[To Peter Bond, a football fan who has beat Colin Clay, a fellow supporter, to death in order to provoke a riot between opposing supporters]
You know nothing about football! [Punches Bond, winding him] I used to go to football with my dad. United and City fans used to walk to the match together. Our next door neighbour, he had a City flag up in his window. Kids used to play together in the street - red and blue. But then people like you came along and you took it away from us.
A good punch up's all part of the game! It's about pride. Pride in your team. Being the best!
No it isn't! This is how it starts and then it escalates. It gets on the telly and in the press, and then other fans from other clubs start trying to out do each other. And then it becomes about hate! And then it's nothing to do with football any more! It's about gangs and scumbags like you roaming the country seeing who can cause the most trouble. And then we overreact, and we have to put up perimeter fences and we treat the fans like animals! Forty, fifty thousand people herded into pens! And then how long before something happens, eh? How long before something terrible happens and we are dragging bodies out?
More from this episode
All quotes from this episode →More Life on Mars quotes · These quotes come from Wikiquote's Life on Mars pages and are available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.