Yesterday’s ‘Black Country Derby’, a fourth round FA Cup match between hosts West Bromwich Albion (WBA) and Premier League visitors Wolverhampton Wanderers was stopped for 38 minutes due to disorder in a corner of the ground. Thanks to video bloggers (vloggers), anyone can go online and piece together what happened, and get behind the mainstream media headlines of ‘crowd trouble’, ‘chaos’ and ‘fans storm the pitch’, writes Mark Rowe.
The trouble that led to the players leaving the field happened late on when Wolves were leading West Brom, of the Championship, one tier below the Premiership, 2-0. As one father and son West Brom vlogger, All Things Midlands, asked: “Why were Wolves fans in the home end?”
Before the internet and mobile phones, that allow vloggers to take immediate pictures, often of excellent quality, and add commentary (while having to take care not to breach copyright), after such disorder as yesterday’s, as with any piece of news, someone who was not at the scene had to rely on gossip, or what the next day’s newspaper (local or national) had to say, or radio or television in less detail. At best, a witness who was also a member of the media would give an account, as the broadcaster (and long-time Albion watcher) Adrian Goldberg did on Talk TV.
Now, thanks to vloggers, you can make your own minds up. That’s not to say the new ‘citizen journalism’ is perfect or better than the old; but you can get under the cliches of police and football clubs (West Brom after the game condemned ‘in the strongest terms the unsavoury scenes’, promised the club would ‘work with West Midlands Police and the Football Association to fully investigate the incidents’, would ban anyone involved in the disorder; and would make no further comment.
The crowd cheered when (shown by All Things Midlands) a woman ran onto the field, kicking in front of her one of the footballs left at the pitchside, for a player to pick up and for the game to continue if the match ball is kicked into the stands. She made it as far as a black-uniformed security steward towards the centre of the field of play, and fell over. A message afterwards on one of the digital boards in a corner of the stadium may have been aimed at her: “Please return to your seats, entering the field of play is a criminal offence.”
As so often in a football stadium or indeed other disorder – such as a political protest turned violent – nearly all do not join the disorder. Several fans did skip the advertising hoarding and make it past the orange-coated stewards, to head for the corner of the ground where fighting broke out. In front of the father and son vlogger, quite near the centre circle on the opposite side from the corner with fighting, one man was seen on camera to set off; otherwise, fans confined themselves to taking video on their phones (violence as a spectacle), making rude gestures towards the end with Wolves supporters, or chanting rudely (such as: ‘Fuck off back to Stafford”).
What also hardly ever counts as ‘news’ is that the stewards and lemon-coated police did their jobs, of keeping rival fans apart. They were in copious numbers, West Midlands Police and WBA evidently appreciating beforehand the potential for trouble. Hence the unusually early kick-off time of 11.45am (giving fans the least time to get drunk on the day). Where another WBA vlogger, Bradley Miller, was standing, a corner of a main stand nearest the Wolves visitors), trouble also flared: of the six-of-one, half-a-dozen-of-the-other variety. Besides rival fans goading each other with gestures and shouts, when Wolves went 0-1 ahead in the first half, at least two orange flares (the Wolves colour) were thrown onto the pitch, and promptly collected by stewards.
The vlogger footage showed how – as in retail and numerous other settings – front-line security and other workers have to accept aggression of ‘customers’. Hardly commented upon, as less extreme and unusual than fighting, plastic bottles got thrown; for example at a Wolves player when he was taking a corner nearest the corner where Bradley Miller was. Later on when a bottle sailed past a dark-uniformed security steward, he ducked slightly to avoid it; part of the job. At the same time, despite the extraordinary violence, otherwise normality reigned. All Things Midlands felt it safe to stand outside the ground to record a final comment; a member of ground staff walked along the touchline past stewards and police, to collect the corner flagpoles.
As for what to do, to prevent disorder another time? The father of All Things Midlands stated: “People don’t want to be involved in that. Fair play to Wolves, if they had come on to the pitch, it would have been carnage.” The violence was by a ‘mindless minority’, BBC Radio WM commented (they said it was ‘carnage’ – who was the more sensational, a vlogger or the BBC?) during the suspension of the game. To blame a ‘mindless minority’ was at best half-right. To climb over the hoardings to run 100 yards to a fight takes some time: presumably some thoughts have to pass through someone’s mind, quite apart from the original decision to leave the crowd you’re among. That remark of Radio WM – and others, such as their stating that they wanted to talk about the football, not ‘this’ – showed a chronic inability of those in football, and the football media, to own up to what football provokes. For (as a football safety officer once remarked to me), no-one, if they go to the cinema and see a film they dislike or don’t rate, turn violent. Even related team sports such as rugby don’t routinely have the derby-day trouble (let alone the policing and stewarding precautions) of Newcastle FC (pictured) versus Sunderland – the extraordinary lengths Newcastle had to go to, to keep their fans apart from Sunderland’s in their third round FA Cup tie are featured in the February print edition of Professional Security Magazine. Or Cardiff City versus Swansea; or Liverpool versus Everton, City versus United in Manchester, and (most regularly of all) Celtic versus Rangers in Glasgow.
The football authorities are good at messaging. Bradley Miller and All Things Midlands each showed the stadium’s digital signage in the 55th minute of the game:
‘Carrying or using smoke bombs, pyrotechnics and throwing objects are illegal, dangerous and have serious consequences. They have no place in our game.’
Other messages offered a text number to send any cases of ‘abuse’ (which many uncounted hundreds, maybe thousands of fans aimed at the other side’s fans, in word and gesture). Another regular message was about working together to prevent extremism, under the ACT (Action Counters Terrorism) rubric. Leaving terrorism aside, ‘abuse’ and ‘pyros’ have become normal, as featured in the magazine last year. One wonders if football clubs agree to such messaging so that clubs can then blame supporters for not heeding it.
As so often, what went unsaid was telling. Police (several drawing their sticks) and stewards deployed promptly and well to deter fans (some doubtless weighing up whether to do more than stand and watch). Behind the line of uniforms, at least two police stood taking video. “It’s kicking off big time!” Bradley Miller said twice.
West Brom were in the Premier League as recently as the 2020-21 season. Their video surveillance cameras ought to be as good as any stadium’s. Yet some fans evidently were not deterred by CCTV (Bradley Miller showed before the match West Brom fans singing and letting off a blue flare in the bar area inside the stadium, where CCTV coverage being internal should be better than in the stands; perhaps the messaging against pyros should be shown there, instead of TV of past football?). Nor did fans pull back from violence, deterred by the likelihood of police collaring them, nor of a criminal justice punishment, nor a ban by their club. But you can hardly expect the police and courts hollowed out by the austerity of the 2010s to have the capacity to throw resources at an outbreak of hooliganism than any number of things: metal theft, theft of construction site plant, theft from farms.
