Back once again with the ill behaviour

There's a rise in disorder around football, but also a worrying resurgence of a narrative that surrounds it

There’s a worrying increase in the number of instances of fans being talked about rather than to, a rise in the number of lazy clichés and assumptions being peddled about supporter culture, and a danger that we could be seeing a return to the bad old days of media reporting of fans that disfigured the 1970s and 80s.

It comes on the back of figures published by the UK Football Policing Unit (UKFPU) in January showing a 47% increase in football-related arrests in the six months from 1 July 2021 compared to the same six-month period in 2019-20. That six-month period in 2019-20 was the last without lockdown restrictions. There have also been some high-profile incidents at games recently, with several instances of missiles being thrown from the crowd onto the pitch, and shocking scenes at Nottingham Forest’s ground when a Leicester City fan ran onto the pitch and assaulted players. There have also been widely-circulated reports of disorder involving Leicester fans in Nottingham before that game.

There is, for the avoidance of any doubt, a problem to be confronted. What I want to try to address here is the issue of how that problem is talked about. Because that affects outcomes.

Already there are reports emerging that the Premier League and English Football League have begun “an urgent review of crowd behaviour following a wave of fan disorder” – that’s according to a paywalled article in The Telegraph that manages to get the phrase “back to the days of the Seventies and the Eighties” into the first paragraph. Telegraph readers can also get the benefit of chief football correspondent-cum-crime commissioner Jason Burt’s views in a piece entitled “More police, jail terms for offenders and ‘fan coaching’ – how to solve football’s hooligan problem.” Lest you be tempted to disagree, the standfirst makes it clear any divergence from the opinions contained will attract the accusation that football is putting “its head in the sand”.

Meanwhile, UKFPU lead Chief Constable Mark Roberts has lost little time talking up the resurgence. He’s linking it to his objections to the granting of safe standing licences and proposals to remove the ban on drinking within view of the pitch at football matches. Roberts is a throwback to the dark days of football policing, seeing fans primarily as a problem to be dealt with, and this, compared with the expression of a number of evidence-free views on safe standing, have prompted criticism from football policing experts, including former serving officer Owen West. Media outlets really need to stop treating Roberts as an impartial commentator.

So far, no one is suggesting talking to the Football Supporters’ Association, or to fan groups – leaving us to draw the obvious conclusion that we are once again being seen as part of the problem, not the solution. Fan groups at national and local level do a lot of work around safety and policing and there is no excuse for not involving them. But it seems old habits die hard in football.

There have, as it happens, been discussions among fan reps about the reports, and much sharing of anecdotal evidence about a decline in behaviour. As well as the more obvious headline-generating incidents mentioned above, there are tales of an increase in aggressive and anti-social behaviour, men using the ladies’ toilets, parents feeling unsafe when taking their kids, and a general perception of an increase in cocaine use.

Traditionally, fans groups have not seen their role as to police behaviour, but there is an acknowledgement that if we call for fans to be treated properly, we also have some responsibility to try to effect change when behaviour deteriorates. The worry is that, by doing so, we feed into the narrative pushed by the likes of Roberts and media columnists peddling saloon-bar solutions. Any debate needs to be informed, and people need to be aware of the dangers of generalising and making fact out of assumption.

For example, there is much anecdotal evidence of an increase in cocaine use, but little by the way of hard fact to tell us if this is true or what effect it is having. How, for example, does it fit in with the drinking culture that is very present in football and which requires conversation itself? It’s also worth being aware of some of the other instances where assumption morphs in to fact, such as the view that the deterioration in behaviour is primarily driven by “younger people” – another group all too often blamed rather than engaged with.

I asked Geoff Pearson, professor of Law at the University of Manchester and one of the UK’s foremost experts on crowd behaviour, for his take on the latest developments.

“There are indicators that there is a nationwide increase in levels of criminality, disorder, and anti-social behaviour in domestic football in England and Wales,” said Pearson. “And it is unusual to be able to identify national trends in football violence in this country. But we should be cautious about the extent of this increase and about relying just on arrest or incident statistics. Arrest statistics are notoriously unreliable as indicators of levels of criminality, and usually tell us as much about police priorities and resources as they do crime. However, despite these reservations, I think the statistics illustrate at least a temporary uptick in incidents of (mainly low-level) disorder and anti-social behaviour. That’s a view shared by police officers, safety officers, and fan representatives that I work with.”

Pearson makes an interesting point about how police priorities can have an impact on reported levels of criminality. The 36% increase in disorder cited by the UKFPU, for example, includes “hate crime” as well as missile throwing and use of flares. Hate crime should by no means be seen as any less serious than other crimes, but it is a relatively new category of reported crime. Including new measures alongside old and then citing an increase with no qualification doesn’t present an accurate picture.

But what is behind the downturn in behaviour? Pearson told me: “My suspicion is that this increase is primarily linked to the effect of the Covid-19 lockdowns, when fans were almost entirely unable to attend live matches from March 2020 until July 2021.

“The return of fans to matches is probably linked with increased levels of misbehaviour, which may be the result of fans deprived of carnivalesque expressions of identity wishing to party longer and harder than pre-lockdown.

“It may also be linked to a turnover of regular fans and an influx of younger fans and irregular fans who may be less aware of the norms of football spectatorship, less deterred by the threat of CCTV, banning orders, and a loss of a season ticket, and fan groups that have less established behavioural norms and peer-regulation capabilities.”

Again, there’s interesting detail here that ties in with my own – anecdotal – experience as a matchgoing fan and a supporter rep. The pandemic has changed the composition of the crowd, and this is something that will have wider-reaching effects than many have imagined. In short, breaking the habit of going to the game regularly has made a good number of fans reassess priorities. Missing a game isn’t the end of the world, there are other things to do sometimes when the match is on. Particularly if the kick-off time is more convenient for the TV companies than those attending the game. People are passing on season tickets – officially and unofficially – for the odd game. There’s more churn in the crowd, both home and away. So what Pearson says about behavioural norms is an important point.

And there are more structural issues arising from lockdown. “Lockdown has almost certainly also had a serious impact upon the ability of police and stewards to manage crowds,” says Pearson. “Effective football policing operations rely upon the development of relationships between specialist police officers and the fan groups they are managing. This allows them to negotiate, set down tolerance limits, and intervene in a proportionate manner. It also provides intelligence about numbers expected to travel to matches and levels of threat posed by individuals.

“There has been, in most cases, a 16-month gap in this vital work which will inevitably hinder forces in effective management of football crowds. Added to this is the loss of stewarding capabilities, as many experienced personnel left the profession during lockdown, which not only closed down sports events but also pubs and nightclubs. Between all these factors, an increase in issues was almost inevitable.

“I would expect that this uptick will settle down as the police rebuild those relationships and norms of fan behaviour are re-established. However, that’s not to say that it won’t get worse before it gets better, particularly towards the business end of the season.”

The conversation we need to be having should be based on facts and informed insight. The danger is that it descends into a cacophony of individuals pushing agendas or peddling pet theories. To some extent, that reflects what is happening with public and political discourse in the country now. Former FA Secretary Ted Croker’s famous riposte to Margaret Thatcher to “get your hooligans out of my game” always comes to mind at this juncture – and I know that risks me being accused of pushing my own agenda – but what’s happening in wider society cannot be divorced from what’s happening in football.

We’re coming to the end of an extraordinary period of our history, a global lockdown of unprecedented scale combined with intense economic, political and cultural turmoil. It’s little wonder there are difficult questions to be faced, but we need to be more aware than ever of the danger of easy answers.

Photo by David Geib from Pexels