Just as the saying goes that in a city you are never more than so many feet away from a rat, so in Britain you are never, even in midsummer, many days away from a game of professional football. In fact even before England played Spain to lose the final of the Euros tournament in Berlin, Scotlandโs next season had begun. The English Football League resumes on Friday, August 9. Mark Rowe looks ahead in terms of security and crowd safety.
Ahead of the season, Rex Grizell wrote: โAt some matches fans donโt know whether to watch the football or the fights breaking out on the terraces. Fights even break out after the match. After a Blackburn v Liverpool cup-tie last year, Blackburn police had to make 20 baton charges into crowds of football supporters fighting in the streets long after the game was over.โ Grizell quoted a Harley Street psychologist on crowd psychology, that โtends to exaggerate individual psychology. As a member of a crowd a man โfeels much stronger emotions, identifies himself with the group and tends to behave as its other members doโ. As Grizell continued: โGroup emotion leads easily to violence, and the loss of a sense of proportion.โ
Endearingly, or depressingly, Grizell was writing in the long-gone John Bull weekly magazine in August 1959. He told the story of locked-out โirate supportersโ unable to see the Arsenal-Colchester cup tie at Highbury (long since vacated and now upmarket flats) in north London, who burst into Aubert Court, a six storey block of flats overlooking the ground, even smashing down doors to get on the roof. That was a common tactic among fans; Liverpool fans used it once at West Hamโs ground, Upton Park. Giving away Grizellโs era was his list of what players and officials had been bombarded with: โbottles, stones, teacups, apple cores, orange peel, lumps of concrete, tumblers, knives, clogs, tomatoes, bags of flour and cushionsโ.
Otherwise, some risks never change; such as a pitch invasion (whether fans are angry, or joyous at promotion, at full pelt they could hurt someone in their way). One London stadium safety officer once pointed out to me the precaution of seeing that building material was not around, that fans might use as missiles.
Drink
Drink does not help. In Scotland, alcohol is not on sale in grounds at all; in England, you can buy (grossly over-priced) alcohol before and during the match, but cannot take it off the concourse, and itโs part of the job of stewards on duty on stairs to deny spectators access with any glasses, that have long been plastic because glass can be dangerous, whether broken accidentally let alone on purpose as an improvised weapon. The recent Euros showed what happens when fans can have drinks in the stands; again, whether out of sheer pleasure or malice, when their team scores they may throw the contents. At a midsummer one-off occasion, those sprayed with beer may laugh it off. On a windy Saturday in January, in Blackburn, you might not be laughing, let alone if the beer stains your childโs expensive replica shirt.
Safeguarding
Talking of children, safeguarding has become part of the training and job for pub door staff (identifying vulnerability, in the jargon), and in stadiums. The hooligans at a football club may be generational. The older ones who were the hooligans a generation ago, are now past being violent except on occasion or if provoked, can mentor a new generation of 15-year-olds who are ready for trouble. Typically that is against visiting fans (who also have their, perhaps merely a handful, of 15-year-old potential hooligans). Where the two sets of fans are closest and have to be segregated (the โseg lineโ in the stadium safety lingo) is where the risk is most obvious.
Violence can arise from a deliberate act of disrespect, by a fan, such as spitting towards a visiting fan, or at a flag that those fans have brought with them. Once fans are fighting, stewards (who ought not to carry out security tasks, being โlicensable activityโ in the jargon of the regulator the Security Industry Authority) and SIA-badged security officers have to intervene, though some will confess that they may not rush to cut short a beating, if a home fan has caused the violence. If the offender has merited an ejection, if theyโre under 18, no matter what the offence and no matter how large and aggressive the youth, the club has to be mindful of its โduty of careโ before it ejects the youth outside the ground. The same as outside a pub; if a youth or woman is intoxicated, the door staff ejecting that person ought to assess if someone is at risk of becoming a victim of assault or worse on the street.
To return to the football, at the point of ejection of an under-18, police in the control room may ask over the radio for the ejected personโs ID. If that production of ID shows that the youth is indeed under 18, it becomes a safeguarding matter and requires a process to be followed, including the clubโs safeguarding officer (as required in all sports, given concerns that adults may abuse children) is present, to see that the youth isnโt harmed. Even though, a ground ought to have full CCTV coverage.
The Euros also showed numerous examples of โpyrosโ (short for pyrotechnics) thrown or let off by fans inside the ground. While the television coverage of matches went to some trouble to avoid showing fans trespassing on the field, the TV could hardly avoid showing the smoke from pyros. For at least ten years, Britainโs football authorities have been reporting that pyro use is rising (because theyโre the fashion), and warning fans against bringing pyros into grounds and how letting them off is dangerous; the Football Association for example promised โnew measures and stronger sanctionsโ โ at the start of the 2022-23 season, to no apparent effect. Given search regimes on entry at big matches are commonplace, how do pyros get in? The short answer is that clubs are not allowed to search under-18s. If you are a hooligan who wants to set off a flare or a smoke bomb when your team scores, as happens even in the lower, fifth or sixth, tiers of English football, you give the device to a youth to carry it inside. As one groundโs safety and security man said bitterly, aviation wouldnโt dream of excluding under-18s from a search before allowing them on aircraft.
Photo by Mark Rowe: Gillingham FC, Kent.
