The Diary

Cod Almighty | Diary

Before we move on

12 November 2013

We need to talk about crowd trouble, if only because there is no other news.

It is highly tempting to say "not in our name" and move on. No sane, rational person expects every Muslim to apologise for 9/11, or every Christian for the inquisition. Why, then, should every football supporter be asked to apologise for every outbreak of disorder? Why should Town fans have to apologise for attacks on Scunthorpe supporters in which they took no part?

However, to talk of apologies is to miss the point. Assuming the open letter quoted by Miss Guest Diary yesterday is a true statement of events, Scunthorpe supporters were the victims not only of hooligans but also of policing. Policing which, at one moment, assumed they were all threats to public order (getting them all off the train at Grimsby Town and making them sit in buses) and, at the next, left them to their own devices in the face of a gathering mob. If the police can, or feel they must, manage a match based on the assumption that all who attend it are potential hooligans, then it impacts on all of us.

Football should purge us of violence. One of your Middle-Aged Diary's fondest memories is of being reduced and then exalted to a state of hysteria at Tranmere when, with Town hanging on to a one-goal lead in injury time, John Aldridge first won, and then missed, a penalty. The incoherent raving of the final minutes of the match dissolved on the final whistle. The supporters walked out and mingled amicably, the people of Birkenhead swifly exempted from the animosity I had left to their football team ten minutes before.

A rivalry, a friendly rivalry, can add to the sense of catharsis. But every idiot who insists on treating it as something it is not is stealing the pleasure not just of their rivals but of everyone.