Before I begin I want to establish that under no circumstances do I condone the actions of the mindless minority last night. They may be fans in the eyes of the media, but fans of what I don’t know. Certainly not football. Man on man action I guess?

I’m a season ticket holder at Upton Park for I don’t know how many years, I was at the game last night and these are my toughts.

Disgraceful, but not suprising.

Before I left from my office I spent some time reading around the forums of both sets of fans. However it wasone Millwall firm forum (remaining nameless) that particularly caught my eye. My original plan was to simply try and find out the safest ways to travel to the game as I was on my own. I didn’t want to be there too early, for fear of the prematch violence and not too late for fear of getting caught up with any police escorts of fans. Fine line.

It begs the question, should there have been more prevention rather than reaction from the police?

What I found though was that for a good hour or two before I left I was able to see where exactly trouble was either currently happening, or going to happen. Rumours quickly spread across the forum in question that West Ham had travelled south across the river to meet Millwall at their place. An indication of this from a West Ham firm member on there simply posting, “SUPRISE”. Equally pubs and locations were being hinted at as to where the two firms would meet. There were a lot of mumerings and rumours circulating to, but the intentions and plans were there for all to see.

And as the forum described, the violence unravelled.

It was only by the grace of God that I missed my tube from work to Upton Park. Had I picked the correct train, I would have been spat out at Upton Park half an hour before KO, the exact time that the major reported violence erupted on Green Street. As it happens I sat angrily on a train at Plaistow for half an hour and missed KO by 5mins, little did I know.

This was a pre-empted, planned, organised meeting between the firms of one of the most bitterly disputed rivalries in the world. It begs the question, should there have been more prevention rather than reaction from the police?

The police and the stewards

Firstly, I belive those police and stewards who were in the ground did a fantastic job. Based on what I saw, I can’t applaud them enough. However, why was there not more of them? My sympathies really lie with the stewards who were having to do the job of trained riot police…without the training, without the protection and without a baton. We’re not talking burly stewards either, but ordinary people trying to make a living, men and women alike. It could have been any of your husbands, wives or children out there…just because they have that flourescent jacket on, it doesn’t make them any different from you or me.

I just do not understand why when it was clear on about the hour mark, that in the ground hostile verbal exchanges were fast escalating into hostile physical changes, they didn’t replace the stewards with rows and rows of riot police and trained crowd control specialists. In fact, why that wasn’t the case from the start. It is beyond me.

My only thought is that perhaps so many resources were expended dealing with the trouble outside the ground, that more man power wasn’t available inside.

Apart from the lack of staff and security available, there are some other questions that are sitting heavy with me this morning:

Why move the fans closer together?

This is something else that coimpletely baffled me. At half time, the powers that be decided to widen the Millwall allocation so that the distance betwen the Millwall fans and the East Stand was reduce by an enitre block. Perhaps it was due to overcrowding, it’s certainly the only logical solution I can think of. But overcrowded or not, it seems to me a grave misjudgement of the situation to actually move the fans closer together…you couldn’t make it up.

They were moved to a distance where every personal insult being hurled in either direction could be heard. I personally saw this as a move that insighted violence and simply achieved nothing but increasing the temperature in an already overheated pressure pot. I said to my brother half way through the second half that you could see a physical difference in the crowd behaviour.

Why not put the Millwall fans in the top tier?

The bottom tier contained around 2,300 Millwall fans. The top contained none.

Not just no Millwall fans, but no fans at all.

My question is why didn’t they place the away fan allocation in the top tier only? Keep the flanks of the tier empty too, as in the bottom half? I’m not a police officer, I don’t make these decisions, but I would love to know their reasoning because as far as I’m concerned this would surely have buffered any crowd trouble – by simply limiting the access to opposing fans to a minimum – making it worthless even trying to get at each other.

Do not tar us all with the same brush

I would like to conclude with the following video. It’s the penalty from Stanislas and the subsequent pitch invasion. At 1min 30sec please listen to the reaction of the fans who remained in their seats. I stress that the events of last night were from a mindless, organised few whose sole intention was to fight. There may have not been a game of football on for all they care.

UPDATE:

I did not see nothing

So the Millwall manager has also come out to say that he thought it was really good of his fans not to invade the pitch. Pull the other one would you fella…

Millwall fans inside the ground ripped up seats and threw them at West Ham fans, they threw bottles and other such missles. Which as far as I’m conccerned is a hell of a lot worse than running around on the pitch (although that in itself is pretty moronic).

Sorted.

Sam

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