I can't give you chapter and verse but I rather suspect that in some ways this is getting into the "we're entitled to know what's wrong with Danny Rowe" territory. I do happen to know that the club takes the safety and security of it supporters very seriously and is highly regarded by the authorities for its professionalism in that regard and I rather suspect, given that, that a lot of what you say should be happening, @floyd, is in fact already happening. The fact that the club doesn't publish a daily report on what steps it has and hasn't taken to identify and address individual transgressions shouldn't, I think, be taken as evidence of inactivity. I'm not saying it can't do more but I do think it's jumping too hastily to conclusions to suggest that nothing's being done about it.
If you'd been following the Danny Rowe discussion you'd know i think the club have released plenty of information and we should leave the kid alone.
This situation is, however, more potentially damaging than a player being unavailable, and certainly more visible. Might i suggest that whatever actions have already been taken are yet to have the desired effect?
The last thing the club wants to do is ban anyone. We don't have the numbers to replace them.
But the number of "Incidents" seems to ramp up each year. When for years we had a proud tradition of zero arrests and no trouble for anyone.
The worst we seemed to get then was when some of the then pub gang expected to arrive at 2.59 at a standard away game, and cram into the best seats in the middle of the stand, riding roughshod over those who had been there for hours.
I find it utterly astonishing that the club have asked fans to shop other fans for "anti-social behaviour." What is anti-social behaviour? Anti-social behaviour is not defined and that whole request appears a power game. By all means report illegal behaviour but I believe it to be shameful reporting another fan for something you just don't like.
@Midlander , without tickling you, and I know you're a changed man, but I think you can think of a certain example that got you banned back in the day. THAT was anti-social behaviour. And i'm sure most people recognise what constitutes it.
@floyd , if you mean, can and should more be done, then you're probably right, certainly in respect of the flare curse. I was rather more seeking to challenge the assumption that nothing at all is being done, which I don't believe can be the case.
Good win last night to put everybody in a good mood. Maybe promotion really is a possibility this season.
Apols to going back to this but to respond to DJ.
If the Trust feels that the behaviour of some of our fans is fairly regularly bringing the club reputation into disrepute, I would advocate the following (obviously if you feel its a minor or isolated issue, do otherwise)
1) resolve to do something about it
2) prepare expected behaviour policy (see below)
3) consult with all relevant parties
4) appoint trust rep at each game
5) at implementation stage of policy, seek to wiork with the 20-50 regular offenders to explain to them what is expected and initially tell them if and when they have got it wrong
6) if they don't engage or continue to misbehave, then warnings and bans as above until they get the message
Policy could be done on prescriptive basis (based on the continental system) or on principles basis (the UK legal system). I would advocate the latter but consult.
Very first draft (which would need further work and consultation but intended to give you the drift) knocked up in 10 minutes
Supporter behaviour policy
The club wishes all supporters to enjoy their day whether match is played at AP or at away grounds. The club encourages noisy positive support for the team but also wishes to preserve its longstanding hard-earned reputation for having friendly well-behaved supporters. The club believes that its supporters are its best ambassadors.
The trust will appoint a match representative at each match home and away to monitor supporter behaviour and service provided by the stadium.
All supporters will be expected to maintain a minimum standard of behaviour at all times before during and after a match, such that the clubs reputation is preserved.
If the match representative , in his sole opinion, believes that a supporters behaviour is compromising that reputation, he will seek if possible to persuade that supporter to desist from such behaviour. he may choose to warn that supporter about his future conduct - either at the match or subsequently - or in his sole discretion ban entry from AP for future matches for a period or longer. During the period of any ban, the club will recommend that away grounds also deny this supporter entry.
For this purpose, minimum standard of behaviour shall include (but not be limited to)
1) Avoiding being excessively drunk or under the influence of illegal drugs
2) Complying with requests from stadium staff (including stewards)
3) Avoiding excessive swearing
4) Avoiding excessive abuse of players of either club or match officials or staff or other supporters of either club
5) Avoiding standing in front of supporters who are unable themselves to stand
6) Avoiding any other behaviour that may reasonably , in the match representatives sole opinion, materially reduce another supporters enjoyment of the game or damage the clubs reputation.
Get the right match representative (not a Hitler), although policy applies to all supporters realistically currently we have 20-50 who regularly misbehave (I only get to 5-8 matcehs a year - I know who they are) so engage with them and try to persuade them to moderate their behaviour and hopefully the policy will never be needed.
Or alternative do nothing because its a bit difficult.
@Midlander , if i've got the wrong person, i pass on apologies.
I thought you were our "ostrich" journalist pal, previously working in the Midlands area. Now back in the mighty chair metropolis.
A match representative cannot at his sole discretion ban a supporter, that is totally ridiculous. Any banning must be agreed by the Board or a committee appointed by them.
Impossible to determine what is "excessively drunk". Everyone will have a different idea and just because you may have had one too many doesn't necessarily mean you are causing trouble or being a nuisance.
Hopefully you will never be a "match representative" Dev as you will very rapidly reduce our gates!
I have to say that this is all quite ridiculous and over the top, I am a spurs fan who went with some Wycombe supporting friends to the game and saw what happened, it was only the second wycombe game I have been to.
These comments are all totally out of context, given what happened and to be fair grown men should know better than to speculate unless they actually saw what happened.
I am not aware of the history of this us and them mentality, but having read this thread, it seems the young people supporting your club are not welcome.
To top this all off I believe the reaction of your club to be a little over the top, after all this is football, not tennis, you see much worse incidents at children's football on a Sunday morning.
The basic point is that everyone on here seems to be making out that Wycombe fans were behind the fracas, when this was not the case and I than to agree entirely with Mr Warboys statement with relation to the police and colchester shouldering the blame, having witnessed what happened and mixed with your large ground of fans all day
Surely simply being "drunk" is enough. Why does it have to be "excessively" drunk.
If you're drunk, you're by definition not in control, and who wants to be around people like that?
You get barred entering pubs and the like if you're drunk, so why not matches too?
The obvious problem, is who is the unlucky bastard who has to judge and then act on it.
So there are the only two possible alternatives. Not sure I'm keen on either. Why do things need to be effectively legislated against all the time. I think people are more than able to root out the bad eggs in there own groups.
@Malone - There are various levels of drunkeness. You are deemed to be drunk if you are driving over the limit, which is on average after 2 pints. I will have 2 or 3 pints in the Vere before the match, does that qualify me as being drunk?
Some people are more affected by drink than others. If you are interested in snooker, you will remember the Canadian Bill Werbenek who reportedly had to drink about 10 pints before he could play a match.
Though @DevC's first draft was, um, a first draft and thus needing a bit of work, I thought the opening statement was a strong one that everyone who goes to watch Wycombe could get behind. I would not hate something based on that being circulated as an overt statement of shared values that could serve to remind everyone of why we really go to the games. The bits about reps with banning powers doesn't really work in the real world, with respect, @DevC, not least because issues like Saturday's after the game involve a group of people rather than isolated individuals. But anything that encourages positive support gets my vote and maybe it's worth spelling it out.
To be clear, for those who think there's a movement on the Gasroom to decry anything to do with supporters less than 40 years old, most of what we have in our support is good and positive. But that doesn't mean there aren't things that need to be addressed at times and anything that causes police to run to the scene, as was the case on Saturday, is certainly in that category.
Regarding a no swearing policy being implemented at Adams Park, wasn't this attempted about 20 years ago by Mr Beeks ? resulting in the terrace singing "..we'll f@cking swear if we want to, swear if we want to....etc etc" towards the direction of the Director's seated in the Main Stand.
I think enforcing no swearing in the family stand is fair enough, elsewhere just isn't going to work.
There was some choice language on the terrace at times last night. I can live with that for the pay-off of the vocal support at other times. Not going to lie: my roars of "YESSS!!!" when we got the winner may have been prefixed by another word in a couple of iterations. You'd have had to be right next to me, mind, to hear it, since everyone was going mental!
So @HCblue you know exactly why the police ran to the scene? I was there and it was not as a result of Wycombe fans singing after beating what I understand to be old rivals
2 sentences on the match, 78 paragraphs on supporters behaviour charter (at games he doesn't attend so relies on 2nd evidence of what it's currently like) that he's made up
No it was not, but why instantly assome that just because there was a large number of supporters travelling togethere, that they instigated some disorder, I can assure you, this was not the case.
What happened was purely down to gross incompetence on the side of the police who were there. They seemed intent on demonising the Wycombe support on Saturday, aggressively standing over them all afternoon. May I add as the first away game I have ever been to with Wycombe, I thought everyone behalved very well pre match, singing on the train and when we got off, struggled to find a pub and even left a beefeater, as some older members thought it unfair to disturb families eating there.
Once the polive eventually found us, somehow they missed about 100 odd people they seemed aggressive.
After the game everyone was happy with a win, the police stood talking, whilst about 20 colchester fans began attacking what they thought was a small group of Wycombe fans, at which time everyone who had travelled together saw and rushed in to defend the young wycombe supporter. How the police ignored these 20 colchester fans all wearing stone Island is beyond me. They then allowed the colchester fans to leave on a bus and made everyone walked a few miles, closing all pubs on the way, at which time the same group of colchester fans attempted to cause trouble near the railway station.
In short they should of allowed your fans on the bus to the station and arrested the colchester attackers, instead of bussing them fureter down the road to cause further confrontation.
No wycombe supporter did anything wrong, the police allowed the colchester fans to cause trouble, rather than dealing with them effectively.
I made no assumptions, @wycombe1999. I left the ground at the same time as a group of Wycombe fans singing rude songs about Colchester. They carried on singing those rude songs as they went to the bus stop and I went to my car, a little short of that. I heard them carry on their singing and saw the police moving pretty quickly in their direction.
When I arrived at the ground about half an hour before the game, I saw about four policemen down at the bar with the vocal element. They were in no manner aggressive, simply present. Once in the stands, a police presence was not visible. There was no hint of trouble that would have warranted any intervention by them, anyway.
Thanks for that @wycombe1999. I know full well that police can be overly aggressive when dealing with groups of football supporters, especially at 'risk' games, where they seem braced for, sometimes even eager for, trouble. I sadly couldn't make the game, so can't refute or confirm what you are saying, but I have certainly come across over-zealous police in my time, including at Wycombe v Col U games.
If no actual trouble was caused by Wycombe fans, the claim that you were marched to the station and not allowed into pubs on the way is troubling. I certainly haven't appreciated the occasions where I've had my freedom of movement restricted by police purely because I happen to be a football fan going to/from a game.
I'm not going to defend the idiots on either side who were causing or looking to cause trouble, but I agree with Andy Warboys' point that Col U should take steps to reduce the potential for trouble by putting away coaches behind the relevant stand. That seems like a fairly obvious measure that should be taken at any game, regardless of the opposition. Likewise, if the above account is accurate, it sounds like the police handled the situation poorly, which makes me wonder if they even had a plan in place as to how they would deal with any outbreaks of disorder.
On a similar theme, these are well worth a read, regarding the recent 'disturbances' at the Arsenal v Köln match and how excitable, even rowdy behaviour shouldn't be mistaken as 'hooliganism'.
No that's the point, had they actually looked for these col u fans, instead of focusing one our well behalved fans then nothing would of happened at all
Comments
I can't give you chapter and verse but I rather suspect that in some ways this is getting into the "we're entitled to know what's wrong with Danny Rowe" territory. I do happen to know that the club takes the safety and security of it supporters very seriously and is highly regarded by the authorities for its professionalism in that regard and I rather suspect, given that, that a lot of what you say should be happening, @floyd, is in fact already happening. The fact that the club doesn't publish a daily report on what steps it has and hasn't taken to identify and address individual transgressions shouldn't, I think, be taken as evidence of inactivity. I'm not saying it can't do more but I do think it's jumping too hastily to conclusions to suggest that nothing's being done about it.
I'm pleased to hear that @Wig_and_Pen.
If you'd been following the Danny Rowe discussion you'd know i think the club have released plenty of information and we should leave the kid alone.
This situation is, however, more potentially damaging than a player being unavailable, and certainly more visible. Might i suggest that whatever actions have already been taken are yet to have the desired effect?
The last thing the club wants to do is ban anyone. We don't have the numbers to replace them.
But the number of "Incidents" seems to ramp up each year. When for years we had a proud tradition of zero arrests and no trouble for anyone.
The worst we seemed to get then was when some of the then pub gang expected to arrive at 2.59 at a standard away game, and cram into the best seats in the middle of the stand, riding roughshod over those who had been there for hours.
I find it utterly astonishing that the club have asked fans to shop other fans for "anti-social behaviour." What is anti-social behaviour? Anti-social behaviour is not defined and that whole request appears a power game. By all means report illegal behaviour but I believe it to be shameful reporting another fan for something you just don't like.
@Midlander , without tickling you, and I know you're a changed man, but I think you can think of a certain example that got you banned back in the day. THAT was anti-social behaviour. And i'm sure most people recognise what constitutes it.
@floyd , if you mean, can and should more be done, then you're probably right, certainly in respect of the flare curse. I was rather more seeking to challenge the assumption that nothing at all is being done, which I don't believe can be the case.
@malone I don't know what you're on about
Good win last night to put everybody in a good mood. Maybe promotion really is a possibility this season.
Apols to going back to this but to respond to DJ.
If the Trust feels that the behaviour of some of our fans is fairly regularly bringing the club reputation into disrepute, I would advocate the following (obviously if you feel its a minor or isolated issue, do otherwise)
1) resolve to do something about it
2) prepare expected behaviour policy (see below)
3) consult with all relevant parties
4) appoint trust rep at each game
5) at implementation stage of policy, seek to wiork with the 20-50 regular offenders to explain to them what is expected and initially tell them if and when they have got it wrong
6) if they don't engage or continue to misbehave, then warnings and bans as above until they get the message
Policy could be done on prescriptive basis (based on the continental system) or on principles basis (the UK legal system). I would advocate the latter but consult.
Very first draft (which would need further work and consultation but intended to give you the drift) knocked up in 10 minutes
Supporter behaviour policy
The club wishes all supporters to enjoy their day whether match is played at AP or at away grounds. The club encourages noisy positive support for the team but also wishes to preserve its longstanding hard-earned reputation for having friendly well-behaved supporters. The club believes that its supporters are its best ambassadors.
The trust will appoint a match representative at each match home and away to monitor supporter behaviour and service provided by the stadium.
All supporters will be expected to maintain a minimum standard of behaviour at all times before during and after a match, such that the clubs reputation is preserved.
If the match representative , in his sole opinion, believes that a supporters behaviour is compromising that reputation, he will seek if possible to persuade that supporter to desist from such behaviour. he may choose to warn that supporter about his future conduct - either at the match or subsequently - or in his sole discretion ban entry from AP for future matches for a period or longer. During the period of any ban, the club will recommend that away grounds also deny this supporter entry.
For this purpose, minimum standard of behaviour shall include (but not be limited to)
1) Avoiding being excessively drunk or under the influence of illegal drugs
2) Complying with requests from stadium staff (including stewards)
3) Avoiding excessive swearing
4) Avoiding excessive abuse of players of either club or match officials or staff or other supporters of either club
5) Avoiding standing in front of supporters who are unable themselves to stand
6) Avoiding any other behaviour that may reasonably , in the match representatives sole opinion, materially reduce another supporters enjoyment of the game or damage the clubs reputation.
Get the right match representative (not a Hitler), although policy applies to all supporters realistically currently we have 20-50 who regularly misbehave (I only get to 5-8 matcehs a year - I know who they are) so engage with them and try to persuade them to moderate their behaviour and hopefully the policy will never be needed.
Or alternative do nothing because its a bit difficult.
@Midlander , if i've got the wrong person, i pass on apologies.
I thought you were our "ostrich" journalist pal, previously working in the Midlands area. Now back in the mighty chair metropolis.
A match representative cannot at his sole discretion ban a supporter, that is totally ridiculous. Any banning must be agreed by the Board or a committee appointed by them.
Impossible to determine what is "excessively drunk". Everyone will have a different idea and just because you may have had one too many doesn't necessarily mean you are causing trouble or being a nuisance.
Hopefully you will never be a "match representative" Dev as you will very rapidly reduce our gates!
I have to say that this is all quite ridiculous and over the top, I am a spurs fan who went with some Wycombe supporting friends to the game and saw what happened, it was only the second wycombe game I have been to.
These comments are all totally out of context, given what happened and to be fair grown men should know better than to speculate unless they actually saw what happened.
I am not aware of the history of this us and them mentality, but having read this thread, it seems the young people supporting your club are not welcome.
To top this all off I believe the reaction of your club to be a little over the top, after all this is football, not tennis, you see much worse incidents at children's football on a Sunday morning.
You must see some very well supported Sunday kids teams!
The basic point is that everyone on here seems to be making out that Wycombe fans were behind the fracas, when this was not the case and I than to agree entirely with Mr Warboys statement with relation to the police and colchester shouldering the blame, having witnessed what happened and mixed with your large ground of fans all day
Surely simply being "drunk" is enough. Why does it have to be "excessively" drunk.
If you're drunk, you're by definition not in control, and who wants to be around people like that?
You get barred entering pubs and the like if you're drunk, so why not matches too?
The obvious problem, is who is the unlucky bastard who has to judge and then act on it.
So there are the only two possible alternatives. Not sure I'm keen on either. Why do things need to be effectively legislated against all the time. I think people are more than able to root out the bad eggs in there own groups.
@Malone - There are various levels of drunkeness. You are deemed to be drunk if you are driving over the limit, which is on average after 2 pints. I will have 2 or 3 pints in the Vere before the match, does that qualify me as being drunk?
Some people are more affected by drink than others. If you are interested in snooker, you will remember the Canadian Bill Werbenek who reportedly had to drink about 10 pints before he could play a match.
Though @DevC's first draft was, um, a first draft and thus needing a bit of work, I thought the opening statement was a strong one that everyone who goes to watch Wycombe could get behind. I would not hate something based on that being circulated as an overt statement of shared values that could serve to remind everyone of why we really go to the games. The bits about reps with banning powers doesn't really work in the real world, with respect, @DevC, not least because issues like Saturday's after the game involve a group of people rather than isolated individuals. But anything that encourages positive support gets my vote and maybe it's worth spelling it out.
To be clear, for those who think there's a movement on the Gasroom to decry anything to do with supporters less than 40 years old, most of what we have in our support is good and positive. But that doesn't mean there aren't things that need to be addressed at times and anything that causes police to run to the scene, as was the case on Saturday, is certainly in that category.
Regarding a no swearing policy being implemented at Adams Park, wasn't this attempted about 20 years ago by Mr Beeks ? resulting in the terrace singing "..we'll f@cking swear if we want to, swear if we want to....etc etc" towards the direction of the Director's seated in the Main Stand.
I think enforcing no swearing in the family stand is fair enough, elsewhere just isn't going to work.
There was some choice language on the terrace at times last night. I can live with that for the pay-off of the vocal support at other times. Not going to lie: my roars of "YESSS!!!" when we got the winner may have been prefixed by another word in a couple of iterations. You'd have had to be right next to me, mind, to hear it, since everyone was going mental!
Context is everything.
A little swearing, while perhaps unfortunate is inevitable. I cant pretend I don't do it myself.
chanting "CNT, CNT, CNT, CNT" at an opposition player is not.
So @HCblue you know exactly why the police ran to the scene? I was there and it was not as a result of Wycombe fans singing after beating what I understand to be old rivals
2 sentences on the match, 78 paragraphs on supporters behaviour charter (at games he doesn't attend so relies on 2nd evidence of what it's currently like) that he's made up
Peak Dev
The thread is about behaviour, not the match, @eric_plant. It was a nice acknowledgment of context by @DevC.
@wycombe1999 : it wasn't to congratulate everyone on being perfect gentlemen.
No it was not, but why instantly assome that just because there was a large number of supporters travelling togethere, that they instigated some disorder, I can assure you, this was not the case.
Purely out of morbid curiosity @wycombe1999, would you care to tell us what you did see?
What happened was purely down to gross incompetence on the side of the police who were there. They seemed intent on demonising the Wycombe support on Saturday, aggressively standing over them all afternoon. May I add as the first away game I have ever been to with Wycombe, I thought everyone behalved very well pre match, singing on the train and when we got off, struggled to find a pub and even left a beefeater, as some older members thought it unfair to disturb families eating there.
Once the polive eventually found us, somehow they missed about 100 odd people they seemed aggressive.
After the game everyone was happy with a win, the police stood talking, whilst about 20 colchester fans began attacking what they thought was a small group of Wycombe fans, at which time everyone who had travelled together saw and rushed in to defend the young wycombe supporter. How the police ignored these 20 colchester fans all wearing stone Island is beyond me. They then allowed the colchester fans to leave on a bus and made everyone walked a few miles, closing all pubs on the way, at which time the same group of colchester fans attempted to cause trouble near the railway station.
In short they should of allowed your fans on the bus to the station and arrested the colchester attackers, instead of bussing them fureter down the road to cause further confrontation.
No wycombe supporter did anything wrong, the police allowed the colchester fans to cause trouble, rather than dealing with them effectively.
@Malone a large amount of Wycombe fans are absolutely obliterated at home games, mainly in the seats, but you'd never know.
These drunks could be rounded up under Devs new harsh regime.
I made no assumptions, @wycombe1999. I left the ground at the same time as a group of Wycombe fans singing rude songs about Colchester. They carried on singing those rude songs as they went to the bus stop and I went to my car, a little short of that. I heard them carry on their singing and saw the police moving pretty quickly in their direction.
When I arrived at the ground about half an hour before the game, I saw about four policemen down at the bar with the vocal element. They were in no manner aggressive, simply present. Once in the stands, a police presence was not visible. There was no hint of trouble that would have warranted any intervention by them, anyway.
Thanks for that @wycombe1999. I know full well that police can be overly aggressive when dealing with groups of football supporters, especially at 'risk' games, where they seem braced for, sometimes even eager for, trouble. I sadly couldn't make the game, so can't refute or confirm what you are saying, but I have certainly come across over-zealous police in my time, including at Wycombe v Col U games.
If no actual trouble was caused by Wycombe fans, the claim that you were marched to the station and not allowed into pubs on the way is troubling. I certainly haven't appreciated the occasions where I've had my freedom of movement restricted by police purely because I happen to be a football fan going to/from a game.
I'm not going to defend the idiots on either side who were causing or looking to cause trouble, but I agree with Andy Warboys' point that Col U should take steps to reduce the potential for trouble by putting away coaches behind the relevant stand. That seems like a fairly obvious measure that should be taken at any game, regardless of the opposition. Likewise, if the above account is accurate, it sounds like the police handled the situation poorly, which makes me wonder if they even had a plan in place as to how they would deal with any outbreaks of disorder.
On a similar theme, these are well worth a read, regarding the recent 'disturbances' at the Arsenal v Köln match and how excitable, even rowdy behaviour shouldn't be mistaken as 'hooliganism'.
http://www.fsf.org.uk/blog/view/arsenal-vs-fc-koeln-warning-signs-not-heeded-says-fsf-faircop
http://www.fsf.org.uk/blog/view/fc-koeln-in-london-did-the-media-get-it-wrong
No that's the point, had they actually looked for these col u fans, instead of focusing one our well behalved fans then nothing would of happened at all