With no game attended on the weekend it’s time for an opinion piece instead, as always there’s no shortage of things to write about when it comes to non-league at levels that sometimes you’ve got to pick and choose a little, sometimes you could easily be blogging every day if this was a full time job, working on that!
Things get brought to your attention all the time so it’s then time to pick a topic and actually as I was discussing this particular topic something else on the same similar lines came up as well.
Success for a club can bring great happiness, wealth, enjoyment and smiles, but it can also bring with it an ugly side to the game and some of it not caused by either the clubs or it’s hardened long-time supporters.
footballwriting.co.uk is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
The content below was originally paywalled.
Last season we saw a lot of pitch invasions after games, and not for example at the end of cup finals where you might see the odd exuberant crowd wanting to celebrate a little too much. It did get to a point where the spill over onto the pitch was coming after a goal was scored.
Now I’ve no problem with celebrating, we’ve all got emotions to share, however raw or controlled there is a time and a place, might be the latter but rarely is it the former.
The reason I’ve picked this topic for debate is the reporting of some ‘uncalled for’ incidents during and following the Whitehawk vs Littlehampton Isthmian League South East Division match at the weekend. Success on the pitch for Town last season saw them win a treble and finish Vase runners up at Wembley, but with it came increased crowds and an element that didn’t seem to know how to control themselves amongst others as the season went on.
Those pitch invasions caused a couple of unsavoury moments painting the club and it’s supporters in a bad light. The remainder of the season saw a security team for each home game although I’m not convinced how much they fully deterred from happening, the club however did act to contain the problem.
Away from home then became the problem where the issues were not policed as heavily, sometimes taking the shine away from what was happening on the pitch which shouldn’t have been the case.
This season with a step up above County League football the club acted to remove this element from their home ground of The Sportsfield, and so far that I am aware of it has worked. I haven’t been to as many games this year but then social media isn’t shy to tell you the story, or as many versions as you can of one incident.
On their travels there is still a problem, games are still fairly local at this level and that makes getting to those grounds relatively easy. I am led to believe that a lot of the minority are banned from the Amex in Brighton, possibly from Football League grounds too and that makes non-league the unmonitored place to go.
If that is true, then there’s a good reason why they’re unable to attend those high profile sporting events, but why should we be ‘putting up’ with them in non-league?
I don’t for one minute condone the flares and firecrackers, they’re dangerous in an enclosed space and when it’s this level of person setting them off, there is no thought process. Having read a lot of different views from both the Whitehawk and Littlehampton side across social media and via the newspaper report, blame appears a two way street and what I’ve seen I don’t agree with the brush tarring of all supporters, people seem to have forgotten how to distinguish between those who come for the football and those who come for the idiocy.
I fully get that it’s a huge issue, it’s not confined to Littlehampton Town by any stretch of the imagination but the ramifications it has for the club itself and those supporters who are there to watch the game and not cause trouble is not what I think is fair, my question that no-one seems to want to answer but happy to vent on the subject is how do you police it then? Whose responsibility is it?
Last year Tottenham Hotspur fans decided to follow Enfield Town to Worthing and cause trouble on the South Coast, Dover Athletic fans banned from Crabble journeyed over to the same ground earlier this season and set about starting a fight at half time, how do you get this kind of thing stopped at our levels where the police are rarely in attendance and most are volunteer stewards?
It’s a latch on effort for idiots who have had their ‘fun’ spoiled at bigger venues and have found that non-league is an easy target. As I said it’s not confined to a single club, South Shields in the Northern Premier League away at Guiseley also this weekend suffered their supporters coach being pelted with bricks after the game with the team coach needing a police escort to avoid the same treatment, the individuals involved believed to have banning orders from Leeds Utd and younger than 20 years old.
What possesses these people that feel they have the right to disrupt non-league football, get every supporter of a particular club tarred with the same brush and cause no end of problems for said club too? How do we police this problem before it’s an occurrence too often up and down the country? To be honest I have no idea how it’s done, while a database can be shared with clubs and authorities no doubt it’s the day itself and the club and how we get to that situation to stop these people attending.
Something though needs to be done before we’re talking about a fatality at a game due to the actions not of a football fan but in reality a thug with no place in our game of football.
Please leave a comment or two, I’d love to hear some ideas of how the game stamps out the trouble before it happens and it becomes all too common.
