Football violence

[NotoriousGTT]

Was saddened hear and read about the crowd trouble at West Ham Vs Millwall.

Stabbings, riot police, pitch invasions, i thought these days were behind us.

I'm a West Ham fan due to family/friends living in the East End but it is embarassing to see that alot of it was caused by our fans.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/8221451.stm

Couldnt find a suitable topic to put this in so... discuss.

[METALMAN]

I can't say I was surprised by it to be honest. :/

[NotoriousGTT]

I think the game was always going to be a bit of a powderkeg, but this really harps back to the bad old days of football violence.

[METALMAN]

Thing is, it's not entirely a thing of the past as people often like to think. There were big incidents with England fans in Germany for World Cup 2006 and at Euro 2000. Also Rangers fans in Manchester last year for the UEFA Cup Final. (although I don't actually remember any fighting there. I think they just trashed the place.)

Yeah so...ban England and Rangers fans and the problem is solved. Throw in Celtic for good measure. >_>

EDIT: oh and Anders Frisk death threat Chelsea fans. Don't ban Chelsea though. I like them.

[TMM]

As soon as the draw was made I was expecting something. Didn't quite expect it to be as huge as it was, but it seems things never change for hardcore West Ham and Millwall fans.

Have to say though, credit to Jack Collison for playing despite his father dying two days ago. Then he has to put up with all this shit. Hope everyone involved (don't care how many hundreds) get lifetime bans.

[Adam]

Disgraceful, it angers me. There was some crowd trouble, nothing like this tonight of course, at our game at Middlesbrough on Saturday and it just makes me angry, there's no need for it in this day and age at all.

They keep showing the footage on SSN and it's just totally unneccessary for people to act this way. Jack Collison got led away by Steve Clarke at the end in tears, allegedly because some fans were jumping on him and he of course lost his father in a motorcycle crash two days ago.

[NotoriousGTT]

Thing is, it's not entirely a thing of the past as people often like to think. There were big incidents with England fans in Germany for World Cup 2006 and at Euro 2000. Also Rangers fans in Manchester last year for the UEFA Cup Final. (although I don't actually remember any fighting there. I think they just trashed the place.)

Yeah so...ban England and Rangers fans and the problem is solved. Throw in Celtic for good measure. >_>

There were running battles with the police in Manchester, but in part that was due to bad organisation on the part of the city council and the breakdown of one of the big screens in the city centre.

That makes it 2 Euro cup finals and both times its ended up with battles with police, Manchester and Barcelona.

So basically, what we have established is that i support 2 teams whose supporters are all thugs.

[METALMAN]

Aberdeen fans are probably worse than Rangers fans though. They don't seem scary at all because their poncy accents make them sound wussy. But they are a scary bunch.

[Darloboy]

Should have played the game behind closed doors, they knew it was bound to kick off. Two scummy clubs with scummy fans.

[NotoriousGTT]

Should have played the game behind closed doors, they knew it was bound to kick off. Two scummy clubs with scummy fans.

You can slate the fans all you want, but 95% of both clubs fans went to watch a good local derby and it was spoiled by a minority as usual. Why deprive the majority of fans a great game? Would you play all Old Firm games behind closed doors as well? How about Rome derbys? Closed doors is never the answer.

[Captain Kirk]

Thing is, it's not entirely a thing of the past as people often like to think. There were big incidents with England fans in Germany for World Cup 2006 and at Euro 2000. Also Rangers fans in Manchester last year for the UEFA Cup Final. (although I don't actually remember any fighting there. I think they just trashed the place.)

Yeah so...ban England and Rangers fans and the problem is solved. Throw in Celtic for good measure. >_>

There were running battles with the police in Manchester, but in part that was due to bad organisation on the part of the city council and the breakdown of one of the big screens in the city centre.

That makes it 2 Euro cup finals and both times its ended up with battles with police, Manchester and Barcelona.

So basically, what we have established is that i support 2 teams whose supporters are all thugs.

If the council had prepared things would have been a lot better(no extra bins for 200,000+?)

Plus if the Manchester police weren't a bunch of heavy-handed arseholes too.(something a friend of mine was told by the Preston police who were up helping)

Edited August 26, 2009 by Captain Kirk

[IAceI]

I love Kenny Jackett.

"We didn't run onto the pitch.. because we didn't have the opportunity."

They know fine well if this was at the New Den then their fans would have been on the pitch. West Ham fans were running onto the pitch but the stabbing and off-field violence was the real worry; something both fans are culpable for - not just the Hammers.

Poor Collison though. His fucking dad and some fans are just to dense to realise the gravity of their actions because they just view these lots as footballers there to provide a distraction to their violence - not as human beings.

[Dynamite]

I blame Danny Dyer >_>.

[IAceI]

Well, possibly a bit of a stretch but I'm sure he'll get a documentary out of this match too. And I'm sure that documentary will include prolific use of the words "massive" and "proper".

[hackerjack]

This is the first time for quite a while that somethign like this has happenned.

Yes there have been incodents of individuals or groups causing trouble (Cardiff coin throwing etc) and of fans clashing with police (UEFA Final) but this was a throw back to the days when groups of opposing fans used to organise to fight each other.

I dont have a solution though, what can be done outside a stadium based in and amongst residential areas after all? Out of town stadiums dont have anywhere near the same problems due to isolation from pubs and the public, less ticketless fans and park and ride schemes but you can't force all clubs into stadiums like that, especially those from London boroughs. Creating an exclusion zone has been tried before but just ends up annoying residents and moving the trouble further from the ground and CCTV is pretty useless in those circumstances, though it could help with the pitch invasions if everyone buying a ticket was forced to register a photograph like they do wtih glastonbury tickets. Tougher punishments dont seem to work as they believe (probably rightly) that they will not get caught as long as they arent seized on the day.

[TheArsenal]

I blame Danny Dyer >_>.

That was Chelsea/Millwall. If you're gonna blame anyone, blame Frodo Baggins.

[Crybaby Bunting]

Plus, what is really going to stop thug X from going to see another football match after a ban for life? It isn't as if club staff can personally identify about 20 people in a 50,000 seater stadium. Even less so if they went to a football match that they're not associated with (a West Ham group going to a Fulham match to start trouble)

It's the big problem with stadiums, unless you set a standard that every team should follow you end up singling out teams and fans for the purpose of finding an idiot or two. The big difference between something like this and a festival gig is that there's usually plenty of time to identify individuals at the ticket office when a festival lasts a few days... with football matches everyone is in and out within a few hours.

[Adam]

They would still have to buy tickets, and nowadays that's virtually always done with the use of a computer database. I'm sure it's possible to keep these bans enforced.

[IAceI]

Unless of course, they got a friend to buy them?