Unlike the likes of The Football Factory and Green Street of which it shares similar themes, Awaydays is a much more meaningful, grounded film less interested in raw violence that hurts to even watch (although this is has some) and more in what it means to be and feel a part of something, even if terrible consequences are wholly potential.
Based on the Kevin Sampson novel by the same name, Awaydays tells the story of Paul Carty, who longs to be a part of something and as a result tries to get in with a "pack" of football hooligans. It's here when Carty meets Elvis, the only one of The Pack who accepts him straight away and Carty sticks with him in order to be accepted by the rest. But what starts out as an opportunity to vent what he feels through the likes of fighting and drinking, Carty soon discovers the consequences which inevitably lie ahead.
What's strange about Awaydays is how it manages to be about football violence without being consumed by being only about that. The Football Factory and Green Street were solely about football hooliganism, and the macho nature of it (including far too explicit, almost painful to even witness on-screen violence) rendered any meaning buried under the surface of bloody punches and stampeding men. However while Awaydays is partially about this, it somehow manages to make it about so much more than that.
It might very well be one of those films where everyone will take away something different from it, but all will, whether they liked it or not, be thinking about it long afterwards. What I personally took away from it was that it was primarily about one young man wanting so badly to be a part of something, to join a group, any group, and feel like he belongs. And that's exactly what he finds in The Pack, the group of football hooligans led by the tough, intimidating John Godden (played by the brilliant Stephen Graham). Carty starts off as a fairly meek, reserved guy but his introduction to the violence between rival football fans brings him out of his shell and before long he's on the front line of the violence at hand. The fact that he gets beaten up doesn't stop him from getting right back up again, his blooded, scratched, a bruised face doesn't stop him going at it again if it means the rest of The Pack embrace him as one of their own.
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