By Giles Lester
April 4 2005

As our sport grows one of the concerns we have is the increased risk of violence. Here Giles Lester lays out some concerns. He asks, Is football coming home?

Is football coming home?

We play our matches at a football stadium.

There must be many others out there, I feel sure, who like myself have ‘made the switch’ from football to rugby.

No doubt their reasons for doing so are varied – cheaper ticket prices, being able to actually get tickets, locality of the club or, like me, maybe due to the increase in violence on the terraces.

Saying that, I don’t just mean physical violence, although any regular to football will probably have witnessed that side of the game. More the verbal assaults and general threatening behaviour of the more malicious side of football fans.

Once I witnessed a ‘fan’ turn on ‘his own’. He turned round and, with an absolute string of expletives, a clenched fist and face insisted that his fellow fans should sing louder. It wasn’t optional. That was the last football game I attended. A girl in our group felt so intimidated by the event she was very close to tears and we left way before the end of the game.

Why does this happen? Where does this violence come from? What is it about football that stirs such passion with an almost religious obsession?

“Professionalism & money” is often the answer given. If this sort of unsavoury event is becoming more prevalent in the rugby arena what is that due to? Money? I doubt that somehow. We all know that wages and sponsorship deals are minute compared to the huge fees footballers charge. ZP Ticket prices are probably about half what they are in the Premiership so it’s not down to the supporters finances either.

Perhaps the more important question that we all need to ask ourselves is ‘What are we going to do about it?’

There seems to be this accepting inevitability about ‘the way the sport is going’. We’ve all heard people saying “I expect it’ll affect rugby soon too!”

It’ll only happen if we let it.

Some complain about stewards at other grounds. Should we be looking at more stewards ‘amongst’ the crowds? Let’s throw these people out. Let’s make examples of them now before we reach the days of segregation, street fights around the ground and in Reading, seats being ripped out and thrown at players and officials.

Scare mongering? Maybe. Maybe not. I’m sure the ‘powers’ in football would never have expected the ‘nasty side’ of their support to have affected their game as it has, yet we expect it along any day now almost with open arms.

Is there a solution? If there is we need to find it now, not when it’s too late.