a Hearts fan recalled "the days when you got bombarded with stones from below after the game".

And another remembered how serious things could get. They said: “Remember Hibs Aberdeen game I went with a few of the Hibs boys, on that same bridge - a boy got a hell of a battering.”

While Aberdeen's ASC firm are said to have been the most formidable at the start of the decade, the likes of Derek Dykes and late former boxer Bradley Welsh are credited with turning Hibs' CCS into a well-oiled, violent machine from the mid '80s onwards.When appearing on Danny Dyer’s Real Football Factories series covering Scottish football hooliganism, Dykes is revealed to have had over 30 convictions for football violence.

He says that in 1984, the CCS was formed by rivalling gangs in Edinburgh uniting under one banner in order to take on firms coming from the West and North East.

Dykes reminisces about the days when Rangers and Celtic would park their buses nearby to the old Railway Bridge in Leith where the CCS would then drop bricks through their skylights. He adds that the street just off the ‘Bridge of Doom’ was one of the favourite places to attack travelling supporters.

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Thanks to increased police presence, the advent of CCTV, and a general reduction in hooliganism over the past couple of decades, the days of violence at the bridge are thought to be over, with opposition supporters able to cross freely, regardless of the occasion.