Football Ultras: A menace or a force for good?

Smoke bombs, pyrotechnics, balaclavas and punch-ups - welcome to the world of the football Ultras.

Inspired by European terrace culture, a new generation of young fans are making themselves heard inside, and outside, stadiums across the country.

But is there more to the social media driven sub-culture that has swept through Scottish football for the past decade?

Are Ultras a menace or a force for good in a game searching for relevance in a corporate footballing landscape?

A new three-part BBC Scotland documentary looks at the phenomenon.

It was a stark reminder of the challenges the more militant edge of the Ultra movement poses.

The Old Firm Ultras declined to take part in the BBC documentary, keeping to a long-standing code of silence and a desire to retain an air of mystique.

But their confrontational behaviour makes it harder for supporters of the wider scene to persuade sceptics that there is a softer side to the Ultras.

The programme speaks to influencer Blair McNally who makes a living producing social media content of Ultras scenes from around the country - from grassroots to topflight club level.

Over the past years he has had 62 million views on TikTok and 10 million on Youtube channel showing Scottish ultras from grassroots level to topflight clubs.

"What these young ultras bring is an energy and a passion," he says.

"Kids from Croatia comment on my videos, kids from Japan saying 'I wish we had this'.

"Scottish football culture is amazing."

Manpreet Singh, the leader of the Partick Thistle Ultras, tells the documentary he has been a fan of the club all his life and the thought of people bringing in drums would have been laughed at until recently.

He traces his involvement to 2021 when fans weren't allowed into games because of Covid restrictions.

For the last game of the season, a large group gathered by the canal to watch the game from outside the stadium as Partick won League One.

They celebrated with flares, singing and a newfound solidarity.

"There were loads of boys that hadn't had anything for a good year and a half," Manpreet says.

"After Covid, a group of us realised 'we can do something here'."

Since then, they have come together to organise huge banners to display in the ground, all paid for by the Ultras themselves.

"It's something we want to be part of - it's a sub-culture that we want to grow and make better.

"Ultras isn't just people running about trying to cause issues," he said.

While many of the Ultras activities maybe harmless, the documentary examines how the scene often clashes with the establishment - from police to local residents to fellow supporters who have little interest in what the groups bring.

David Kennedy, the general secretary of the Scottish Police Federation, says the Ultras movement is on the rise.

"It has a massive impact on the local community because if the local police officers are at these big events, they are not in their local communities," he says.

"We're seeing a rise in this behaviour across the whole of the country," he said.

"We've seen reports of it at lower league clubs and even junior football."

There is certainly more to Ultras culture than the punch-ups and pyrotechnics that dominate headlines.

But the problems associated with the scene are not inventions of the newsroom.

The movement's roots - in South America, and later in Croatia and Italy during the 1960s - include a deep-seated hostility towards authority, policing, and the media.

Within that world sit rules of engagement and codes of honour among those who live for their club's colours and defend its "territory".

That can involve confrontation, but more commonly it plays out through choreographed displays - bigger banners, louder drums, more ambitious pyrotechnics than rival groups.

With all this in mind, comparisons between a group of seven teenagers with a drum in Alloa and the large, well-resourced groups associated with Celtic or Rangers are difficult.

But is there a common thread that binds them all together?

Karyn McCluskey, a forensic psychologist who was the leading force behind Glasgow's Violence Reduction Unit, says: "There was a really famous report that I was involved with that was about 'dying to belong' - why people want to get into gangs.

"That sense of identity and belonging - there is some of that going on here.

"I see it on the terraces, I see it when I speak to young people - they want to belong to something."

There is no Old Firm monopoly on the sense of belonging and togetherness that young fans find through Ultras culture.

Yet those who defend the movement must also acknowledge that some of the concerns directed at it have merit.

In a world that often demands simple answers, two things can be true at once.

Ultras groups can provide enjoyable, mostly harmless experiences for those involved.

They bring colour, noise and energy to stadiums that might otherwise feel flat.

Ultras groups can also create serious challenges for police and authorities, as masked teenagers engage in cat-and-mouse confrontations with smoke bombs and pyrotechnics.

"If we stamp it out then we lose the theatrics, we lose the colour, we lose the noise and we lose the passion around football," podcast host Sean McDonald tells the documentary.

"But you don't get to enjoy the spoils, the adulation and all the positive things and ignore the obligations that you have.

"And when consequences come, as they often do, you don't get to shirk them."

Andy Smith, chairman of the Scottish Football Supporters Association, says the problem is that the clubs, the police and politicians are unclear of the best way forward.

"The big clubs don't know what to do," he says.

"The politicians want a tick box that costs nothing and the police just want no trouble.

"Ultraism in football is here for good - it's the future.

"But there have to be rules - what you can do, what you can't do, what's acceptable and what's not."

The documentary itself underlines just how varied the Ultras scene is - so broad, in fact, that any single attempt to define it is destined to fall short.