Cleaning Up The Fans
Looks like there is finally some talk on the growing trouble that is being seen around the country at football matches. https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/60300610
At Wycombe, I think there are some easy wins to be had with the new monitoring system. It must surely be possible to identify very swiftly those who are involved in unsavoury chanting, criminal damage or entering the field of play. Given the funding that each club puts the way of the police to cover matches, surely faces can be relayed quickly to the officer in charge and miscreants can start to be nicked. All it is going to take is a month or two of people spending a few hours down the cop shop and thereby having their post-match arrangements fcuk up and people will reconsider what at the moment seems like a consequenceless environment,
Comments
Pretty sure that already happens, and already did happen going back years having had a look in the control box in the early 2000s.
Hmm, I'd rather not go down the 'just encourage the police to use force more freely' route...
Also, as grim as it is, I don't think 'unsavoury chanting' is a criminal offence? Obviously it needs stamping out, but I'm not sure it can be tackled that way.
As far as I can recall all football league & PL grounds have to have CCTV monitoring of the stands and entrances as part of their licence; with the quality of modern CCTV there is no reason that troublemakers cannot be rapidly identified and quietly apprehended by the police; likewise where it is a case of abusive chanting the CCTV should assist stewards stepping in to "request" fans stop...
Do we still have the number for reporting discrimination btw?
Surely our club should not accept such chanting and it would be great to see us stand up to this unsavoury chanting. Yes it will be difficult to monitor and act upon but that doesn’t mean we should just roll over and accept it.
Difficult but I hope we can stop this trend.
Apart from a short lived and meek rendition towards Taylor, have we had any "over the line" chanting?
On a side note, there's never been a bigger spectrum of what is and isn't acceptable. There are still some dinosaurs that think anything goes, but there's also now a significant number of people who can't distinguish between unsavoury and unacceptable... Completely getting rid of any kind of "anti" chants would remove a lot of the atmosphere.
Vast majority of people do understand there's a grey area though and generally at Wycombe it's kept the "right side" of the line
I don't even go in the terrace, but I'm sure I could pick out a decent number of aggravators, just from after games and away game experiences.
Am sure the club know of them.> @ReturnToSenda said:
This is the slight elephant in the room.
The loudest singers tend to be the borderline behaviour lot. If you take them out completely, and sanitise it completely, it'll be deathly silence apart from that screamer woman in the Main stand.
Never quite knew what side of the line the song about Mark Stallard's nose sat to be honest! He looked heartbroken when defending a corner in front of the terrace upon one if his returns years ago. Good player, I liked Stallard.
We do: 07591 049982
@ReturnToSenda - By 'unsavory chanting' I was alluding to the kind that Bayo was subjected to last week, not the 'who ate all the pies' type of wit. There seems to be a growing trend around the country and encouraging the local constabulary to nick a few people rather than let them wander off down the road with one of our seats in their hand is not an incitement to police brutality.
Do folk really feel that these matters are well in hand?
It seems as tho the stewarding standards have slipped at Wycombe. I used to work on the turnstiles at the ground and would need to attend the briefing & training done before the gates opened. This included dealing with fans that wouldn't sit down / stood in the walkways in the away end.
At the MK Dons game, I couldn't see 2 of the walkways All game and this was never challenged.
I think that the standards have dropped all over. It seems as tho this all started at the 2020 Euros and the scenes at Wembley for the final. Some fans think they are untouchable. If they get banned from one ground, they just move onto another
I know, and that chanting is grim, but is it a criminal offence? Genuine question - I don't know.
Slander?
Currently there is no law to protect people from being offended, though there are covering things we mostly agree are abhorrent/unacceptable/beyond a line (racism, homophobia, slander/libel subject to a court ruling of course); so much of what passes amongst the knuckle draggers as "bants" is withing the current laws albeit many of us find it deeply offensive.
We need to be very careful about policing and prohibiting speech/words whilst also clamping down on the intolerant, otherwise we end up in the hands of totalitarians,
Isn't that a civil offence rather than a criminal one?
The recent Derby v Birmingham game saw Blues take a 2 goal lead and let it slip. Derby's equaliser cams on 90+6 minutes. Cue Blues "fans" ripping out seats and throwing them into the Derby fans. Neither the police nor the stewards did anything. I've seen video from a few sources and faces are very recognisable yet nobody has been arrested yet. As long as people think they can get away with it, they will continue to misbehave. Zero tolerance.
Fair point - the player would have to sue each person in the crowd who joins in the chant!
And they'd need to prove damages have occurred as a result*.
*Edit: maybe not, examples of a slander case in which actual loss/damage does not have to proven includes if a statement suggests an individual has committed a crime punishable by imprisonment or death. So the Bayo one would be caught by this
I remember getting dragged over hot coals on here once for my opinion that "banter" is one of the worst words in the English language. I stand by it.
It's a rubbish word
It's a rubbish thing in general
This link discusses a variety of scenarios and though not precisely matching the material circumstances, it suggests that there is a lot of scope in the public order act to give the police sufficient cause to act: https://hr.qmul.ac.uk/media/hr/docs/equalcommittee/reports/Laws-That-Cover-Hate-Crime.pdf
Regarding criminal damage to fixtures and fittings, making good the damage is surely a must.
I'm not a hammer/nut type of person, I firmly believe just dragging some perps down to the cop shop long enough for them to miss their coach/train/last orders would sort this all out in a matter of weeks/months. No need to be putting cautions or criminal records on people's files unless the message really isn't sinking in.
@Ed_ overall a fairly accurate leaflet though some of its interpretation of the Equality Act 2010 is wrong.
In the leaflet they refer to gender but that is not a protected characteristic, they should refer to sex which is, and gender reassignement is protected but only if someone has a GRC. It is really important that organisations represent the law as it is rather than how they would like it to be...
I think it WAS a great word, but has been utterly hijacked by idiots using it as an excuse for all manner of abusive behaviour.
All fair criticisms of the leaflet, but it nevertheless illustrates (albeit inaccurately in places) that there are laws in place that are broad enough to be applied to the context that we are discussing.
It was a great word and it was about joking between friends it wasn’t about bullying strangers
Agreed. All about the bantz, lolz and shiggles.
Wtf are shiggles?
A cunning amalgamation of sh!ts and giggles.
I'm fairly sure I'm not alone in thinking that it was never a "great" word.