by Norfolk Royal »
12 Apr 2013 09:00
Pissed Off wrote:
Which part was wrong? Did football fans stop fighting each other out of choice, not because of banning orders, disqualifications from tournaments and such?
When gangs fight it's usually spontaneous i.e. "look, there they are lets get them" or has to be organised over the phone or internet (time, place, number of people and whatever). All I'm saying is that football simplified this process and gave the opportunity at least twice a season for people of rival towns to fight.
If you thought my comment was aimed at the events of Hillsborough then you're wrong. I was saying that in general football fans are mostly to blame for the reputation of football fans.
NR: To answer your points in this and the previous post. You said that football gave degenerates the opportunity to act like a pack of animals for many years.
The logical conclusion to that is that football should be played behind closed doors, which was tried in several instances in the 80s and still happens now. That punishes the majority of well behaved fans of course and is not tenable in the long term for obvious reasons.
You said that fans were forced to behave well by the Government and the authorities.
That is not true almost in its entirety. Incidents of hooliganism did not stop, and still take place now. It is true that banning orders, all seater grounds, tougher sentencing, all had their effect in minor ways.
But, as many authoritative commentators and fans themselves have noted, the real reason that hooliganism waned was that it simply fell out of fashion. It was a fashion at the time for hundreds of young men to travel the country because they found it exciting to do so with the threat, usually, of a possibly violent caper on the horizon. But when the rave culture of the 90s took hold, young people gravitated to that. It simply got boring for most to actively take part.
You said 'most of the scourge of society are football fans.'
That is patent nonsense. The vast majority of football fans are decent and well behaved. That is as much true now as it was in the 80s. It is true that in the 80s, there were occasions when large numbers of hooligans made up parts of the crowd, particularly at small venues, but those occasions were few and far between.
In a crowd of 40K there are of course people who misbehave, but that would be true at any such event attracting a crowd of that size.