Heroes & Villains, the Aston Villa fanzine
Heroes & Villains => Heroes Discussion => Topic started by: Legion on October 08, 2010, 07:00:29 AM
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From Auntie (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-11473191):
Incidents of football hooliganism involving young people have almost trebled in the past three years, according to police figures.
Association of Chief Police Officers statistics seen by BBC Radio 5 live show there are now 290 teenagers across the UK banned from football grounds.
Officers are concerned there is a new generation of football hooligans.
Police say trouble is more focused on the lower leagues where there are fewer resources to control matches.
Internal police figures seen by the BBC show incidents of football disorder involving young people have increased from 38 in 2007 to 103 last season.
While the violence is not at the levels of the 1970s and 1980s, the Association of Chief Police Officers (Acpo) says it is seeing disturbing evidence of younger fans becoming involved.
Figures show that almost half (47%) of incidents of disorder last season in England, Wales and Northern Ireland involved youths.
Andy Holt, who speaks for Acpo on football policing, said: "If they're engaging in football-related disorder at an earlier age then we're going to be stuck with that sort of behaviour potentially for some while.
"So it is something that we are acutely aware of. People are coming through and engaging in football disorder who perhaps weren't around in the heyday of football violence 15-20 years ago.
"So it is a worrying trend that the younger element are starting to pick up on this sort of behaviour."
One of the key tools used to try to tackle the problem are football banning orders.
The orders allow the courts across the UK to impose severe restrictions on the movements of potential hooligans around matches.
They will be banned from all football grounds, and can also be stopped from using trains or entering city centres on match days.
Official statistics for the current football season will be published in the Autumn but BBC Radio 5 Live has seen figures showing that in September there were 3,211 bans in place across the UK. Some 290 of them were for teenagers, and the youngest was aged just 13.
"Phil" and his brother "John" are both in their early 20s. John got his first football banning order when he was 17.
Tom is 19. He first became involved in football hooliganism in his early teens. He is banned from going near any football ground in the UK.
"You bump into people or you arrange things (violence) if it's a big day and you see how things go through the day. If you don't get nothing you go back to the pub and everything's sweet, you're out for a drink anyway with the lads.
"If something happens it happens, if it don't it don't. It don't make a difference to your day, but having a row (fight) does tend to make the day better. It's something to talk about.
"I've seen knives involved, pool cues, chairs, everything. Anything, any weapon you could think of. Anything that you could pick up on a Saturday. It happens. There is a buzz to it.
"I'm not allowed near the football stadium 4 hours before, 6 hours after the match. I have to hand my passport in every time England play away and hand my passport in a week before the World Cup so it affects you going on holiday.
"Most people I know have got season tickets - everyone in Derby loves football. So I regret it for that, but it was still part of growing up. It happened. I don't regret nothing in my life so that's how it goes."
Despite being Coventry City fans, neither of them will be able to go to a football match until they are almost 30.
"Phil" has been banned for eight years and "John" for 10. They were both convicted of football-related violence after being involved in a fight involving up to 100 Coventry and Leicester fans in 2008.
Proud members of the club's hooligan "firm", the Coventry Legion, they got involved in football violence when they were 14.
Despite the damage they have done to the reputation of Coventry City they see themselves as the true fans of the club.
"Football hooligans may not be true fans to you, we're there every game. What are you doing? 'Oh lets sit at home on the chat boards slagging off how bad Coventry City are doing.' Come back when you know what you are talking about."
"We're prepared to fight whether it's windy, snowy, rainy, we're prepared to fight every weekend through the football season for Coventry City and for everything they represent."
"I definitely think we're treated worse than paedophiles. Okay, paedophiles have to sign a register for so long, but they don't have to go through what we have to go through.
"They don't have to go down the police station at eight o'clock at night after working a 12 hour shift to go sign their football banning card."
Officers say they have seen a shift in the way football violence takes place, with trouble more focused on the lower leagues where ticket prices are cheaper and there may be fewer resources to steward and police games.
On Saturday, trouble broke out after Southampton's League One match against Bournemouth. Six people were arrested after violent clashes between supporters outside the ground and in the city centre.
Match commander Supt Rick Burrows said of the trouble: "Southampton's a lovely town and the club's a great club, and the majority don't want to see that. It's the reality of modern day football.
"Football hooliganism doesn't go away. It morphs and it comes back in different forms and the police have to be switched on to that and respond accordingly."
The cost of policing games has become a point of tension between the football leagues and the police.
Acpo estimates it costs up them up to £25m to deal with football matches, but last season they only recovered £12-15m of that from the clubs.
The rest of the price is being borne by the police, and ultimately, taxpayers.
In response, the clubs say they are not legally liable for trouble happening away from their grounds and should not be expected to pay for it.
The Football League says it is not complacent about the problem of hooliganism but the figures need to be seen in context. They say the scale of the rise is not significant.
A spokesman said: "We are very surprised and disappointed that wider assumptions are being made about an increase of 65 incidents, some of which would not have been serious enough to merit an arrest, across a season that encompassed 2,000 football matches watched by more than 30 million people."
"There is a constant dialogue between the football authorities and the police service. If the police have some new issues of concern they should raise them at the appropriate forum."
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Saw this mentioned on BBC breakfast this morning with the headline that hooliganism amongst youths has trebled. While not wanting to sound as though its unimportant, its poor use of statistics. Something trebling sounds very high, until you realise its fairly low base figures to begin with.
The findings that many problems are in the lower leagues doesnt surprise me, its nothing new. I can remember going to a Nuneaton v Oxford cup game many years ago and it was as bad as Ive seen anywhere, Nuneaton fans still have a reputation I believe.
Also, arent the lower leagues getting larger attendances now ? The Conference used to be a league where only the big clubs would get above the 1,000 mark. Its now not unusual any weekend to see half the games getting crowds between 2,000 - 5,000 plus.
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From Auntie (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-11473191):
"I definitely think we're treated worse than paedophiles. Okay, paedophiles have to sign a register for so long, but they don't have to go through what we have to go through.
"They don't have to go down the police station at eight o'clock at night after working a 12 hour shift to go sign their football banning card."
From Auntie (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-11473191):
What???! lol
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There's a phone-in about this on 5 Live now.
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I was going to start up a thread but seen this.
Iv just spoke to a Wolves fan who goes up whenever he can and he's stopped following the club, a group of his mates who have season tickets have stopped going because theres so much trouble. Im sure you heard about the Notts County incident when a 78 year old woman was put into hospital. He also said they were on the pitch at Everton. And another really strange one was they burnt the Tottenham club shop! The most shocking he told me was he knows a villa fan (14) who went to the game the other week and some Wolves fans held him at knife point untilo he took his Villa shirt off, and then his shorts for the fun of it!
I do think theres more hooliganism around in the lower leagues. I think were lucky at Villa cus theres not really much trouble except for one or two incidents.
Them kids doing the interview sound like dicks, treated worse than paedos? And having to go to the police station after a 12 hour shift. My heart bleeds, dont do it in the first place..
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I think they have done well to stamp hooliganism out it's never going to go away they just need to police it better.
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I have to say i dont really know what more they could do. Theyv got spotters that go to every game so they know if somethings set up. Phone bugging on known hooligans, huge amounts of police on match day. Thing is if its games like West Ham Millwall there wasnt a police force in the world that could stop that, it was always going to really go off. Its sad but theres not much more they can do now. Its part of the game now.
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With the recession and everything it's like we really are trying to recreate the 1980s.
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Bit of a joke article really. “Disorder” is up, so are banning orders. Case studies of three youngsters who have been involved in fighting with the implication there are loads of youngsters having serious rows at football week in week out.
I bet anything when the figures are released the majority of the banning orders are for public order offences or drunken singing, maybe a few pitch invasions or even taking beer into the stands.
Its in the polices interest to get figures up as high as they can so they get more soft overtime and hit their banning targets. As they keep banning people. The easier targets are teenagers who are less likely to defend their actions in court, more likely to give back chat to impress their mates, and who show that if a problem is re emerging then even more resources are needed to deal with it…….
No one can convince me that the police don’t actively go looking for arrests in order to meet their order targets.
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Lies
damn lies
and statistics
I can honestly say that in 35 years of going to VP I have seen disorder in the ground probably 3 times
Outside maybe the same
I do agree with the restrictions bit. If you smack someone on a saturday night outside the pub sod all action would be taken but do it at football and the book gets chucked at you.
Fuck me you can get a banning order for running on the pitch these days, so chances are you will get stopped from travelling abroad when there is a game on. A paedophile wouldnt get those restrictions place on them.
Sensationalism at it's very best
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No hooliganism thread is complete without obligatory hooligan videos of grown men punching each other in the face, just because the other lot erm, well, because!
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Its part of the game now.
I think the day you accept that is the day they win! Will it ever be stamped out 100%? Probably not, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't try. I think the next step is education and campaigns like the one they had for anti-racism.
If people want to fight they inevitably will, so lets try and stop them from wanting to.
A huge step towards this would be the banning of known hooligans, so that they can't recruit their next generation at an impressionable age.
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Its part of the game now.
I think the day you accept that is the day they win! Will it ever be stamped out 100%? Probably not, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't try. I think the next step is education and campaigns like the one they had for anti-racism.
If people want to fight they inevitably will, so lets try and stop them from wanting to.
A huge step towards this would be the banning of known hooligans, so that they can't recruit their next generation at an impressionable age.
How about selective culling ?
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This story was on Radio 5 just before 8 this morning. The official being interviewed actually stated that the number of football related incidents hadn't changed but it was the age of those involved that had changed significantly. The Beeb seemed to gloss over that bit rather quickly.
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Its part of the game now.
I think the day you accept that is the day they win! Will it ever be stamped out 100%? Probably not, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't try. I think the next step is education and campaigns like the one they had for anti-racism.
If people want to fight they inevitably will, so lets try and stop them from wanting to.
A huge step towards this would be the banning of known hooligans, so that they can't recruit their next generation at an impressionable age.
It's pie in the sky, John.
I think that the mistake that is always made is to call it football hooliganism, rather than just hooliganism. There are always people out there that will fight; some times it's around football, sometimes it's around your bird looked at my pint, sometimes it's over a post code, sometimes it's just because they're bored and so on. It's part of the society we live in, football is just one of the places where they get the opportunity.
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Its part of the game now.
I think the day you accept that is the day they win! Will it ever be stamped out 100%? Probably not, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't try. I think the next step is education and campaigns like the one they had for anti-racism.
If people want to fight they inevitably will, so lets try and stop them from wanting to.
A huge step towards this would be the banning of known hooligans, so that they can't recruit their next generation at an impressionable age.
Thing is, as you say it wont be stamped out 100% so its part of the game really. I think we've been fighting it for so long that the ones that want to do it will anyway. Theyll always be the ones that see an oppertunity.
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Bring back Raves and e's! That'll stop 'em!
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No hooliganism thread is complete without obligatory hooligan videos of grown men punching each other in the face, just because the other lot erm, well, because!
[/youtube]
Great videos.
If they fucking worked.
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They work fine for me. Tell WMP to get better computers.
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They work fine for me. Tell WMP to get better computers.
I've passed your email onto the head of ICT for advice :)
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They are not 'football hooligans', they are ******.
Football is their excuse.
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Also, arent the lower leagues getting larger attendances now ? The Conference used to be a league where only the big clubs would get above the 1,000 mark. Its now not unusual any weekend to see half the games getting crowds between 2,000 - 5,000 plus.
Not really, although it has gone up a little bit as The Premier League has priced a few people out of top flight football, the main reason the Conference is seeing higher crowds is the amount of ex-league clubs who have found their way down there in the last few years. Luton, York, Cambridge, Darlington, Mansfield, Grimsby, Wrexham...all clubs with decent fan bases now plying their trade in non-league football. Plus AFC Wimbledon who have inherited their fans from Franchise FC.
Clubs like Stevenage, Burton, Morecambe, Accrington and Dagenham meanwhile are not exactly packing them in now they are Football League clubs, it takes a while to build a fan base when you have spent years struggling to get 1000 through your turnstyles.
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Saw this mentioned on BBC breakfast this morning with the headline that hooliganism amongst youths has trebled. While not wanting to sound as though its unimportant, its poor use of statistics. Something trebling sounds very high, until you realise its fairly low base figures to begin with.
I saw this on the BBC this morning too and the presenters were determined to try and make it into a real issue. The problem for them though was that the number of hooligans banned from games is less than 200 and the number of people going to games in a year is something like 39 million! Typical BBC though - tossers.
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I feel pissed after watching the second one. Is it just me, or did nothing happen? Seemed to me like it was a load of blokes just shouting at each other.
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They are not 'football hooligans', they are c***s.
Football is their excuse.
Correct.
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I feel pissed after watching the second one. Is it just me, or did nothing happen? Seemed to me like it was a load of blokes just shouting at each other.
Can't be arsed watching it, but is it the one where they spend most of their time jumping up and down (safely out of harms way) and occasionally lob a bin at each other?
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One thing's for sure, the camera man won't win any awards!
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I feel pissed after watching the second one. Is it just me, or did nothing happen? Seemed to me like it was a load of blokes just shouting at each other.
Yep it seems to me that modern football hooliganism seems to consist of about 20 blokes aside facing each other off down a street and rather than getting stuck in, just standing there shouting at each other with their arms stretched wide. Occasionally one "firm" will get a bit of a run on and the others will back off and vice versa. It just looks so utterly fucking pointless, if you're going to have a fight then have a fight and get stuck in don't stand there like a fucking scarecrow.
I followed the West Brom Villa link and looked at a few others which were all pretty much the same thing. Shakes head.....
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I feel pissed after watching the second one. Is it just me, or did nothing happen? Seemed to me like it was a load of blokes just shouting at each other.
Can't be arsed watching it, but is it the one where they spend most of their time jumping up and down (safely out of harms way) and occasionally lob a bin at each other?
I don't think it was even that interesting!
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Whats WBA away like? Is it rough for Villa fans?
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Whats WBA away like? Is it rough for Villa fans?
The worst trouble Ive seen at a West Brom v Villa game was when some fans were shouting over the wall under the stand at half time. Someone kicked their foot against the dividing door in a slightly aggressive manner.
Its a joke that the police always force this fixture to an ultra early kick off time, its nothing like playing small heath.
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Cheers going to try get tickets this year but just wanted heads up. Went Blues away last year, i knew it wasnt going to a nice fixture but ended up getting chased. Is it a case of sticking to the right area's a Baggies or just shouting at each other?
At VP its gunna be a 3pm kick off unless ESPN take it, i hope it will be a 3pm so people turn up for it, diddnt sell out last time we played em
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I would say don't wear colours and steer clear of trouble and you'll be fine. I even sat amongst their fans in one derby (draw, when Dion missed pen)
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I dont generally wear colours these days anyway, shirts are too expensive and they havent really been that good in recent years but thats another matter. Hope i get a ticket i enjoy the baggies derby at vp, its a derby without pure hate and a garuntee'd no lose game. Is it good atmosphere at the hawthorns?
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79 banned from Villa (http://www.birminghammail.net/birmingham-sport/aston-villa-fc/aston-villa-news/2010/10/10/revealed-hundreds-of-football-hooligans-banned-at-west-midlands-clubs-97319-27442736/)
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Anyone who thinks the Albion don't hate us is deluded.
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Anyone who thinks the Albion don't hate us is deluded.
Agreed, for most of the 30+ Ollbeyun fan they hate Villa as much as the Under 30's hate the dogheads.
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I haven't seen any trouble at VP since Small Heath a few seasons ago.
Most football related hooliganism happens on the lower league scene.
Thank God.