Pitch invasions: two questions for Billy Sharp
Questions and answers about pitch invasions and their discontents
Words: Sam Parry (with a little help from Twitter friends)
Feels like Groundhog day.
Night after night after night, the spectacle of another pitch invasion on the News at Ten greets the nation as an uncanny replica of the one before. Same but different.
Sheffield United fans have obviously focussed on the violent consequences of the pitch invasion that followed the semi-final defeat to Nottingham Forest. Those consequences were described by Billy Sharp as “one mindless idiot” – or perhaps, mindless idiots – marring an unbelievable night of football.
Realistically, you can’t prevent mindless idiots from invading the pitch. It would require fencing or netting or the spangling high-vis jackets of threefold stewards. Are those deterrents desirable? I don’t know. Maybe. I don’t think so. I’m conflicted.
But I’ve been thinking about Billy Sharp. Someone who has experienced the full gamut of pitch invasions: the high highs and low lows. I wonder how he feels about them? And this led me to two questions:
Question 1 - Would you erect barriers or implement other measures to prevent a pitch invasion here?
Question 2 - Would you erect barriers or implement other measures to prevent a pitch invasion here?
One is beautiful, the other is ugly; for both, Billy Sharp is the protagonist. And preventing the latter no doubt means preventing the former. So I wonder how he’d answer? I wonder if there are solutions to the problem? I wonder how we’ve come to this point where, predictably as fish on Fridays, these abrasive pitch invasions replay and replay; febrile, truculent, and just a bit bloody sad?
Under the microscope
Like fingerprints, snowflakes and Didzy’s first touch, all pitch invasions are unique. However, there is a certain DNA that all pitch invasions share:
1. An inciting incident: a goal; promotion; relegation; survival; trophy et cetera
2. Invaders: the presence of supporters who are able to enter the pitch
3. Invasion: a movement of supporters from the stands and onto the pitch
4. Invaded: the presence of playing and coaching staff on the pitch
All four conditions – (1) inciting incident (2) invaders (3) invasion (4) invaded – must be present to observe the DNA of what we know to be a pitch invasion. Of course, this metaphor is distinct from science, but placing different slides on the microscope might help us to think about where interventions to stop or mitigate dangerous situations would be best placed.
Slide No.1: Sheffield United 4-0 Fulham
(1) Blades secure play-off semi-final, causing (2) a minority of fans (3) to enter the pitch (4) where the home players react politely but mostly ambivalently.
Slide No.2: Nottingham Forest 1-0 Arsenal
In January, Forest scored a goal in the FA Cup 3rd Round:
(1) Scoring a goal causes (2) a significant minority of fans (3) to enter the pitch (4) where home players react positively.
Slide No.3: Nottingham Forest 1-2 Sheffield United
Fast forward to this week, where Billy Sharp was attacked.
(1) Forest securing a play-off final spot causes (2) a majority of home fans (3) to enter the pitch (4) where away player(s) is (are) assaulted, sparking conflict between fans and players.
Clearly, when a majority of fans enter the pitch, the possibility for conflict is increased.
Slide No.4: Everton 3-2 Crystal Palace
Crystal Palace manager Patrick Vieira kicks a fan to the floor. No, he doesn’t. It’s a classic, if unsightly, “decking”. He decks a fan who had goaded him.
(1) Securing top-flight status causes (2) a majority of home fans (3) to enter the pitch (4) where away players attempt to leave the pitch, and goading from fans leads to conflict.
Invasions reproduce invasions
In this unscientific study, a few things are clear:
fans enter the workplace of professional footballers with relative ease
conflict between fans and professional footballers can occur, although the scale and type varies
goading and violence from one party is likely to escalate goading and violence among all parties
It also reveals something else: reproduction brings reproduction.
It’s no surprise to me that one spiky pitch invasion has normalised the spiky pitch invasion. Set the standard. Charted the course. And now the spectacle is being reproduced. The trouble is that invasions have always been tolerated because, by and large, they have been peaceful events (of course, not always). But tolerance is rightly wearing thin.
According to the Football Offences Act 1991, it is an offence for fans to enter the pitch "without lawful authority or lawful excuse". And now, as lawlessness is seen to go unpunished, the law effectively does not exist. It happened last night, so it can happen tonight. They did it, so I’ll do it.
If you compare and contrast Slide 2 and Slide 3, you can observe how one invasion predicts the next. Nottingham Forest had a very recent history. Earlier this season, a pitch invasion was sparked by a minor catalyst: a single goal scored in the 3rd Round of the FA Cup. Given that track record, it is inconceivable that the police, the stewards and Nottingham Forrest Football Club did not know that an invasion was likely if Forest overcame Sheffield United.
Similarly, each and every season, most football clubs’ final home game tends to spark some level of pitch invasion. They are mostly tolerated rather than criminalised, but they are certainly predictable.
So the question is, given the violence, what action can be taken to prevent or mitigate pitch invasions? Can authorities do anything more in advance, or do we need to beef up retrospective action? Do players and staff have the right to feel safe in their workplace? And after news that Oliver McBurnie has been invited to attend a police interview for allegations of a fracas on the pitch, to what extent should players and staff be free to defend themselves?
Big questions and no easy answers.
The view from the professionals
What footballers think matters. Few of us experience a workplace like football, but I’m certain we all expect to be safe at work. So should it be any different for footballers?
Ex-Blade Paddy Kenny had this to say:
At the level of common decency, it’s very hard to disagree with Paddy. Nobody deserves to be assaulted at work.
And yet, I can’t remove Northampton from my mind. That glorious scene of Billy Sharp being held aloft in what was (as far as I’m aware) a perfect Kodak moment in a safe and respectful invasion: no assaults, no violence.
But a lack of violence in one invasion doesn’t prevent violence elsewhere. And what happens when things get nasty?
Brian Deane:
Seriously, what would you do?
In most instances, you’d have recourse to “reasonable force” in self-defence. However, it is up to the courts to decide whether a situation requires “self-defence” and whether a person has used “reasonable force”.
It’s a hazy, grey area.
But as we’ve seen, the more fans invade pitches, the more invaders there are, and the more likely that the invaded players are going to respond with fight or flight – it’s only natural.
What Paul Devlin touches upon here gets to the nub of it: if a fan invades the pitch, goads the wrong player, and gets hurt as a result, then it becomes difficult to know who is the wrongdoer. One of them? Both of them? How can someone undertaking duties commensurate with their job be at fault when they perceive themselves, rationally, to be threatened?
You only need to look at Brian Clough’s reaction to fans on the pitch to understand what happens when fans put themselves within touching distance of the wrong person:
As employers, it might well be that the football club themselves should be to blame. This might be one way of ensuring that more action is taken to protect players. A point made by Carl Asaba:
Whilst I agree with Carl in almost every way, I still can’t get that one word out of my head: Northampton (and those of a certain age will also think, “Leicester”). My perspective is a fan’s-eye-view. It is utterly romanticised and that’s because – let’s face it – fans crave those boiling points, those moments of high-drama that spontaneously combust on and off the pitch.
And after all, as Jock Stein put it: “Without fans who pay at the turnstile, football is nothing.”
The view from the fans
So we need a fan’s perspective.
For my part, I remain conflicted. Ultimately I support keeping people safe but…Northampton.
Do we want to reinstate fencing in football stadiums? No.
Do we want to burden clubs with crippling fees for extra stewarding and policing? No.
Do we want games behind closed doors? No.
Do we want point deductions? No.
Do we want players and staff to feel and be safe? Yes.
Do we want spontaneous moments? I think so.
At least, I think I think so.
Violence and pitch invasions do not necessarily go hand-in-hand, although we’d be forgiven for making that assumption based on the past fortnight. If it becomes impossible to secure the safety of players and staff, then we will end up returning to some Thatcherite, anti-football dark age. I don’t want that, and that’s my position: it’s more disposition.
At the same time, the theory grows that there are pockets of fans - and society, I guess - that simply do not behave in a safe, respectful manner.
@Tray_the_Blade elaborates:
Lockdown has altered how businesses run, how we communicate, and how young people behave around others.
As a maths teacher in an FE college I have seen first-hand how the mental health of young people has deteriorated. Many cannot cope being in a room with what used to be standard class sizes. Some that do enter the classroom are too afraid to participate in lessons. They refuse to work in groups, citing reasons such as “I don’t know them very well” or “I prefer working alone”.
I have taught lessons where learners will loudly insult or degrade their peers, or even just other people walking past their classroom, without any regard to their feelings, or whether they have been overheard. It’s almost as if they forget that others can hear them. Maybe they have spent their umpteen months of lockdown shouting at others on Twitter. There are no consequences. Say what you want. Do what you want.
I think we’re seeing this behaviour in football stadiums. There have been no consequences for anything as people have interacted solely through the internet for an extended period of time. If you behave inappropriately on the internet, so what? They seem to have forgotten that when you’re out in the real world, the things you do and say can come back at you in a very, very different way.
Maybe it doesn’t help that “authority figures” such as policemen and teachers (although I hate calling people like teachers authority figures) have been vilified by certain parts of the media. It has eroded the already-dwindling respect for these people, and I’m not sure how that can be restored.
What do you think about pitch invasions?
Sam Parry is the co-founder of DEM Blades fanzine and Commissioning Editor of The Pinch. Inside work he writes speeches, and outside of work, he wonders whether he’s ever eaten a truly greasy chip butty.
My view on the issue is that giving up the days like Northampton is a small price to pay for keeping our players safe. I don’t disagree with pitch invasions at all, in fact I’ve always enjoyed them until recently. But, if this is the way the invasions are going then something needs to be done about it. Maybe pitch invasions could be welcomed as long as the home club can wholly guarantee the safety and well-being of visiting staff and players. Maybe stewards should form a guard around the visitors rather than stand in a pointless formation of four lines across the pitch as they stand there doing nothing anyway. After what I’ve seen these past two weeks I would not disagree with more action being taken to prevent invasions altogether. However, I would miss the good ones.
Really good read, thank you. I agree with The Sheffield United Teachers’ Supports Club.
I think the recent pitch invasions have lacked that spontaneity that makes ones like the Northampton one as special as it was. I’ve got no doubt that there were Forest, Everton, and even Man City fans yesterday planning their pitch invasion actions out while they were having their breakfast the day of the game. It’s planned, and when that’s partnered with the perceived lack of consequences, you’ll get folk planning to assault certain players.