Cod Almighty | Diary

There's cricket on: why do we have to talk about football violence?

25 July 2016

Is there any way of talking and writing about football-related hooliganism without sounding, on the one hand, like a cross between a headteacher ("You've spoilt it for everyone") and a paid-up member of the hang 'em and flog 'em wing of the local Conservative club; or on the other like a nerdy adolescent in denial that he gets a bit of a stiffy thinking about young men in skins out for a scrap? There probably is but Middle-Aged Diary has left himself 20 minutes after making sure you have Tony Butcher's thoughts on Saturday's 3-1 defeat by Sheffield United to read this lunchtime.

There is something profoundly depressing about the fact that a significant number of people can think of no better way to enjoy themselves by the seaside on a sunny July day than to get themselves tanked up and then start a fight. John Fenty has taken the "not true fans" line, which is understandable when you want to distance yourself from the scenes which saw six people arrested and a police officer injured in the run-up to the game. Is it just me though, or is that an equivalent of the American gun lobby's glib defence that "guns don't kill people; people kill people"? Until it stops, football clubs will have to run matches with contingency procedures which do inevitably "spoil it for everyone".

The match itself saw the debut of Kayden Jackson, whose acquisition on a season-long loan from Barnsley was anticipated by Retro Diary on Friday. He played on his own up front in the first half and alongside Omar Bogle in the second. There is more to come from him, confides Paul Hurst.

But as for me, that's all you are getting.