I watched a football match between Arsenal and Tottenham Hotspur, two north London clubs. There was some crowd trouble outside the stadium after the game and there was a photograph circulating on social media of a baby’s high chair soaring through the air.
Someone was using it as a missile but thankfully they had the good sense to take the child out of it first.
I saw another football game on the telly between Chelsea and West Ham. It was played in London and when Chelsea scored a goal, the players ran to celebrate near the touch line. Suddenly, this big, bald guy jumped over the advertising hoarding and made a run at Eden Hazard who had scored the goal for Chelsea.
The security guys were quick off the mark and they grabbed him but they had a struggle before they led him away. What struck me about him was the fact that he appeared to be so angry. He was behaving very aggressively towards the player as the stewards battled to restrain him.
He was shouting something and pointing at Hazard as if he wanted to kill him. Hazards only offence, as far as I could see, was that he scored a goal in a football match.
The other thing that stuck out for me was that this character is no spring chicken. As it turned out, he is 51 years of age and he was arrested on suspicion of pitch encroachment. I’m not sure why they put in the ‘suspicion’ bit.
He was seen by about 50,000 supporters at the game and a few million viewers on the TV. There would appear to be very little doubt that he is guilty of encroachment at least and maybe a couple of other things as well.
He was referred to by the media as a supporter, which is a bit of an insult to regular football fans who go to matches week in and week out and behave themselves. I would prefer to call him a hooligan and I suspect that West Ham and their genuine supporters would be happier if he took his support elsewhere.
In a separate incident, an Everton supporter was captured on TV trying to punch a player from the opposing team when they gathered near the advertising hoarding. He reached out over the hoarding and swung his arm at the player while holding a child in his other arm. Kind of brings babysitting to a whole new level.
Football is secondary to most of these characters. Thankfully he was identified and banned from attending further games. He’s not the only culprit either. So far, this season, West Ham have banned 97 fans for bad behaviour.
Football hooliganism was a huge issue back in the seventies in England. I can remember as a teenager going to a Leeds United match in 1972 and being terrified at the scenes I witnessed on the way to the stadium. Hundreds of fans from both sides were squaring up to each other and all the shop fronts were boarded up to protect the windows.
The violence that I experienced that day was really frightening but I thought that those days were long gone. That may not be the case.
Most of us find it difficult to understand this type of carry-on but one infamous English hooligan, Andy Nicholls, has written five books about football violence. He has admitted being an active football hooligan for 30 years while following Everton Football Club. He was classified as a Category C risk to the authorities which is the highest classification you can get.
He’s proud to have served prison sentences for his involvement in hooliganism and for being deported from countries all over Europe. He also boasts of being banned from attending football matches at home and abroad more times than he can remember. He says that he loved every minute of it.
“I have done most things in life—stayed in the best hotels all over the world, drunk the finest champagne and taken most drugs available. Nothing, however, comes close to being in your own mob when it goes off at the match, and I mean nothing.”
According to Nicholls, “We were there when you could get hurt—hurt very badly, sometimes even killed. Yes, it happened; on occasions, we killed each other. Football hooliganism in my day was a scary pastime.”
“There were also the times we spent following England, the craziest days of our lives. Up to 5,000 mindless thugs visiting and basically pillaging and dismantling European cities, leaving horrified locals to rebuild in time for our next visit.”
I suspect that most of us will struggle to understand that mentality. I dislike calling these guys fans because really, they are nothing but thugs and for them, the football is just incidental.
I heard it said one time that football is a gentleman’s game watched by thugs, while rugby is a thug’s game watched by gentlemen. There is no comparison between the supporters of both codes and why there should be such a vast difference in the way they behave is difficult to explain.
In rugby, for example, the referee is treated with respect. He is referred to as sir, his word is law and his decisions are not contested. In football, every time the referee blows his whistle he is surrounded by players all trying to influence his decision. The linesmen are also regularly subjected to abuse from players and others sitting on the benches.
Owen Farrell walked into a pub in Dublin after Saracens had defeated Munster in the semi-final of the European Cup. The pub was full of Munster fans who appreciated the great game that Farrell had played so they gave him a standing ovation.
Now, they’re the real fans.