They had risen up out of Seven Sisters tube station in a steady stream and sauntered abreast in groups through the vibrant hum of the Tottenham High Road.
The fans were young white men in the main, dressed in an informal uniform of collared shirts, dark jeans and smart, new pumps, and they had a swagger about them as they headed north in the early evening, as if the fight they were here to watch was already filling them up with bravado.
They walked past the Afro-Caribbean food markets and the convenience stores and the nail salons and the Tesco and the McDonald's and the kebab shops and the Polish supermarket, past a smart brick building called The Trampery, 'a home for Tottenham's entrepreneurs' and past an 'old-school boozer' called The Bluecoats.