Football Hooligans Game
Kanisha Dezarn
Beginning in at least the 1960s, the United Kingdom gained a reputation worldwide for football hooliganism; the phenomenon was often dubbed the British or English Disease.[1][2][3][4][5][6] However, since the 1980s and well into the 1990s the UK government has led a widescale crackdown on football related violence. While football hooliganism has been a growing concern in some continental European countries in recent years, British football fans now tend to have a better reputation abroad. Although reports of British football hooliganism still surface, the instances now tend to occur at pre-arranged locations rather than at the matches themselves.
Football hooliganism dates all the way back to the Middle Ages in England. Fights between groups of youths often occurred during football matches organised between neighbouring towns and villages on Shrove Tuesdays and other Holy Days.[7] Merchants concerned over the effect of such disturbance on trade called for the control of football as early as the 14th century. King Edward II banned football in 1314,[7] and then King Edward III in 1349 because he felt the disorder and violence that accompanied matches led to civil unrest and distracted his subjects. A number of other monarchs and various authorities also tried to ban football through the centuries in England and Scotland but they were largely ineffective.[7]
Hooliganism in the modern game of football in England dates back to its establishment in the 19th century. Individuals referred to as roughs were known to cause trouble at football matches in the 1880s, for example when they attacked the visiting team in a match between Aston Villa and Preston North End in 1885.[8] Local derby matches would usually have the worst trouble in an era when fans did not often travel to other towns and cities, and roughs sometimes attacked the referees and visiting team's players.[9] Incidences of fan violence have been reported from the late 19th and the early 20th century in England and Scotland. In 1909, thousands of Rangers and Celtic fans rioted at the replay of the Scottish Cup Final at Hampden Park.[10] Crowd troubles also extended to areas outside of the ground, into the town as well as trains and railway stations. For example, Leicester City fans vandalised a train in 1934, and several trains were damaged in 1955 and 1956 by Liverpool and Everton fans.[11] John Moynihan in The Soccer Syndrome describes a stroll around the touchline of an empty Goodison Park (Everton's home stadium) on a summer's day in the 1960s. "Walking behind the infamous goal, where they built a barrier to stop objects crunching into visiting goalkeepers, there was a strange feeling of hostility remaining as if the regulars had never left."[12] The News of the World's Bob Pennington spoke of the "lunatic fringe of support that fastens onto them (Everton), seeking identification in a multi-national port where roots are hard to establish." The same newspaper later described Everton supporters as the "roughest, rowdiest rabble who watches British soccer."[12]
Incidences of disorderly behaviour by fans gradually increased before they reached a peak in the 1970s and 1980s. Between 1946 and 1960, there were an average of 13 incidents reported per season, but between 1961 and 1968, the number had increased to 25 per season.[11] Hooliganism in the modern age has been attributed by some sociologists to the decline of the British Empire.[13][14]
In 1974, when Manchester United were relegated to the Second Division, the Red Army hooligan firm caused mayhem at grounds up and down the country, and in the same year a Bolton Wanderers fan stabbed a young Blackpool fan to death behind the Kop at Bloomfield Road during a Second Division match.[16] These two events led to introduction of crowd segregation and the erection of fences at football grounds in England.[17]
A bad-tempered FA Cup quarter-final tie between Newcastle United and Nottingham Forest on 9 March 1974 was halted mid-match when "hundreds of fans" invaded the pitch, one of whom attacked Forest midfielder Dave Serella.[18]
The so-called "relegation battle", when Tottenham Hotspur and Chelsea fans fought on the pitch before Spurs relegated Chelsea in the return fixture in 1975, made national news when shown on the BBC television programme John Craven's Newsround. Leeds United were banned from Europe soon after, when their fans rioted after the 1975 European Cup Final against Bayern Munich in Paris.[19] Manchester United were banned in 1977 after rioting before, during and after their Cup Winners Cup game with Saint-tienne, also in France.[20] In March 1978, a full-scale riot broke out at The Den during an FA Cup quarter-final between Millwall and Ipswich Town. Fighting began on the terraces and spilled out on to the pitch and into the narrow streets around the ground. Dozens of people were injured.[21]
During the 1970s, black footballers became an increasingly frequent presence in English football, mostly born to Afro-Caribbean immigrants who settled in Britain from 1948. With racial tension high in many parts of Britain and the far-right National Front peaking in popularity at the same time, many of these players were subjected to regular racial abuse from fans of rival teams, whose fans often pelted them with banana skins, as well as making monkey chants or shouting racist obscenities. Perhaps the most notable player to suffer this type of racial abuse during the 1970s was Viv Anderson, the Nottingham Forest full-back who became England's first black senior international player in 1978.[22] Black players became an increasingly frequent feature in the English game during the 1980s, and with hooliganism still widespread, incidents of racial abuse continued on a large scale. John Barnes, who made his Football League debut for Watford in 1981, was soon targeted with racial abuse by rival fans, which continued after he joined Liverpool in 1987, soon after which he suffered severe racist abuse. In 1984, soon after breaking into the England national football team, Barnes was racially abused during a friendly match in Brazil by a section of England supporters identifying themselves as supporters or members of the National Front.[23]
The [Inter-City Firm], like the sub-groups from other clubs, specialises in infiltrating the terraces reserved at games for rival fans. Its members wear no club colours, carry apparently inoffensive weapons like umbrellas or hardened hats and maintain their anonymity by avoiding official supporters' transport. [...] Once the game has started they lay into rival fans, cause havoc, and melt away into the crowd.
During the 1980s, clubs which had rarely experienced hooliganism feared hooliganism coming to their towns, with Swansea City supporters anticipating violence after their promotion to the Football League First Division in 1981, at a time when most of the clubs most notorious for hooliganism were playing in the First Division,[25] while those living in Milton Keynes were concerned when Luton Town announced plans to relocate to the town, although this relocation ultimately never happened.[26]
On 1 May 1982, after a London derby between Arsenal and West Ham United, a supporter was killed in a riot between fans of the two teams.[24] On 5 January 1985, an FA Cup third-round tie between Burton Albion and Leicester City was replayed after Albion goalkeeper Paul Evans was wounded by a block of wood thrown from the City end of the neutral Baseball Ground.[27]
On 13 March 1985, Millwall supporters were responsible in large-scale rioting in Luton when Millwall played Luton Town in the quarter-final of the FA Cup, although a number of Luton fans were also involved in the violence. In response, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's government set up a "war cabinet" to combat football hooliganism. This was the first of several high-profile incidents of hooliganism in 1985.[28]
Certainly it is a long time since followers of the Scottish national team or [Scotland's] great club sides have caused the sickening mayhem which English fans have produced in Belgium, France, Luxembourg, Spain and Switzerland in the past three years. [...] English fans have come to be regarded in Continental football circles as by far and away the worst in Europe, if not the world.
On 11 May 1985 (the same day as the Bradford City stadium fire) a 14-year-old boy died at St Andrew's stadium when fans were pushed by police onto a wall which subsequently collapsed following crowd violence at a match between Birmingham City and Leeds United.[nb 1][30] The fighting that day was described by Justice Popplewell, during the Popplewell Committee investigation into football in 1985, as more like "the Battle of Agincourt than a football match".[28][nb 2][31] Because of the other events in 1986 and the growing rise in football hooliganism during the early 1980s, an interim report from the committee stated that "football may not be able to continue in its present form much longer" unless hooliganism was reduced, perhaps by excluding "away" fans.[28]
On 29 May 1985, 39 people, mostly Italian and Juventus fans, were crushed to death during the European Cup Final between Liverpool and Juventus at Heysel Stadium in Brussels; an event that became known as the Heysel Stadium disaster. Just before kick-off, Liverpool fans broke through a line of police officers and ran towards opposing supporters in a section of the ground containing Italian fans. Many fans tried to escape the fighting, and a wall collapsed on them.[32][33] As a result of the Heysel Stadium disaster, English clubs were banned from all European competitions until 1990, with Liverpool banned for an additional year.[34]
On 8 August 1986 rival gangs of Manchester United and West Ham United hooligans were involved in violence on a Sealink ferry bound for Hook of Holland. Eight football hooligans, all either Manchester United or West Ham United supporters, received prison sentences totalling 51 years 16 months later.[35] Another incident was soon forthcoming: on 20 September 1986 Leeds United hooligans overturned and immolated a fish and chip van at Odsal Stadium, the temporary home of Bradford City following the fire at Valley Parade the previous year.[36]
e59dfda104