There is currently much fretting about pitch invasions, but there’s an easy way to stop them.
It’s that time of year when fans run on to celebrate winning titles, going up or staying up and is one of football’s great traditions. To be honest, the vast majority of people mean no harm. The fact it’s transgressive just adds to the thrill. The problem is, football is massively popular and when you’ve got 40,000 people all in one place, there’s going to be a few who are prone to violence, or people whose minds are disturbed in some way. It’s a numbers game.
There has been plenty of ‘what about the thing that didn’t happen but might have happened’ talk. Someone might indeed have a knife, or a broken bottle, someone might bring a grenade into the ground or launch a bazooka, but such debates are pointless because worse outcomes are always possible in every situation in life. If we lived by ‘what ifs’, we wouldn’t even have 40,000 people crowded into one place. What if, what if…we can’t live by what if…you’d never leave your house if we lived by what if.
At Goodison, supporters were overcome by the emotion of staying up, Frank Lampard’s 20 points accrued being so massively superior to Rafa Benitez’ 19 points, so they ran on to rejoice in the unlikely win over Palace after being 2-0 down. Fair enough. It was a great comeback. There were nearly 40,000 people there, a few behaved like morons, one got in Patrick Vieira’s face just because he could. Others were more noble. That sounds like life more broadly.
After Nottingham Forest overcame Sheffield United in the play-off, Billy Sharp was headbutted by a man who is now in jail. There were mass pitch invasions at Port Vale and Northampton and after the Huddersfield v Luton play-off. Villa’s goalkeeper was ‘manhandled’ by Manchester City fans. Two have been arrested.
The fear is that we live in a copycat society. One lot of people see another lot of people doing something and copy…
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