Sitting Room Only:
English Football Terraces and the Changing Role of Sports in Society
A Senior Thesis for the Major of Sociology Presented by
Peter W. Crispin
June 5, 2012
Table of Contents
Table of Contents………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 2
Abstract……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 4
Glossary of Terms……………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 5
Chapter One: Introduction…………………………………………………………………………………………. 7
Overview of study……………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 7
Background……………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 9
The Role of Sport in Society…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 11
What makes a sports fan?……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 21
Why “fans” get “fanatic”…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 23
Football fanatics in England: the changing nature of the sport in society……………………………………….. 25
Purpose and Significance of This Study………………………………………………………………………. 26
Chapter Two: Literature Review……………………………………………………………………………… 28
A Short History of Social Issues Embedded in Football…………………………………………………. 28
Politics and Nationalism in Football…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 28
Religion in Football……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 32
Racism in Football……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 34
Factors that Contribute to Hooliganism and Violence in Football…………………………………. 37
Terraces as a Contributing Factor……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 37
Alcohol as a Contributing Factor…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 43
Hooliganism and Violence: The End Result………………………………………………………………… 45
Efforts to Reduce Violence and Hooliganism……………………………………………………………….. 50
Changing Physical Structure of Football Grounds……………………………………………………………………………………….. 51
Reducing Fans’ Alcohol Consumption……………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 52
Other Efforts: Raising Ticket Prices, Instituting Membership Systems…………………………………………….. 53
Policy Changes to End Unsavory Behavior……………………………………………………………………………………………………… 55
Awareness Raising in Football……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 56
Summary………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 58
Chapter Three: Methods and Data…………………………………………………………………………… 60
Research Design……………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 60
Research Question……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 60
Research Methods………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 60
Sampling…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 62
Data Analysis………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 63
Limitations…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 64
Data…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 64
How aware are different stakeholders about the actions taken to reduce hooliganism, racism, and violence? 65
How supportive or critical are different stakeholders about these actions?…………………………………… 66
What effect do different stakeholders feel these actions have had on reducing hooliganism in and around football stadiums? 68
Summary of Data………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 77
Chapter Four: Discussion………………………………………………………………………………………….. 80
Religion…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 81
Racism……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 82
Alcoholism……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 82
Terraces as a factor in hooliganism……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 83
Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 84
References…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 86
Appendix A: Informed Consent Form………………………………………………………………………. 90
Appendix B: Fan Interview Questions……………………………………………………………………… 91
Appendix C: Club/Team/Athlete Representative Questions…………………………………… 93
Appendix D: Debriefing Statement………………………………………………………………………….. 94
Abstract
The purpose of this thesis is determine whether, from various stakeholders’ perspectives, the actions made by the Football Association and various English football clubs to reduce hooliganism and violence have been effective. One of those actions included replacing standing terraces at stadium grounds with “sitting room only” — higher-priced seats — thereby making it harder for rowdy fans to charge the field or initiate fighting. In addition to a review of existing literature and historical sources on hooliganism in English football, the primary method used to collect information about fans’ and club representatives’ opinions of hooliganism was face-to-face interviews with ten fans and four club representatives. The results of these interviews indicate that stakeholders believe that hooliganism has declined sharply over the last twenty years. In particular, they feel that the removal of the terraces in the Premier League has had a positive impact on decreasing hooliganism connected to English football.
Glossary of Terms
· Banter: witty, mostly good-natured chatter between football supporters. In intense rivalries, banter can escalate to conflict or violence.
· Football: What we in America call “soccer” is called “football” in most of the rest of the world.
· Firms: Organized groups or “gangs” of people supporting a Football club, often devoted to hooliganism.
· Grounds: English term for a stadium where football clubs play
· Hooliganism: The act of engaging in violence in relation to football
· Orange Order: Protestant organization in Northern Ireland and Scotland. Relevant to football because some teams (e.g., Rangers) are largely made up of and associated with being Protestant.
· Pitch: English term for the field of play
· Pyramid of teams playing in the English Football League
a. The Premier league: top division of English football. The three worst teams are “relegated” (demoted) to the Championship league each year.
b. The Football League Championship: second division of English Football. The two top teams are automatically promoted to the Premier League. The third one is promoted through a play-off. The bottom three teams are relegated to League One.
c. The Football League One: Third division of football League. The top two teams are automatically promoted; the third team is promoted through a play-off
d. The Football League Two: the fourth and final professional division in English Football. Four clubs are promoted; three automatically, the fourth through a play-off.
· Terraces: The standing areas in some football grounds, now mostly found in the lower divisions of English football (the lower divisions are similar, in some ways, to minor league baseball in the U.S.)
· Tournaments: competitions where the winning team earns a “cup” trophy. Running alongside the league seasons are two “cups” knockout tournaments:
1. The FA (Football Association) Cup: A competition open to all professional and many “non-league” semi-professional clubs.
2. The League Cup: A knockout competition that contains all 92 professional league clubs from England.
Chapter One: Introduction
Overview of study
Sports play an important role in every society and in people’s lives. Beyond just love of the game as a hobby, extreme fans see their teams as representing something about themselves: their race, class, politics, and religion. Football (called soccer in the U.S.) the sport worldwide has been plagued by poor behavior as people enact their feelings about these issues through their spectatorship. Coupled with heavy alcohol consumption and poverty in England, the result is hooliganism and violence, sometimes fatal, especially on the overcrowded standing terraces of football stadiums where tickets are cheapest. Over the past 15 years, in an effort to reduce the violent effects of excessive fanaticism, the English Premier League has banned standing terraces from football grounds and put in seats with higher ticket prices. They have also instituted other practices, such as closed-circuit cameras, banning alcohol from some games, and introducing media campaigns against racism. The goal of this thesis paper is to examine the perceptions of stakeholders such as fans, athletes, club and league officials about whether these changes in English professional football stadiums has had an effect in reducing hooliganism. In particular, I want to ask stakeholders their opinions about the Football Association’s controversial decision to mandate that all Premier League stadiums do away with standing sections and replace them with seats in order to cut down on troubling aspects of fan behavior. The research question is: What are the perceptions of English football supporters (fans), authorities and others involved with the sport about the efforts to reduce hooliganism in football, particularly removing the standing terraces where much violent behavior has historically started?
1. How aware are different stakeholders about the actions taken to reduce hooliganism?
2. How supportive or critical are different stakeholders about these actions?
3. What effect do different stakeholders feel these actions have had on reducing hooliganism in and around football stadiums?
The methodology for this study includes:
· Review of historical documents (books, articles, artifacts) that show history of hooliganism associated with football in England, and that show efforts to change the culture of fan behavior and attitudes.
· Interviews with selected supporters, authorities, athletes and others
The findings indicate that both fans and club representatives feel that hooliganism and violence has lessened considerably over the past 20 years. Most agree that it is due to the efforts of the clubs and league to crack down on it through policing, public awareness, and changing the policies in the stadium, including removing terraces, not selling alcohol, and using video cameras and text numbers to record disruptive acts. Hooliganism still occurs, interviewees concur, but now it primarily happens away from the grounds among fans of teams with historical rivalries. There is acknowledgment that removing the terraces has had an effect in reducing hooliganism and violence within the grounds at football games, and therefore it seems unlikely that terraces could return, at least at the premier league level where the most serious violence occurred in the past. However, hooliganism has not been reduced by removing the terraces alone; club efforts to use tools such as video and better policing and punishment, and policies such as reducing alcohol sales, have also made a difference, according to those I interviewed. This comes at a cost, though, as most fans would prefer to stand on the terraces to enjoy the games. Thus, while removing the terraces has made attending the games safer, it has also had an effect, fans feel, on their enjoyment of the game.
Background
Football (soccer) is the world’s most popular sport (The Economist 2011). As a sport, it has been imbued with more than just a fan’s love of the game or loyalty to a particular team. It has been an outlet or vehicle for issues between people in society and culture: politics, religion, class, and race. These issues are expressed, sometimes violently, by supporters on the terraces and around the grounds of English football stadiums. Racial and class tensions can manifest themselves with a crowd made up of mostly white working-class males who want to let off steam after a busy workweek (University of Leicester 2002). In Scotland, the issue of religion manifests itself through the identities of the two major clubs: Celtic Football Club and Rangers Football Club, one Protestant and one Catholic. Every time these teams play one another, there is an atmosphere fraught with tension and passion due to deep-seeded hatred between each other. Politics and football mix when British nationalist groups, such as the National Front, British National Party and the English Defense League, recruit from among the conservative, working class football fans.
These issues display themselves in verbal and physical conflict called “hooliganism”, an issue that has infected English football since the late 1960s up until the present day. Hooliganism is gratuitous violence spawned by high emotions and copious amounts of drinking. Where did this fan culture get its start in England? The terraces, the standing room areas of grounds reserved for the working class who at 3 o’clock on a Saturday afternoon go down to the pub and drink, and then go to the match and sing and banter with the supporters of the other team, is often the center of rabid fan activity. The terraces, standing room only, represented the cheapest ticket into the game, and clubs made the most of this by overselling these tickets. An overcrowded group of mostly drunk, highly-charged fans trading insults with the other team’s fans via religious, racist and political slurs led often to violence on the terraces, spilling over into the streets after the game.
In order to relieve this toxic mix, the English football leagues began to change over the last twenty years. In the Premiership, the top division of football, there are no grounds with terraces anymore. All have been replaced by higher-priced seats. With the rise of ticket prices, there has been a decrease in the number of working class people inclined to go to a match every other week. Seats, instead of standing room, increased the price of season tickets that working class supporters in the 70s and 80s could afford when terrace tickets were affordable. Along with other changes, such as constant closed circuit TV, limits on alcohol, and direct awareness raising by the clubs, the change to “sitting room only” has been an attempt to reduce or stop hooliganism in English football.
The goal of this senior thesis is to look at how the demise of terraces — among other changes — at football grounds has affected English football and English society. How do football fans, club and league staff, and athletes feel these changes have affected the sport? Specifically, what are the perceptions of English football supporters (fans), authorities, and others involved with the sport about the changing nature of football? Has the removal of terraces, for example, turned down the temperature resulting from fans’ association with particular teams based on the religion, politics, class, and locality assigned to them by those very fans?
The Role of Sport in Society
Sport is an institution in most societies. Sport gives people an outlet to expend energy after a long day or week. Watching or going to a sporting event with friends means freedom from work and the stress of normal life. In its simplest form in society, kids or adults kick or throw a ball around. Other people watch them. It is a part of everyday life. At its best:
Sport forms part of human and social development; it can contribute to social cohesion, tolerance and integration and is an effective channel for physical and socio-economic development. As a universal language, sport can be a powerful medium for social and economic change: it can be utilized to bridge cultural gaps, resolve conflict and educate people in ways that very few activities can. World Economic Forum: The Role of Sports in Society[1]
Yet sport is a complex phenomenon in and between societies; as it reaches the more professional levels, it goes from a fun pastime to serious work. Professional athletes are paid millions of dollars to play for a particular team, and there is a vast network of corporate, legal, health and non-profit systems bound up in sports. It represents employment for many, leisure for others. At its worst, when sports is managed for corporate profit,
Morality and ennoblement are replaced by spectacle and entertainment. Play is replaced by display. Attracting spectators and media sponsorships becomes more important than the playing process because sport is now driven by profit and the market. The ethics of the business and corporate world tend to guide sport, not the principles of play and enjoyment (Frey 1991:508).
To purists, sport is part of their lives because of their love of the game. Professional sports, rightly or wrongly, has become about money and sponsorship. However, money in professional sports oftentimes brings in better players, and better players bring better quality of play. With quality of play, more fans attend because they are excited about how well their team is doing.
However, despite and sometimes because a segment of sport is professional, amateur sports can also be used to promote more noble goals. The Olympic games have long been a symbol of a worldwide effort to bring countries and cultures together through sport. There has been a growing movement to promote sports as a vehicle of peace in the world. Recently, there have emerged transnational agencies called “sports development and peace agencies”. In parts of Africa and other conflict-ridden areas such as the Balkans in the 1990s, there have been efforts to break down social barriers and tensions among different groups of people through sport. This is a novel solution that might be able to curb tensions in some areas of the world through sport, yet these efforts suffer from lack of resources: “resourcing and sustainability problems arise through short-term funding or failures to plan for the breakdown of sports equipment” (Giulianotti 2011:51). However, such initiatives demonstrate the potential of sport in society to heal rifts between groups of people that develop along political, racial and ethnic, religious or territorial lines.
Why People Love sporting events
What does sport mean to us as a society? Why is it so important to so many people in this country and around the world? Why do people love sports? One reason is that it is just plain fun, a leisure and team activity. In many cultures, people believe that sport at a young age can build character and life skills: “Despite a barrage of criticism, a very strong societal support exists for sport participation because of the belief that sport teaches proper values such as social discipline, sportsmanship, and an appreciation for hard work, competition and goal attainment” (Frey 1991: 506). Sport serves as an agent of socialization, to teach young people values about working hard to do their best.
People like sporting events for the sense of togetherness and pride it can promote, either in a family, a community or neighborhood, a city, a state or region, or a country. People love sports because it allows for a type of competitiveness and behavioral pattern not present in other activities. For example, you would not generally see 20,000 people screaming and shouting at a lecture or while someone was writing a paper. Fans want to see a goal be achieved on a sports field and, in turn, they believe that a goal would be achieved in their own life. Sport offers “highly crystallized forms of social structure not found in other systems or situations” (Frey 1991:504).
…sport provides, for example, structured conflict and competitiveness in controlled settings rarely found in other aspects of life. Group dynamics, goal attainment by social organizations, subcultures, behavioral processes, social bonding, structured inequality, socialization, and organizational networks are just a few sociological topics that can be studied in sports settings (Frey 1991:504).
Why people identify with a particular professional team
A particular sport: People may become a fan of a certain sports team because they themselves played that sport as a child or continue to play it as an adult. They have a love of that game, perhaps based on memories of playing catch with their family and friends when they were young. They remember going to games when they were young and hearing stories their family members told them about past games and great players. They read books about the history and meaning of their sport; for example, Roger Angell and George Will, two famous American writers, are enamored with the sport of baseball, and its history and traditions are ingrained into their writing.
In football, there is the allure of worldwide competition between countries every four years in the World Cup. People who live in countries where there may be turmoil can unite with the national team and cheer their team on to achieving the ultimate goal of winning a major trophy. A tournament like the World Cup is watched by billions of people across the world; whether you live in Europe, Africa, Asia or Latin America, you will be surrounded, for those two weeks, by a group of people who will be passionately into the action on the field. Unlike most sporting events, the World Cup truly unites many people.
Locality: Where you live also plays a role in the professional team you follow. Traditionally, fans will root for the team that is closest to their home. They may likely have been born in the general vicinity of the stadium or arena, so as they grow up, they see the venue where the team plays, hear stories about the teams’ history from friends and family, and naturally become a fan of that team.
Locality plays a role when a sports team brings a sense of identity to a place. The New Orleans Saints football team is a recent example of local identification with a team. In 2005, Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans very hard. Many people lost their lives and their possessions. They also lost their sports teams. The stadium where the Saints play their home games, the Louisiana Superdome, turned into a shelter for many people seeking refuge from the floods and chaos. However, the Superdome suffered damage due to Katrina, and it became an unusable venue for play until it was refurbished. This left both the town and the team’s owner without a place for the team to play. Additionally, attendance would be down since so many people had fled the area, and those remaining could ill afford to go to any games. This added to New Orlean’s woes, since the Saints’ games, along with events like Mardi Gras, brought tourists and thus much-needed money into New Orleans.
With newer stadiums in the National Football League in other big-market cities that would allow the Saints to produce more revenue, there was a threat that the Saints’ owner, Tom Benson, would move the team away from New Orleans. Why would Benson do this? “The answer of course is a more lucrative offer or better economic prospects by locating to another city such as Los Angeles, which has been without a team since 1995” (Matheson 2006:13). From an economic perspective, this makes sense, since Los Angeles would deliver not only fans but a celebrity culture not found in New Orleans. Such a move would devastate Saints fans, many of who are very passionate about their team: the Saints had a sellout streak of 36 games before Katrina hit, even though they were not a particularly winning team at the time.
However, Saints’ fans had an ally in New Orleans mayor Ray Nagin. According to Espn.com, Nagin was angry with Tom Benson for threatening to move the team that he, along with many fans, saw as an important symbol of New Orleans. Nagin stated that “For them to be openly talking to other cities about moving is disrespectful to the citizens of New Orleans, disrespectful to the Saints’ fans who have hung in with this franchise through 30 something years under very trying times“ (Martel 2005).
However, this story has happy ending. The Saints did eventually end up staying in New Orleans. Finally, four years after Katrina, the Saints won the Superbowl in 2009. This ended their long wait for a title and put New Orleans back on the national stage again. This time, however, it was in a good context: not only loyal New Orleans’ fans but fans around the country rooted for the Saints against Indianapolis because of the symbolism of a city, a team, reborn. The identification of this team with this city helped the people of New Orleans regain some pride in the city from the win.
Identity: Identity also plays a role in how people become fans of a particular team. The simplest form of this is people being fans of a particular team because it “their family’s” team; generations follow who become fans because that is the team with which their family has always identified.
Throughout sporting history, individuals or groups of people have identified with an athlete or team because of ideological reasons: nationalism (e.g., locality on a broad scale), religion, or political affiliation, for example. One example is the U.S vs. USSR semi-finals Olympic hockey game in 1980. Even though it was a semi-final, it occurred at a time when tensions were high between both nations; the Cold War was in full swing, and USSR had recently invaded Afghanistan, which angered the U.S. The public in both countries realized quickly that this hockey game symbolized and stood for the aggression between the two countries. Americans were very concerned that the Soviets could start a nuclear war. Coupled with this was a poor U.S. economy and high interest rates, leading to a general sense of frustration in the U.S.
The U.S-USSR hockey game united the U.S. It was a classic sports scenario. The U.S was viewed as a massive underdog to the far superior USSR team, which had not lost a professional game in years. The Soviet hockey players were “professional” in the sense that they were supported completely by the Soviet government just to play hockey. The U.S team, on the other hand, was mostly college hockey players who, the public felt, embodied the traditional qualities of the U.S.: scrappy amateur underdogs with extreme motivation. No one gave the U.S any chance to win. However, the US team worked tirelessly and began to win all of the games leading up to the Olympic semi-final. This brought the country together at a time when the country was under tremendous stress. The symbolism of an underdog American team against the overwhelming Soviet “hockey machine” made Americans exhibit a passion for hockey in America that had not been seen until that point. Millions of people watched the match, with the U.S. team winning. It is this moment that gave many people hope that the U.S could rise from its troubles and win the Cold War.
It remains a relevant point in the American sports climate today. People still talk about the “miracle on ice” and how much it meant to beat the Soviets, viewing it as a defining moment in U.S sports history. Books and Hollywood movies depict the story. The footage captured of the last ten seconds is still aired frequently on television in segments when the greatest upsets in sports are mentioned. Since the U.S is not traditionally viewed as one of the best international hockey teams, such an upset would not likely be achieved again. Even on its thirty-first anniversary, it is still a moment that we, in the U.S., will never forget because it tapped into our identity as Americans, even for people who weren’t sports nor hockey fans at the time.
Another such example of sport having ideological undertones was the boxing match between American Joe Louis and German Max Schmelling that happened in 1938, on the eve of World War II (Oates 2005). Joe Louis, an African American who had achieved success in his career up to this fight, had already lost to Schmelling once, and Louis was determined to beat him the next time they faced one another. This fight was arguably more important because of the social and political issues it represented. Schmelling was Nazi Germany’s star athlete and thus he was supposed to beat Louis easily and reinforce German pride. Since it was the 1930s in America there was still racism directed towards African Americans; however, this racism was nothing like Hitler’s determination to create a perfect Aryan race, which didn’t include Jews or blacks. Thus, all of America came to unite behind Louis even though he was black, since he represented what was good about America: democracy. Louis won with a knockout in the first round, and became the first true African-American hero in U.S. history. After the depression of the thirties and the threat of war looming in Europe, this sporting event came to symbolize more than a simple win of one man over another. Louis’ win contributed to a huge boost in the morale of America.
Characteristics of the team itself: Fans may also root for a particular team because it embodies characteristics they themselves value, such as charity, team spirit, certain ethics, or even a particular player to which the fan is attracted because of the player’s particular history. Some fans follow a team simply because it has been more successful in the past. In the 1990s, the New York Yankees gained a larger fan base solely because of the fact that they have been more successful than other teams. In other cases, a person will switch to a team based on the fact that team has experienced recent success. Such “band wagon fans” are sometimes viewed, by hardcore, long-time fans of the team, as not true and passionate fans because they have joined the fan base so recently, based on the team’s recent success. The Boston Red Sox, who finally won the World Series Championship in 2004 after losing it for 86 years, definitely gained fans in the seasons following 2004.
People may also become a fan of a team because the team represents a spirit or ethic they admire. For example, it is not uncommon for professional sport teams to support and raise money for favorite charities. The Boston Red Sox provide an example of this. The Red Sox have cooperated with the Jimmy Fund and the Dana-Farber Cancer Center for many years, sponsoring events and fund drives to raise money for cancer research and treatment for children and adults. They have given many children a chance to fulfill their dreams of going to a game or even getting onto the field. They sponsor children battling cancer to go to spring training in Florida in March. They also partner with other sporting events such as the annual Pan Mass Challenge, a one or two-day bike ride across central to eastern Massachusetts that raises millions of dollars for cancer research.[2]
The relationship between the Red Sox and the Jimmy Fund officially started in 1953. However, it was in 1948 when Ted Williams, then the Red Sox’s best player, started the relationship. He would routinely go to the Jimmy Fund clinics and talk to the patients (The Jimmy Fund n.d.). Tom Yawkey, the owner of the Red Sox was also deeply involved in helping raise money to beat cancer. Other Red Sox players stepped up to the plate to help the Jimmy Fund. Starting in the 1950s and lasting for many years, the Jimmy Fund was the only advertising allowed in Fenway Park. As the partnership grew, more fans of the Red Sox got involved, raising money through fundraisers or just becoming aware of the need for cancer research funding because the Jimmy Fund was always front and center at Fenway Park. While this has changed, it demonstrates the Red Sox team’s commitment to the Jimmy Fund, which has and will continue to play a prominent role in the culture of the club. It represents a classic example of how a team’s characteristic can entice people to become and stay fans of the team.
Fans may follow a team because they like a particular player. It could be that player is particularly good at their position, so there is a natural affinity for him or her. It could be that the player has done a lot for charity, and thus the fan or a group of fans admire him or her. It could be that a particular fan has overcome great obstacles in his life — physical or mental, family upbringing, drug abuse, etc. — to stay as a player in professional sport, and admiration for this player makes one a fan of the team.
What makes a sports fan?
Anyone can say she or he is a fan and that sports or a particular team plays a role in his or her individual or social life. However, there are typical behaviors and actions that fans may do that characterize them as a “fan”, rather than just a person interested in sport. These characteristics are listed and discussed below.
Follow sport or team’s progress: To be considered a sports fan, one has to follow one team with a passion that is greater than just watching a few games here and there. Following the sport or team’s progress entails more than passing knowledge about the sport or team that they are following. Fans may “follow” the sport or team by watching games, getting news about the sport or team from the newspaper, radio, TV, internet or other media, by exchanging information with friends and family during conversations, or by reading books, magazines, or research about the sport or team. With the advent of CNN and ESPN, as well as websites such as espn.com or the website of the team itself, sports fans can now receive almost minute-by-minute updates about what is going on in the sport or in a particular team.
Sports talk radio is one example of a medium people use to follow a sport or a team in society. Sports fans all across the world listen to their favorite shows, often with an international base if sponsored by BBC or Voice of America. The format of these shows varies from simple news and commentary to call-in shows where both announcers and people calling in express controversial and outspoken points of view on a range of topics related to the sport or team. People have heated arguments about who should start on their favorite team(s) or who should be the general manager. The average listener to sports radio includes “Euro-American men with high rates of high rates of political participation” (Bennett 2005:7). “Most sports talk radio listeners are between ages 25 and 54. Eighty-one percent are Euro-American. Half make over $75,000 a year” (Snyder 2002). “Fully 85 percent of the audience is male. Thus, sports radio listeners have money to go to sporting events and to keep up to date with it on a regular basis. Sports talk radio opens up conversations in society about sports that cross national boundaries. But it can also incite negative passions as well: “Sports talk radio is complicated discursive terrain. It can be sexist, homophobic, and biased toward those who do not conform to its norms of stoic masculinity and middle-class sensibilities”(Bennett 2005: 2).
Listening to, watching or attending games: One of the simplest acts of being a fan is watching games, often with friends or family, in whatever sport they follow. This adds to the social experience of supporting one’s favorite team. Going to games to see your team in person in their home stadium with other like-minded people breeds a social sense of pride in the team. Many a child remembers the exact moment they became a fan of a particular team, at the first game they ever attended.
Buying merchandise that shows others their allegiance to a particular team. Most professional teams or leagues within a particular sport now produce and sell a wide range of “kit” or clothing and other gadgets with the team logo and name on them. From T-shirts to hats to key chains to beer glasses to pajamas and even underwear can be purchased in stores near the stadium or online and by catalog. Buying and wearing or displaying the merchandise for a sports team shows one’s passion for that team. It demonstrates one’s affiliation with a particular sport or team. The purpose is to identify oneself to others, either as a friend or a foe.[3]
Talking with friends, family and colleagues about the team or the sport. Talking about sports is very important in society. Family and friends often talk about sports when they get together for gatherings such as wedding, reunions, holidays, or graduations. Sport becomes an easy and instant topic of conversation for friends and relatives who may have been out of touch for years. It is generally a safe topic, unlike politics or religion; “How ‘bout those Mets?” has become an idiom in American society for opening conversation while avoiding broaching a difficult subject between two people. In addition, talk about sports can solidify relationships between younger and older generations in a family or between siblings who have grown apart. Sports may also be a diversionary topic, an escape from discussing the stresses of business or relationships gone bad. In American offices, sporting events or news items are subjects for “water-cooler talk” during breaks from work. Oftentimes people will discuss what went right or wrong for their favorite team. It allows fans of sports to share information or even to convey to others that they are more knowledgeable.
Why “fans” get “fanatic”
Fan is a shortened term for “fanatic”. A fanatic is someone who is extremely passionate about his or her team. They may have season tickets to all of the home games of their team, or travel long distances to watch their team play in another stadium. They may dress in particular clothing or get a tattoo of their favorite team’s logo. Other characteristics of “fanatic” fans are presented and discussed below.
Extreme identification with team or sport, so that you disrespect or dislike people who are fans of other teams. This could even stretch to disliking people from that city solely because of their sports team. Non-fans, looking on from the outside, might feel that it would be taking sports far too seriously: “it’s only a game!” Friendly banter and teasing about how one’s team is doing in the standings is a sign of a fan; fanatics may get angry, hostile, discontinue the conversation or even the relationship. In this way, sports fanatics feel so strongly about their team that the team is elevated to almost a religious or political position in their minds.
Individual ego leading to demonstrating greater dedication for the team may be part of being a fanatic. Such fanatics may feel that their identity is tied to demonstrating to others that they are more loyal, more serious, more passionate about their team than other fans. In so doing, they are either implicitly or explicitly building themselves up and putting the other fellow down.
Escaping from the real world of jobs, difficulties, or money problems may be a characteristic of a fanatic fan. Such fans are looking for an all-consuming outlet to get away from normal life. They may have a mundane job or dissatisfying job or homelife. Going to a sporting event on a weekend or on a weeknight will allow them to express passion, feel alive and forget about their troubles at work or home. They may have personal problems, and so going to a game allows them to let out all that pent-up frustration.
Unfortunately, interest in sports, either as a fan or a fanatic, can bring up another problematic element for people: gambling on sporting events. Almost everyone with an interest in sports has, at one time or another, bet a friend “a dollar” or “a fiver” that such-and-such a team will or won’t win the big game. However, fanatics may indulge in professional gambling and become addicted to betting on particular sports or teams. In 1973, over forty million people gambled on sports (Frey 1991); a 2008 Gallup poll found that 1 in 6 Americans gambles on sports (Jones 2008). In England, gambling on football (soccer) plays an important role in society; a high profile sporting event such as the FA Cup can become even more important for a fan or group of fans because they have a vested stake in the game.
Football fanatics in England: the changing nature of the sport in society
England (like other countries) has a history of extreme fans as part of their society, and this has created unwanted by-products (violence and hooliganism, racist language). Arguably, the sport that most embodies this is English Football. The English have a history of violence at sporting events. In 1970s and 1980s, hooliganism was common. This culture of extreme fandom also gets imbued with racism and excessive drinking, leading to a poisonous atmosphere in many stadiums up and down England.
Thus, English authorities in the 1990s realized that something needed to be done. One action was to take out many of the terraces, the standing room areas in grounds (stadiums). They changed start times of matches to earlier in the day to slightly decrease the amount of alcohol being consumed before matches. They installed closed-circuit television cameras in seating areas and around grounds so that they could track down hooligans and those instigating violence afterwards. Some clubs and leagues have players repeat a non-racist pledge before the beginning of televised games, to remind fans that racism doesn’t belong in football.
However, the question now is: are these actions working to cut down hooliganism, violence, and racism at and around football games? There is some evidence from recent research and news (see literature review in next section) that one can now go to a football match and worry about becoming involved in physical conflict. However, questions remain about how fans and club representatives perceive these changes: how does the average fan actually feel? How do club representatives feel about whether these actions are working? Do stakeholders feel that getting rid of terraces has stopped undesirable aspects of English Football from creeping back into the game? Do stakeholders feel that actions to reduce racism and hooliganism have made a difference in reducing football violence? If so, what difference has it made? If not, what else could be done?
Purpose and Significance of This Study
The goal of this thesis paper is to examine how the decision to ban standing terraces — as well as other actions — in English professional football (soccer) stadiums has affected the perceptions of stakeholders such as fans and club officials about these changes to the sport. In particular, I wanted to ask stakeholders their opinions about the Football Association’s controversial decision to mandate that all Premier League stadia do away with standing “terraced” sections and replace them with seats in order to cut down on troubling aspects of fan behavior.
The findings from this study should be of interest to sports fans, club and league officials, and those responsible for promoting football as a safe, family sport. Current perspectives and opinions about actions taken to reduce violence and bad behavior among spectators may have implications for further actions, education or public relation efforts to change the nature of fan loyalty. For example, clubs could decide to start a new campaign aimed at a particular group of fans that are still resistant to changing their attitudes about the role of football in their lives.
Chapter Two: Literature Review
In this section, I review the literature on how football is intertwined with politics, religion and race. Next, I discuss how terraced stands and alcohol play a role in increasing destructive passion at and around games. Then, I discuss the results of this passion: hooliganism and violence. Finally, I present a description of efforts — including removing football terraces — by the government, clubs and leagues to decrease the violence and racism associated with football. These efforts include changing the physical structure of football grounds/stands, campaigns to reduce racism, policy changes, and athletes’ own efforts to appeal to fans.
A Short History of Social Issues Embedded in Football
Football plays a huge role in English sporting life. Thousands, if not millions, of supporters go to grounds up and down the country at Saturdays, Sundays, and sometimes during the middle of the week. These supporters come from all walks of life, but the majority are working class people who come from the local area to support their clubs. In England, however, as in the rest of the world, social issues are intertwined with a fan’s love of the game. Since football is two teams competing against each other, it is theorized that people’s politics, religion, and race would also rise up when two sides face off. In this section, I discuss how these issues play a role in fueling football hooliganism and violence.
Politics and Nationalism in Football
There are political tensions that manifest themselves in English football. English reactionary parties, such as the now disbanded National Front and both the English Defense League (EDL) and the British National Party (BNP), have played a role in fostering far-right sentiments and opinions in some football supporters. This is linked to the fact that many football supporters are white working class males who live in towns and cities where unemployment is high:
According to the 2001 FA Premier League National Fan Survey (SNCCFR, 2001a)
Black British or British Asian fans comprise only 0.8% of the total sample of active top-level fans (compared to 0.7% in 1997) way below the figures for the population at large. Black players probably account for between 13–15% of professional footballers nationwide. Even in areas of the country with large ethnic minority populations, match attendance from among these groups is very low. (University of Leicester 2002:10)
These fans are likely to feel that immigrants are taking their jobs and thus to identify with these political parties, who promote nationalist, anti-immigrant sentiments.
The first example of this was in the National Front, founded in 1967. The politics of nationalism in England was fueled by racism and encouraged by the National Front. Its relation to football is described at length in Bill Buford’s book Among The Thugs (1990). In the chapter titled Bury St Edmunds, Buford profiles Dougie and Neil, two Chelsea Football Club supporters. These fans combined their love of football with radical far-right politics which are very Nationalist and insular. A magazine called Bulldog, according to Buford (1990), was a key campaigning tool for the Front. National Front members could go to any football ground in the country and sell this magazine and young people would buy it. Bulldog regularly featured a section called “On the Football Front”. This section included letters to the editor about racist football supporters’ exploits on the terraces of various grounds up and down England:
Dear Bulldog: In issue 35 you printed an article on the racist ‘bots’ who support Newcastle United. The ‘boys’ were pleased to have been mentioned but they disagree strongly with bulldog’s claim that they don’t have as many racist ‘boys’ as Leeds, Chelsea or West Ham. In fact the ‘boys’ believe that they have more and that they are now the number one racist ‘firm’ in the country…Yours sincerely, Joe of the East Stand (Buford 1990:135)
Dear Bulldog: I buy your paper regularly but a lot of your reports are the same: it’s always Leeds or Chelsea or Spurs or West Ham in every issue. I follow Rochdale AFC and at every home match you can count on hearing racist chants and songs. The police have tried to stop us but to no avail. Recently they were stupid enough to send a Paki copper but he got so much abuse that he hasn’t been seen at the Dale since. If you print this letter it will show people that there is NF support at the smaller grounds as well as the big ones. Yours sincerely, The Rochdale AFC National Front (Buford 1990:135)
These letters indicate the willingness, even pride, among group of supporters (often connected to the anti-immigrant nationalism promoted by the Front) to use racist songs and insults at matches to racially abuse players of African descent.
Another place to find football hooligans was National Front discos:
Everyone here would have been a Bulldog reader, drawn for the football grounds. I had heard that the football grounds were ideal for recruiting new members — -Ian Anderson had said that there was nowhere else in Britain where you would find so much disconnected youth in one place — But the problem, having brought them together, was to keep them from fighting. (Buford 1990:146)
While people going to the National Front discos were all football supporters of one club or another, they were also hooligans, meaning that it was more likely that a fight could break out during one of these events.
After the era of the National Front, the English Defense League (EDL) has become the dominant far-right reactionary party. Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, also known as Tommy Robinson, is the leader of The English Defense league. He founded the EDL on June 27th 2009. The movement started in Luton, after a group of English military personnel were mocked by a small group of Muslims for their service in the Middle East. It was that this point that Robinson and others decided to respond by forming the EDL. The main goal of the EDL, according to their mission statement, is to respect and uphold traditional English society, although they say that Muslims should be able to practice their religion freely so long as they respect English society and do not engage in radical acts.
This party also has ties to football as well, in the form of Casuals United, which claims that they are a coalition of hooligan firms (football gangs) from across the country. From a look at their website, the root of their hooliganism is alleged incidents of English people being mistreated by Muslim immigrants. The Casuals United is a group of people who are members of hooligan firms across England who have united to stamp out radical Islam in England. Their leader, Jeff Marsh from Wales, describes their mission this way:
Hooligans from rival clubs are uniting on this and it is like a ready-made army… We are protesting against the preachers of hate who are actively encouraging young Muslims in this country to take part in a Jihad against Britain. (Lewis 2009)
Individual football clubs themselves can also be associated with particular political parties or issues, including anti-Semitism. Chelsea Football club, for example, has had an association to far right politics:
More than any club, Chelsea has been associated with the Neo-Nazi right. I had just seen a BBC documentary that showed how many of the Chelsea Hooligans…travel to concentration camps on tourist trips so that they can admire Hitler’s accomplishments. They deliver “sieg heil” salutes to the tourists and confiscate artifacts for their personal collections of concentration camp paraphernalia (Foer 2004:107).
This quote shows the connection between racism and politics, where football fans from one club can embrace a political ideology that is widely hated. Since most hooligans are working-class people who feel disenfranchised in greater society, they turn to hooliganism, which then proves to be a breeding ground for Neo-Nazi ideals.
Religion in Football
Religious tensions can also play a role in football. This is particularly the case in Glasgow, Scotland, where the religion in which one was brought up also determines the team one supports. The best example is the rivalry — commonly known as the “Old Firm” — between Celtic Football Club, a Scottish club with Irish Catholic origins, and Rangers Football Club, with Protestant origins:
But the Celtic-rangers rivalry represents something more than the enmity of proximity. It is an unfinished fight over the protestant reformation. (Foer 2004:36)
Supporters of both sides engage in sectarian acts:
… Rangers don’t try too hard to discourage religious bigotry. They continue to hawk orange jerseys. They play songs on the Ibrox loudspeaker that they know will provoke anti-Catholic lyrics: Tina Turner’s “Simply the Best” culminates in 40,000 screams of “Fuck the pope”. The clubs stoke ethnic hatred, or make only periodic attempts to discourage it, because they know ethnic hatred makes good business sense (Foer 2004: 39).
Sometime in the vicinity of World War I, Rangers instituted a Protestants-only policy, extending from players to janitors. And it became more stringent than that: the club denied promotions to executives who married Catholics. Rangers allowed itself to become a staging ground for strident protestant politics… One of the club’s official histories describes its ethos bluntly enough. “A protestant club for Protestant people” (Foer 2004:45).
The selling of an orange Glasgow Rangers kit sounds harmless. In fact, however, Rangers are a club allied closely with the Protestant faith and a Northern Irish group called the Orange Order, a protestant fraternal organization that is extremely anti-Catholic. They have “lodges” scattered across Northern Ireland, Scotland, and even America. The Orange Order often received money from matches that Rangers played in Northern Ireland. The Order itself had links to Protestant paramilitary organizations.
Celtic, too, were not innocent. Members of the Celtic management openly voted for Sinn Fein, an Irish Nationalist political party. Sinn Fein has links to the Irish Republican Army (IRA), a paramilitary organization committed to fighting for a free Ireland. It is not uncommon for Celtic supporters to sing Irish ballads, which, though on the surface may seem innocent, are actually tinged with anti-Protestant meanings. There are also hooligan firms associated with Celtic that are openly pro IRA:
… Celtic has used its stadium for open-air celebration of mass; chunks of its management devotedly backed the Irish republican cause; and its directors consisted exclusively of Catholics up through the 1990s. (Foer 2004:45).
Celtic and Rangers goes beyond a simple geographical rivalry; it is a vehicle for intense religious fervor. This is also played out in the press:
The notion is that Catholics have imagined the crimes committed against them, have grown too attached to the idea of suffering. This smells of victim blaming, but the closer one examines the evidence the more reasonable the thesis becomes. Celtic fans have a predilection for dredging up ancient history and conflating with recent events. (Foer 2004:51)
Thus, instead of decrying a missed penalty or an offside on the ref, which is a perfectly natural reaction for a supporter, they tend to blame ancient history related to past battles between Catholics and Protestants. The Catholic Celtic-supporting population of Scotland and Northern Ireland believe that the fortunes of their football club are closely linked to the fortunes that they have experienced throughout their lives and history. This is the nature of the Old Firm: there is much more going on than just playing one another twice a year.
However, for all of the sectarian sentiment, Rangers and Celtic are trying to change their ways:
Indeed, the Celtic and rangers organizations want to convert themselves into international capitalist entities and entertainment conglomerates. They understand that they have to become something more than adversaries in a centuries-old religious war (Foer 2004:38).
They have started programs teaching young people about not using sectarian language. Both clubs want to be known for the football, not the religious tensions, yet they know that religious fervor increases passion in and attendance at games. After hundreds of years, such complex religious issues might never be resolved.
Racism in Football
Racism is an issue for black players in both England and around the world. Players of African descent claim that they have been racially abused on the field of play by both fellow players and by fans (see above). This is not something new to football in England. In the 1880s, Arthur Wharton was the first player of African descent to grace the English leagues. He suffered racist abuse from many supporters in the late 1800s.
In the inter-war period in England, there were a few great players seemingly excluded from the national team because of race. The best example of this was Jack Leslie, a black player who played for Plymouth Argyle, a club in the south of England. Even though he scored 400 goals in his career, he was never called up to the English national team. He believed it was because of the color of the skin. While no black players in the inter-war period were asked to play for England, John Parris, who played for Wales, was the first black player to play for any of the British national football teams. During the Inter-war period, it was somewhat easier for Asian players who arrived in England, most notably Abdul Salim from India, who played for Celtic for a short time, and H. Hegazi, a player for Dulwich Hamlet and Fulham in England (Williams and Bradbury 2006).
After the war, the number of black players in England increased somewhat, as more countries in Africa and Asia started to play football. With increasing immigration from other countries, more black and Asian families in England had young players who wanted to play the game. After World War II, a large number of immigrants came to England from countries like Jamaica and India. They brought with them a sense of community based on their roots, often referring to themselves as being Black British or Asian British. Unfortunately, this did not help them assimilate into mainstream English society because it alienated white working class Britons, the core group of football fans. Thus, in the late 1940s and in the 1950s, it was still very difficult for Black and Asian players to be given the chance to play at the highest level. African and Asian players were not viewed as being as competent on the pitch as their white counterparts (Williams and Bradbury 2006).
The situation changed again in the 1970s and 80s. There were even more blacks and Asians in the inner cities of England and, thus, more people with an attachment to their local team. Increasing numbers of black players gave local black communities role models to look up to. By the late 1980s and 90, there were more black players playing at the big clubs like Manchester United, Liverpool, and Arsenal. This has, to a certain extent, cut down on some of the racism seen in Premiership grounds in the 1990s, because more black supporters are in the stands to see their heroes play (Williams and Bradbury 2006).
In 1993, the Commission for Racial Equality and the Professional Footballers Association launched a campaign called “Let’s Kick Racism Out of Football”. All football clubs in the league have endorsed the campaign, which includes adopting a 10-point action plan (see box), which evolved into a campaign simply called “Kick it Out”.
However, today players of African descent in England still face racial taunts, both from fans and from other players:
Racism clearly remains a problem to some extent at all professional clubs. 27% of FA Premier League fans polled in 2001 reported witnessing some racism aimed at players at matches, with 7% identifying racism against spectators. These figures tally with those for the Football League national fan survey for 2001(SNCCFR, 2001b). (cited in University of Leicester 2002:10)
In 2000, Neo-Nazi groups, such as the English Volunteer Force, organized racist chanting at both Chelsea FC and Charlton FC (Campbell 2000). In 2004, Luis Aragones, then manager of the Spanish national football team, called Thierry Henry, a Frenchman of African descent, “a black shit”. While this incident did not gain much coverage in Spain, it made news in England where Henry played for Arsenal Football club for many years. English National teams players David Beckham and Michael Owen, who were then playing for Real Madrid, wore anti Racism t-shirts in support of Henry before a friendly against Spain in Spain. This was a prominent example of racism that shocked the English, even while such racism still happens between fans and players (Williams and Bradbury 2006).
All sports should be an open place for players of every color and background to play freely and not face racial abuse. However, this is not yet the case (see box, right). As the recent Liverpool case has shown, there are still issues to be resolved for English football to be viewed as a league and country where players can play without the fear of racism.
Factors that Contribute to Hooliganism and Violence in Football
Terraces as a Contributing Factor
What is a terrace? A terrace is a standing area for people to watch their local team at an inexpensive price. The terraces were traditionally known as the most passionate part of the ground (stadium) where working class supporters would vent their feelings about their team, the opposition and the referees. The terraces are also termed “ends”, since they were often set up behind the long end of the field, behind the goal posts. An “end” is traditionally set up for fans of one team or the other; fans from both teams do not mix in these terraces. Supporters and often hooligans who stood in these ends were expected to “protect” the end from the rival supporters. So along with just standing and supporting their club, there was a responsibility to protect the pride of the club. There are two types of people that stand
on the terraces. One type is the regular supporter who watches his or her team every other weekend. They look for no trouble and just want to support their club. The other type are the hooligans, the “Casuals”, who want to stir up trouble and get into fights. However, many terraces have been demolished due to safety concerns and the threat of hooliganism erupting. Today, all grounds in the top flight of English Football the premiership do not have terraces — standing-room only areas — although grounds in the lower divisions of English Football still have terraces. An example of one of the terraces at Wycombe Football Club is pictured above, and the terraces at Dagenham, another lower-league club, are pictured below.[4]
How did terraces evolve as part of football grounds? The first terraces were called the Spion Kop at Woolwich Arsenal, now just called Arsenal. The name originated from the site of a famous battle in the Boer war. So why would a football club use the name of an infamous battle that the British lost to name a stand at their ground? The answer appears to come from the fact that the Spion Kop in South Africa was a large hill. The battle of Spion Kop was a disaster for the British armies against the Boers of South Africa (BritishBattles.com 2002–2012). The British soldiers had to contend with mist on the Spion Kop as well. In total, the British armed forces lost 1,500 men.
The first terraces were mainly just mounds of earth where fans would stand. In England, the most famous still standing is the Kop at Liverpool that holds 13,000 spectators and is the largest single-tiered football stand in England.
The present day “Kop” is a regular seated section, as a major disaster in 1989 (see a description of the Hillsborough disaster below) prompted a call for all stadia in the first division (now the Premiership) to change their standing-only terraces into areas with seats. In the Premier League, the last club that had terraces was Fulham Football club in the 2001–2002 season. Now there are only terraces in grounds of professional clubs in leagues 1 and 2 and in one Championship club (Peterborough), who are tearing down their end and replacing it with a seating stand. Even in the lower leagues, clubs like Tranmere and Sheffield United still have Kops but like Liverpool’s, they too are also seated. In many ways, this move towards seats in the former terraced sections may have reduce hooliganism, so that football grounds are safer than they were. However, it is unclear whether such a restructuring has also changed the atmosphere and the passion that is integral to English Football.
Also in the early 20th century, there were wooden terraces but these carried the risk of fire and of collapse. In Scotland, the Ibrox disaster of April 5, 1902 occurred in a home nations match between Scotland and England. Halfway through the match, the terraces collapsed, since they were only engineered for 35,913, and an estimated 60,000 people were on the terraces that day (Shiels 1998). Hundreds of fans fell up to 40 feet when the stands collapsed, and 25 people died and 517 people were injured. Amazingly, the match was allowed to go on, for fear of a stampede of fleeing fans.
While the passion on the terraces could and was often times fantastic, it could also be very dangerous. For example, in the 1970s and 1980s, ticket takers at the grounds exercised little caution when admitting paying customers:
In the shed, like large parts of English soccer stadiums before the 1990s, there was no place to sit, just terraces of concrete. You could cram a seemingly unending amount of humanity into these terraces, and the ticket-takers were never really inclined to cut off the flow (Foer 2004:91).
This sort of mentality has led to some disastrous consequences. The Hillsborough disaster of April 15, 1989, was one of the worst incidents of violence and overcrowding in English football history. Ninety-six people were killed in the crush of people. The main problem was overcrowding in the Leppings Lane terrace. Liverpool traditionally has more supporters than does Nottingham Forest, the club that Liverpool was playing in the FA cup semifinal that day. Thus, there were more people that wanted to go into the ground to see the match. People who did not have tickets were not supposed to be allowed into the ground. Nonetheless, there were many people without tickets who were able to get into the ground. There was a crush of people trying to see the match clearly. Particularly poignant is the testimony of Eddie Spearrit, whose son Adam died in the crush on the Leppings Lane terrace:
The crush came… it wasn’t a surge. It was like a vice getting tighter and tighter. I turned Adam ‘round to me. He was obviously in distress. There was a police officer, about five or six feet away and I started begging him to open the gate. I was screaming. Adam had fainted and my words were ‘ My lovely son is dying’ and begging him to help me and he didn’t do anything. I grabbed hold of Adam’s lapels and tried to lift him over the fence. It was ten feet or thereabouts with spikes coming in. I couldn’t lift high. So I started punching the fence in the hope I could punch it down. Right at the beginning, when I was begging the officer to open the gate, if he’d opened it I know I could’ve got Adam out. I know that because I was there. (from Scraton 2004:183)
This quote demonstrates the anguish of that day. Blame, however, can be spread around. There is no doubt that there were most likely too many Liverpool supporters that did not have tickets who tried to force their way into the ground. The emergency response from both the police and medical units were not adequate. The south Yorkshire police were not up to the task of controlling a large section of the crowd that were in the terraces. It also led the daily tabloid TheSun to produce a sensational and mostly untrue account about Liverpool supporters obstructing the police and not letting them do their job (Scraton 2004).
The police were criticized for a cover up of the details of what happened that day. There were multiple mistakes in policing such a high profile football match. First, the supporters forced themselves through the crowded turnstiles. If they would have been more restrained, the 96 people who did die that day may have been spared. The police could have done a much better job in realizing that a huge mass of humanity was trying to wedge its way into a very cramped terrace. The ticket takers could have realized that the Leppings lane terrace was filling up at a very fast rate, and that there might eventually be dire consequences. It turned from a regular FA cup semi-final to an awful day that no one in English football would ever forget. To this day, the true fallout of the Hillsborough disaster has not come to light, and there are parents still searching for answers. The 96 people who died that day have since been immortalized by the flames on Liverpool Football Club’s crest (Scraton 2004).
The Hillsborough disaster prompted the investigation that would eventually lead to the Taylor. Lord Taylor, a distinguished judge, was commissioned to recommend changes to the coordination of games because, as Hillsborough proved, overcrowding on the terraces could happen very easily. Lord Taylor wanted to make sure that nothing like this could ever happen again. The Taylor report recommended that all stadia in the top flight of English football must renovate to replace the standing-room terraces with individual seats. In fact, the Taylor Report also recommended that all stadia where football is played should be “all seaters”, meaning no terraces or standing areas of any sort within the ground. In addition, Lord Taylor proposed that grounds in the top two divisions of English Football and the top division of the Scottish Football league reduce their standing capacities by 20%, and that standing capacities in other division grounds should be reduced by 10% (Taylor 1989).
This had a profound effect on the construction of football stadia in England. No longer were stadia being constructed with terraces between the goals. There were new stadia where everyone had a seat. After Hillsborough, getting rid of terraces was a structural way of reducing the dangers of attending football games. It allowed people to sit down and not have to worry about what might happen if there was a surge of people towards the fence that separated the pitch from the terrace stands. While getting rid of the terraces in the upper echelons of English football has led to increased supporter safety, it has also caused a change in the atmosphere at a match. For many supporters, along with watching their team win, this sense of excitement while watching a football match on a terrace cannot be replicated while sitting down. But even with “sitting room only”, the social problems associated with football — violence and hooliganism, racism, political and religious partisanship — continue to haunt what should be a safe yet exciting leisurely activity for millions of sports fans in England.
Alcohol as a Contributing Factor
Alcohol consumption also contributes to violence in English Football, both by fans and by athletes. It is traditionally always done before matches, in local pubs; however, sometimes it is done after the match. In earlier decades, players commonly turned up for training smelling of alcohol. Former players, such as Paul Gascoigne, are known as heavy drinkers. George Best, a legendary footballer who played for Manchester United in the 1960s, was also famed for having massive drinking sessions. Best himself summed up the fast-paced lifestyle of a footballer: “I spent 90% of my money on women, drink and fast cars. The rest I wasted” (Kuper n.d.). Many (although not all) Footballers grew up in working class areas where having long drinking sessions was an accepted part of the local culture. Football managers encouraged players to build team spirit, sometimes through drinking together, even when it seemed to cause a decrease in performance on the pitch. Alcohol was accessible after training sessions and matches when players wanted to unwind and relax. Some players from other countries who come to play in England speak out about their dislike of the culture of drinking at English football clubs. A young Norwegian player, Ragnvald Soma, was disgusted at the amount of drinking that English players did:
All the drinking at English clubs doesn’t tempt me… I’m not a teetotaler and I can understand why a player wants a beer after a game. But when players are getting drunk and smelling of alcohol in training the next day, the whole team suffers. (Soma, quoted by Collomosse 2009).
Footballers can also get into dangerous situations off the pitch. Drinking by players leaves them susceptible to attack by others. In November of 2009, a semi-professional footballer named Matthew Edgington who played for Ramsbottom United was out celebrating with friends after a match and was attacked by men who had clearly been binge drinking. Edgington suffered severe brain injuries as a result of the attack and was forced to retire from professional football. It is not clear if Edgington himself had been binge drinking but this clearly shows the risks to footballers of drinking in public (Thorpe 2011).
As police have made their presence felt more inside the grounds in recent years, and “ends” have been turned into “sitting room only”, hooligans have moved their operations outside the grounds and into the local pubs, thus increasing the role of alcohol as a factor in hooliganism. Most grounds now do not serve alcohol, at least not in view of the pitch; the reasoning is that selling alcohol openly in view of the pitch is an open invitation for hooligans to pick fights with other hooligans, thus ruining a good football match and a good out for families who just want to watch football. However, banning alcohol entirely in the grounds leads to hooliganism outside of the stadium. Many football grounds are located in industrial areas that also contain local pubs where patrons and supporters can go and drink freely. This oftentimes leads to hooliganism in and around the ground, which Marsh (1977) cites as the actual source of most violence. Shopkeepers would board up their shops to protect them from being hurt or having valuable property being stolen. Even some pubs near grounds will close for fear that a group of hooligans would break in and loot or burn the place down.
Hooliganism and Violence: The End Result
Football-related unrest is a well-known by-product of football not only in England but also across the world and has been for hundreds of years. In 1314, King Edward II banned football because of the social unrest it might cause; football games could sometimes lead to all-out brawls among rival villages in England (The Football Education Network n.d.). The commoners, however, kept playing their game “on foot” with a ball (different from the royalty’s sports, which were all played on horseback.) In the modern day version of football, some of the first noted incidents occurred in 1885 in matches that featured Preston North End and Aston Villa. According to eyewitness, both sets of supporters threw rocks and sticks at one another, and there was even one Preston player that lost consciousness.
However, in the times of both world wars, there was considerably less hooligan activity. Before and after World War I, women came to the matches in smaller numbers than men but still were spotted. With WWII, and the era of hooliganism, women were both discouraged and scared to do to matches:
We had season tickets (at Nottingham Forest) and we were on the stand on the halfway line and the Leicester supporters picked up stones and threw them at us. It was really frightening. So I said, ‘That’s it, if that’s football I’m not going anymore’ (Maud Gascoyne quoted in Taylor and Ward 1995: 256.)
Starting again in the 1950s and 60s with the Mods and rockers, more violent incidents at and around football stadiums occurred. Hooliganism increased in the 1970s and 80s. Researchers argue that hooligans in this era were generally working class young men who found it difficult to get jobs and live a traditional existence:
The present evidence suggests that… (football hooligans) are mainly from a working class background with the special problems inherent in large industrial cities and ports where violent and delinquent subcultures are known to exist (Dunning 1986: 229).
Lack of education contributed to difficulties getting a stable job. Thus, they may have felt that one way to earn respect in society was to be a hooligan. Put together many unemployed people in a high-emotion situation, like watching a professional sport, and they are more likely to band together and cause mayhem.
“Aggro” or aggression was viewed in the 1970s and 1980s as something accepted. Men are supposed to “act like men”, and hooliganism was accepted as a part of a “good day out”. The idea of ‘Aggressive Masculinity” is relevant here. If young working class boys do not have a support system from their parents, they develop a support system with their friends through hooliganism. If young boys see their fathers act in a “macho” way at games, they can come to believe that this is the way to act in society as a whole, not just football grounds:
It was obvious that the violence was a protest. It made sense that it would be: that football matches were providing an outlet for frustrations of a powerful nature. So many young people were out of work or had never been able to find any. The violence, it followed, was a rebellion of some kind- social rebellion, class rebellion, something(Buford 1990: 15)
What counts as hooliganism? Is it just being drunk in and around a ground a criminal offense? If one person throws a punch at another, was that caused by football? Anything that happens in the stands — or on the field — could be hooligan violence. Frosdick and Newton (2006) categorize hooliganism into three distinct types of crime: (1) crimes against people i.e. assaults, (2) crimes against property, i.e. throwing objects like stones and bricks through shop windows in downtowns across England, and (3) crimes against the state in the case of major riots. Fighting amongst hooligans is sometimes close quarters combat, but more often it is groups of hundreds of people who may be intentionally armed (knives) or who may use whatever is at hand (bricks). Other weapons used in the past include coins and petrol bombs.
Football violence can be sparked by events on the pitch, and manifest itself in “pitch invasions”, like the recent tragedy in Egypt. In other instances, violence is sparked by rivalry between fans in the stands, starting with “banter”, escalating to racist or taunting chants, perhaps leading to an “invasion” of one team’s “end” (terrace) by the other team.
However, hooligan behavior is often purposely started and instigates a wave of fighting that can be very dangerous for innocent bystanders. Hooligans view their fighting as integral to attending a match. Many are addicted to it; they live for it. Paul Harrison, a truck driver, says:
I go to a match for one reason only: The Aggro. It’s an obsession, I can’t give it up. I get so much pleasure when I’m having aggro that I nearly wet my paints … I go all over the country looking for it …every night during the week we go around town looking for trouble. Before a match we go round looking respectable… Then if we see someone who looks like the enemy we ask him the time. If he answers in a foreign accent, we do him over, and if he’s got any money on him we’ll roll him as well (Dunning, Murphy and Williams 1986: 222)
Certain types of hooliganism seem to be a way for fans to establish themselves as a social entity. Hard-core hooligans are involved in firms, types of gangs of attached to a particular team. “Taking someone’s end”; i.e. invading the stand where the supporters of the other team are standing, gives a hooligan firm (group of team supporters) great standing among their peers. In the 1960s and 1970s, groups of young men from the local council estates (similar to urban housing for the poor in the U.S.) and suburbs staked out the terraces at their local clubs. Clashes between gang members of different council estates were common. Groups of hooligans unite to protect the pride of the city against “away” fans. Today, with better economic conditions, the remaining hooligan firms may desire to bring the game back to its working class roots, now that its commercial value has launched it into the realm of TV and celebrity players (Frosdick and Newton 2006).
In some instances, when football clubs from the northern part of England visit southern clubs, two clubs’ firms will band together to repel the firm of the northern club. When southern clubs visit northern clubs, southern clubs complain that different bands of supporters will band together in so called “inter-end alliances”. In international matches, firms from both the north and the south will band together to protect the reputation of England. One of the greater dangers for the police is when one group of supporters is leaving a ground and another group of supporters (most likely the supporters of the home team that day) want to cause mayhem. Problems can occur because there is no segregation outside the ground. Oftentimes these mass fights start by a “run” of two hundred or so people rushing to attack another group of supporters in the local area. But so-called ‘hard core’ hooligans know how to evade police detection.
The fans of specific teams are particularly noted for their hooliganism. Liverpool supporters often seem to be at the forefront of any trouble. Chelsea Football Club was also notorious, through its hooligan firm entitled Chelsea Headhunter:
They set a new standard for their naughtiness during a 1963 match against a club from the industrial north called Burnley. A few hundred Burnley fans sat in the North Stand of Stamford Bridge, opposite the Shed. Alan [leader of Chelsea Headhunter] and his friends fumed over this presence of so many outsiders. They decided that they would pay a surprise visit to the North Stand and teach Burnley a lesson about the etiquette of visiting Chelsea. Because Alan wasn’t even sixteen — and many of his mates were even younger- their attack was easily repelled by a bunch of thirty-year-old men, whose jobs in Mechanic shops and factory floors had bequeathed them imposing biceps. ‘It was a right kicking”, Alan recalled to me many years later. Within minutes after he launched the attack, Alan was sent tumbling down several flights of terraces. The young men needed many pints of lager to make the pain go away. But even the alcohol couldn’t erase the humiliation. From that evening in the pub, Alan and his mates began planning a visit to Burnley the next season. Stealth tactics would guide them. They would melt into the Burnley crowd, and only then mount their attack. It worked masterfully. Nobody can be sure how many men of Burnley were sent to the hospital that day. But enough fell that the newspapers took notice. The English press wrote about a menace it called football hooliganism (Foer 2004: 92).
It became very popular for ex-hooligans to write about the trouble they got up to on a Saturday afternoon:
The violence…we’ve all got it in us. It just needs a cause. It needs an acceptable way of coming out. And it doesn’t matter what it is. But something. It’s almost an excuse. But it’s got to come out. Everyone’s got it in them (Alan Garrison, quoted by Buford 1990: 116).
It is the still the case that most hooligans are teenagers or young men in their early 20s (Pearson 2007). Young people are drawn to hooliganism because of the rush it gives that they would not find during their daily workweek:
Hooliganism is the original dangerous sport, and the buzz you get from it never diminishes because you never know what is going to happen next (Dougie Brimson, quoted by Poulton 2008: 3).
But are hooligans “hotheads who had not learned the ethics of sportsmanship in both life and sports” (King 1997), or is hooliganism over-reported and sensationalized in the English press? The tabloids in England have been accused of stoking the fires of hooliganism by writing articles in such a way that they grab people’s attention, rather than provide the important facts at hand. Tabloids often claim that more needs to be done to try and curb hooliganism, but some industry insiders maintain that the tabloids have only caused the problems to grow (Pearson 2007), and that hooliganism is exaggerated:
As the new football season arrives we can look forward once more to a regular flow of horror stories — -to the sensational media coverage of allegedly anarchic and senseless events on the soccer terraces. We can also anticipate the diatribes of right-thinking moral entrepreneurs and of magistrates who will go so far as to demote football fans from the human race. ‘Soccer Fans Behaved Like Animals’, we will be informed. Towards the end of the season the absurd rhetoric of outrage and vilification will culminate in ‘Soccer Fans Worse than Animals’, and measures proposed to deal with the problem will move from the extreme to the ridiculous. But what is the problem? To what extent is the image of blood and destruction that has become so firmly embedded in contemporary social attitudes based on fact? (Marsh 1977: 1)
To support his point, Marsh (1977) cites statistics from a study of Oxford United’s ground in the 1974/75 season, now considered to be the time period at the height of hooliganism, indicating that there was only one assault on a policeman or women, only three instances of a offensive weapon used in the stadium, only one breach of peace offense, three criminal damage offenses, and one each of drunk and disorderly/incapable and actual bodily harm. Even a ground like Old Trafford, home of Manchester United, which in the 1970s held about 62,000 people, had few incidences where hooliganism was the main cause of violence. Other studies (Bale 1990) have shown that, in instances where football stadia are located in residential areas, people are more concerned about everyday traffic rather than hooliganism, which would most likely only occur every other Saturday. Residents object more to concerts and other one-time events rather than the football that is ingrained in society.
Efforts to Reduce Violence and Hooliganism
After the Hillsborough disaster, Lord Justice Taylor was commissioned to write a report on the aftermath of the Hillsborough disaster. The Taylor Report laid out clearly what was an offense at a football match, such as racial abuse and/or obscene language and invading the pitch. The Taylor Report also outlined recommendations on how to deal with hooliganism, including changing the physical structure of the grounds, reducing alcohol consumption among fans, raising fans’ awareness about the dangers of racism and violence at and around games, and policy changes related to matches. Each of these will be discussed below.
Changing Physical Structure of Football Grounds
The Taylor Report called for all Premier League grounds to remove all standing terracing and to reduce it substantially in lower-level league stadia. He acknowledged that not all standing room areas were completely unsafe, but he maintained that all-seater grounds are safer and more comfortable. However, one of the problems with building all-seater grounds is that they cost more than building grounds with terraces. Lord Taylor maintained that all-seater grounds would be important for higher division clubs but acknowledged it would be difficult for clubs in the lower divisions to afford all-seater grounds. Lord Taylor admitted that having all seater grounds would also reduce the number of tickets that could be sold, causing fewer supporters to come through the turnstiles.
The report specified limits on the number of people allowed in sections, and how terraces should be monitored. Lord Taylor recommended that, in any sort of closed-in section, there should always be a steward or policeman watching the crowd to make sure that there is no overcrowding. He recommended that a policeman man every gate so that if there was a problem, and supporters needed to be evacuated, they could be evacuated quickly and safely.
The report also specified the type of fencing used to keep supporters off the pitch. Football clubs had differing views on fencing. Some clubs like Arsenal never had fencing erected around the pitch because they trusted their supporters not to invade the pitch. Other clubs, such as Millwall, had imposing structures with spikes that kept the supporters from possibly invading the pitch. While Lord Taylor believed that fencing is important, high-spiked fencing is too imposing and unnecessary for clubs to build. Lord Taylor recommended that any crush barriers there were not up to regulation should be replaced as soon as possible.
The report also addressed the issue of safety corridors. At grounds such as Anfield (Liverpool Football Clubs’s ground) or Goodison Park (Everton’s ground), there were spaces between the terraces and the pitch built to stop supporters from invading the pitch. These were constructed right in front of a terrace so that a would-be pitch invader would have to scale a short fence then climb advertising boards just to get to the pitch. Lord Taylor felt that, at high-profile matches, these corridors were not sufficient, and he recommended that the police be stationed in these corridors to stop fans invading the field.
Reducing Fans’ Alcohol Consumption
The Taylor report led to many actions, some based on the threat of supporters drinking large quantities of alcohol beforehand. Everyone already knew that extreme alcohol consumption before and at matches was a lethal combination. In the 1970s, British Rail stopped running the “football specials”, trains that would be run just for football supporters to get the ground where their team was playing that day. While these specials were very profitable, they could cause problems as often supporters would get drunk while traveling to a match and violent disturbances would break out. Lord Taylor’s report went further, recommending the closing of bars and pubs within the vicinity of the grounds or within the range of one to two miles for certain periods of time before and during the match (although this would do nothing to prevent supporters from getting their alcohol at other venues, such as off licenses and pubs just outside of that range). Lord Taylor also discussed how banning alcohol ahead of high profile matches such as local derbies, particularly in smaller cities, might be effective in deterring hooligan behavior.
Taylor also recommended changing the start times for matches so that happen earlier in the day, leaving less time beforehand to drink. Traditionally, football matches would start at 3 pm or later on Saturdays. While this was convenient for factory workers to get to the match after work, it also allowed for some supporters to embark on long drinking binges before the matches. Taylor believed that an earlier start time would reduce the number of hours before the match that people spend drinking. It is now commonplace to have matches that start at 12:30 pm. Lord Taylor also suggested more matches be played on Sunday, where there would be less business traffic, allowing supporters to get to the ground and allowing the police to organize themselves to stop an outbreak of trouble.
Other Efforts: Raising Ticket Prices, Instituting Membership Systems
Football has historically been an affordable entertainment. However, based on the notion of a relationship between working-class supporters and hooliganism, clubs have experimented with raising ticket prices to encourage more middle- and upper-class fan attendance. For example, Queens Park Rangers (QPR) Football Club, a Premier League team, have raised ticket prices, based on owner Flavio Briatore’s dream of QPR as a boutique club, frustrating many long-time fans. Most of the larger clubs, like Arsenal, Liverpool, and Manchester United, have raised both single match and season ticket prices considerably; for example, the cheapest ticket at Arsenal is now 35 pounds (almost $50, depending on the exchange rate), while a season ticket is about 1,825 pounds ($2,900). Such a price may be affordable only to a middle- or upper-class citizens, and not to the average factory worker with a family in North London. While raising ticket prices to this level probably does weed out potential hooligans, it also weeds out the working class families who just want to go and watch their football club every other Saturday. The option that remains is to get satellite TV to watch the matches, which is not cheap in itself. Sky TV costs around 40 pounds a month ($65).
Lord Taylor also pondered how to keep known hooligans from entering stadia anywhere in the country. He proposed introducing a nationwide membership system to reduce hooliganism and other crowd disturbances at matches. This is essentially an I.D scheme to stop hooligans. The example of Luton Town Football Club demonstrates how this could work. After a Luton match against Millwall, who have a notorious hooligan following that came with the intent on doing damage in and around the ground, Luton’s club officials came up with a scheme whereby only home supporters would be able to go the matches. Applicants for this scheme had to live within twenty-five miles of the town. They could bring up to three guests to the ground. This ticketing system was computerized so that a person’s membership card could be swiped at the first turnstile. At the second turnstile, the card-carrying member would have to actually pay for the ticket. If anyone was found guilty of hooligan behavior, they would have their membership revoked. If a “banned” card was used to try to get in to the stadium, a red light would appear in the computerized system and the ticketing staff would notify the ground stewards.
However, at first the scheme was not successful. For example, it was discovered that the first set of equipment installed could be easily circumvented by a smart hooligan or other troublemaker. Clubs would have to make sure that these cards could not be forged. Legitimate supporters also had to wait for their cards to be processed. Eventually, however, Luton got better equipment, the system began to work, and Luton reported a decline in hooliganism. The main reason was that, with no “away” team supporters, there was no urge for the supporters to attack another group of supporters. The amount of arrests declined, as local hooligans also did not want their identities revealed to the police and club authorities. However while a scheme like this worked in Luton, Lord Taylor believed it would not be as successful in larger cities like London and Manchester, where there are more clubs and supporters and a greater chance of hooliganism.
Taylor also suggested guidelines about clubs’ responsibilities for the protection of the supporters in the ground. Clubs and police forces were to write a letter of intent about how they would function to keep the supporters safe during a match. All clubs had to allow Closed Circuit Television (CCTV) to monitor the supporters in the ground and to make sure that any potential crushes of supporters could be stopped. Finally, the ticketing system should be computerized so that club stewards and local authorities could easily track an offender down after the match if they were identified on TV as causing trouble in the stands.
Policy Changes to End Unsavory Behavior
One of the main policies enacted to reduce hooliganism is called “The Football Offenses Act” of 1989. It defines football offense; for example, it is an offense to throw any foreign object onto the field of play or to enter the pitch at any time. It is also an offense to use any racially charged language in a football ground.
Punishments for football offenses are also included in this act. This act states that banning orders should be more strictly enforced than before. The Football Offences Act suggested that any hooligan offenders be banned for up to five years. If an alleged hooligan was found guilty, they could be subjected to a multi-year ban from attending matches not just at their home club but, if the crime were serious enough, from any football ground within England or Scotland. A spectator may also receive a banning order for all English grounds even if they committed an offense outside of the United Kingdom. Only the police and judges are allowed to issue banning orders. Obviously, in cases of violent hooliganism, hooligans would also be subject to jail or prison time. This act also states that all hooligans must surrender their passport, as well as being subjected to strict bail conditions. The passports, in particular, are important to trying to stop hooligans from traveling to other countries and creating problems there.
Awareness Raising in Football
In addition to these specific actions, the English Football Association has been trying to raise public awareness about being a good football supporter. The strongest example of this is the effort to increase awareness about the problem of racism in football and to stop this societal issue in England. One such initiative is called the “Football Taskforce”, set up by the Labour party in 1997. The Football Taskforce was a committee that included major players from the Premier League and the Football League as well as the Professional Football Association and different fan organizations. The Task Force produced a document called Eliminating Racism in Football, which Bradbury and Williams (2006) argue helped stimulate the Football Association to initiate anti-racism campaigns. The Report raised multiple questions, including: Why are there very few players of Asian descent playing in the English professional leagues? Why are there so few people of Asian or African descent serving as referees in the professional game? And, perhaps most importantly, why is there no representation from people of Asia and Africa on the FA board? The Report recommended that the Football Association (FA) allow referees to show a red card to (expel from the game) any player who is alleged to use racist abuse. This report also recommends that racist abuse should be a distinct offense, and that at lower levels local football associations should make racism a severe punishment. The report includes a recommendation for locals football associations to sign an “anti-racism charter”. Finally, it recommends that clubs should promote recruitment for more coaches of African and Asian descent.
The Task Force had its critics, however. For one, there was only one person on the board of African descent, referee Uriah Renne. Second, the task force was poorly organized. Supporters’ reactions was not all positive, with many football supporters accusing the taskforce of letting politics obscure the main goal, which was to stop racism in football. Bradbury and Williams (2006) claim that members of the football community believed it was a missed chance to solve a large problem in football.
Public awareness campaigns have also targeted alcoholism, based on the fear that a culture of drinking among football supporters will influence the next generation of football supporters to follow the same path. Beer or whiskey sponsors are now not allowed on children’s football kit (clothing) in the United Kingdom. The goal is to reduce the promotion of alcohol to under 18s who would most likely be the most susceptible to seeing beer sponsorship. This extends now to players’ uniforms as well. Scotland was the first country to institute such a ban on alcohol kit sponsorships. The rule on banning alcohol sponsorship on football shirts in Scotland started in 2008.; the “Old Firm” in Scotland banned Carling from being on the front of Celtic and Rangers’ uniforms. Authorities in Scotland hope that this will possibly stop excess drinking among young supporters. In England, Everton Football Club was the first club to ban beer sponsorship on their kit, a move publicly announced by the club’s Chief Executive, Keith Wyness: “As a Premier League Football club we are all too aware of our social responsibility, especially towards our younger supporters, and we are only too pleased to adopt this policy for the new season.” (Footballshirtculture.com)
Summary
This review produces a picture of English football fans as passionate about their game, sometimes too passionate. Their passion has, historically, been imbued with their feelings about ethnicity, religion, politics, immigration, and class. The result, at times, is football hooliganism and violence, which then becomes a vehicle for societal issues to cause physical and structural damage. While efforts have been made to reduce hooliganism and violence associated with football, such incidents still occur. In the next section, I attempt to gather the perceptions of fans and club representations about their knowledge of such efforts and their opinions about the effectiveness of initiatives such as reducing alcoholism, removing terraces, and better policing at football grounds.
Chapter Three: Methods and Data
Football has been imbued with core and personal issues beyond just love of the game. People see their teams as representing something about themselves: their race, class, politics, and religion. As a result, the sport has been plagued by violence and poor behavior as people enact their feelings about these issues through their spectatorship. Stakeholders want football to be less violent, politically/racially/religiously charged. So clubs, leagues, government, athletes and supporter associations have taken action to reduce alcohol abuse, violence, racism, political and religious divisiveness demonstrated by the more rabid or “passionate” fans. These actions have included changing the structure of the grounds, launching public relation campaigns, setting legal and policy changes, and establishing new safety procedures that include TV cameras on the grounds and banning of alcohol at certain times.
The question is: how are football stakeholders — fans/supporters and club officials — reacting to these changes? Is there widespread acceptance and support, or are there barriers to making these changes work to reduce alcohol abuse, racism, and hooligan violence in football?
Research Design
Research Question
What are the perceptions of English football supporters (fans), club representatives, and others involved with the sport about the changing nature of football?
Research Methods
I used two main information-gathering methods for this thesis. First, I conducted a review of historical documents (books, articles, video, and artifacts) that describe the history of hooliganism associated with football in England, including efforts to change the culture of fan behavior and attitudes. Second, I conducted face-to-face interviews with four representatives from four different football clubs in England: two public relations officers at Fulham Football Club and Wycombe Football Club; and two safety officers at Burton-upon-Trent Football Club and Scunthorpe Football Club. I also conducted interviews with 10 football fans, several at each of these clubs plus several at Dagenham and Redbridge Football Club. The interview protocols for both club representatives and fans focused on their perceptions of changes in the levels of violence and hooliganism over the years and whether/to what extent changes in policy, the structure of the grounds or safety precautions may have influenced those changes. The interview protocols themselves are included in the Appendix.
I decided to use interviewing and qualitative analysis as my primary methodology since the focus of the study is the perceptions of football stakeholders (club representatives and fans), and people’s opinions are much richer when done via interview than via paper-and-pencil questionnaire. In addition, I was able to personally visit each of the grounds to see (and sometimes attend a game) from the terraces or seats of the stadium. This first-hand experience of being at the grounds gave me a basis for understanding fans’ comments about the nature of terraces vs. seats or about their stories of previous incidents of hooliganism and violence within these stadia. (Please see Appendices for the full interview protocols.)
Sampling
The researcher conducted all interviews were conducted face-to-face during the time period between March 15 and March 25, 2012 in England. Two different sampling methods were used to obtain interviews with club representatives vs. fans. To identify club representatives, I began in December 2011 to identify a geographical area of several hours drive outside of London. This was done because of limited time and money for conducting the research. In 10 days, I knew I could only visit so many sites. Within that circumference, I then identified a range of football clubs according to several criteria: (1) their level in the Football Association (e.g, some Premier League clubs, some second tier clubs and some third tier clubs), (2) their stadium construction (some with standing terraces, some whose standing terraces had been changed to seated areas), and (3) the history of violence and hooliganism amongst the clubs (from clubs with very little history of violence to clubs well known for violence and hooliganism).
Using this first list of potential clubs, I then searched each club website for the name of any type of public relations, safety official or outreach representatives. I sent an initial e-mail to these individuals, explaining the focus and purpose of my research and asking for an appointment to do an interview with someone from the club during the last two weeks of March. Where no PR official was listed on the website, I sent my e-mail query to the club’s general contact e-mail address. For those clubs who responded immediately indicating willingness to speak with me, I began an regular e-mail correspondence aimed at setting up a specific date and time for coming to visit the club. For those clubs responded with an immediate “no”, I wrote a thank you e-mail and crossed them off the list. For those clubs who did not respond immediately, I waited three weeks and then sent a follow-up e-mail. I continued in this fashion until, by the second week of March, I had established appointments with four different club representatives. These four clubs included one Premier League club (Fulham Football Club), 2 third tier clubs (Scunthrope United Football Club,Wycombe Wanderers Football Club), and one fourth tier clubs (Burton Albion Football Club). I reviewed the informed consent form with each club representative before the interview, and tape recorded each interview. I also took notes after each interview once back at the hotel.
I used convenience sampling to identify fans to interview. I visited five different clubs, and some of these visits were on days that the club had a game. Whenever possible, I attended the game and sought interviewees from people in the crowd. When attending the game was not possible, I visited the neighborhood outside the ground up to 1 ½ hours before the game and asked people if they would care to be interviewed before the game started. I also stayed around the neighborhood after the game was over, again asking for potential interviewees. For each person who agreed (and some did not), I reviewed the informed consent, made sure they understood their right to withdraw or not participate, had them sign the form, and gave them a copy of the form to keep. I tape recorded each interview and made notes afterwards once back at the hotel.
Data Analysis
I listened to each interview multiple times and transcribed significant parts of each interview. Then, I drafted a short profile of each interviewee, whether club representative or fan. I then looked across those profiles, according to the questions on my interview protocol, for common themes or patterns. After identifying these themes, and identifying relevant quotes that would serve as evidence for interviewees’ perspectives related to that theme, I also returned to the books and articles to triangulate these themes with other historical and academic research.
Limitations
This is a small qualitative study including only 15 interviews from among the millions of football fans in England. I had limited time and resources in England to collect data, so the scope of research is confined to smaller geographic area. The sample of interviewees was self-selected, so the results may be skewed or biased towards fans that are still attending games, and may under represent those who may not attend football games because of the violence. In addition, because of safety reasons, I did not feel that I could attend games where violence and hooliganism is still known to exist; for example, the Millwall-Leeds game, an intense rivalry, was on my list of clubs to visit, and I could possibly have attended one of their games. However, I was repeatedly warned by both football fans I interviewed and by representatives from other clubs NOT to even go to the Millwall stadium area on the day of the game, because there would likely be violence in crowds that I might not be able to avoid. While this was a disappointment, as I would have liked to see, experience and perhaps even interview fans who could be categorized as “fanatical” (although no fans self-identify as hoodlums), I felt that it was more important to heed the locals’ advice and stay safe. Thus, the perspective of fans who may still be involved in hooliganism and violence is not represented (to my knowledge) in this thesis.
Data
I conducted interviews in order to get a sense of what stakeholders associated with football had to say in regards to hooliganism, racism and other important issues in football and English society. In this section, I present brief profiles of the supporters (fans) and club representatives I interviewed in England between March 16–25, 2012. I then present an overview of the data from the key questions across all the interviews. Finally, I summarize the key themes emerging from these interviews related to my research question: What are the perceptions of English football supporters (fans), club representatives, and others involved with the sport about the changing nature of football?
During the ten days I was in England, I was able to talk to four club officials and 10 fans, or 14 people in total, in London, Scunthorpe, Wycombe. All of the club officials were male; three of the 10 fans were female, the rest male. All interviewees were white, and all were either middle-aged or elderly. Unfortunately, I was not able to interview any football athletes. Originally my plan had to go to Millwall, a London club that was notorious for its incidents of hooliganism in 1980s. However, after talking to the safety officers at both Burton and Scunthrope, I decided to change course and go to Dagenham & Redbridge instead. Most interviews lasted about 20 minutes; all interviews were tape recorded.
The key questions around which the interviews centered, along with the data across interviews, is presented below.
How aware are different stakeholders about the actions taken to reduce hooliganism, racism, and violence?
Obviously, club representatives and safety officers are well aware of all the actions they have taken to reduce hooliganism, since it is their job to enforce these actions and policies, which include use of cameras, removing terraces, reducing sales of alcohol, giving out “bans” to keep disruptive fans from coming to the games.
Fans are somewhat aware of the specific actions that the Football Association and clubs have put into place:
Separated fans, obviously. Move to a new ground and it’s better organized. They bus fans in: the fans can’t get near each other. If they tried, they couldn’t.
Male football fan, Swansea
I used to go and watch West Brom regular, and when the Taylor report come in, which made some of these recommendations about the stadiums, they changed their standing, that’s when I really started coming to Burton to enjoy standing much more.
-Male football fan, Burton
The Scottish Football Association was probably ahead of everyone in getting rid of standing room terracing in the top league and getting rid of alcohol for the grounds.
-Male football fan. Scotland
How supportive or critical are different stakeholders about these actions?
Club reps are obviously well versed in all the actions they themselves do to reduce hooliganism and racism. They are obviously supportive of the efforts, because it is their job to enforce them. However, they also recognize that fewer fans can be accommodated in the seats than can be accommodated in the terraces, and this reduces income for the club:
I can put 2,773 people standing in there, but I can only put 1,700 seated, so I am losing over a thousand people.
— Club representative
Fans’ opinions about the terraces are mixed: while, on the one hand, they agree that for some clubs the terrace-removal has reduced the violence, many fans express their preference for standing on the terraces:
I think it probably did make an effect. You still get a lot of people in the Premiership who stand up. They’ve got their seats but they still stand, they prefer to stand. It’s the English tradition to stand. When you sit down you are more pushed into the background. When you stand up, you feel like you are on top of the game.
-Male football fan, Burton FC
I like standing up for football. I always like standing up. Even though I’m 60-odd years now, I’d rather stand up, given a choice. And if there was an area where you could stand, I would stand.
-Male football fan, Swansea FC
Mind you, you haven’t always got a choice. Some grounds you’ve got to have a seat. If you have a seat, you never know what you’re going to get stuck with. We do like standing; I’d rather stand than sit. Bit of a better atmosphere.
-Male football fan,Burton
Good atmosphere for a start. We meet up with our friends every week, the same group of us, and the same family meets every game. So much so, I bring the tub of s sweets and give them all out to everyone who stands with us.
-Female football fan, Burton
I prefer to stand. Standing is a lot better atmosphere than sitting down. It’s a bit stale sitting up, whereas standing you get all the rapport from the crowd. Apart from it making me legs ache.
Some of these grounds even with seats, the fans don’t sit anyway. They’re the hard core.
–Male football fan, Burton FC
These quotes illustrate how standing is more traditional in English football; standing supporters feel more passionate and part of the game than supporters who sit (see photo). Thus, lower-level clubs that haven’t experienced as much hooliganism will keep their terraces whenever possible. This shows that changing from terracing to seats (“sitting room only”) is not an action that clubs would take lightly, since fans prefer to stand. Therefore, removing terraces must prove itself to be instrumental in reducing hooliganism or else clubs, at the urging of fans, might want to return to standing room if possible.
What effect do different stakeholders feel these actions have had on reducing hooliganism in and around football stadiums?
Hooliganism and violence, fighting between teams on the grounds, has lessened considerably since the height of hooliganism in the 80s and 90s. Of the fifteen people that I interviewed, every one stated that hooliganism has decreased at many clubs. A Swansea city supporter I interviewed stated that in the 1980s Swansea city had a problem with hooliganism; however, with better policing the situation has gotten much better:
It’s (getting rid of the terraces) definitely reduced hooliganism, absolutely for sure…Well, I think it’s (hooliganism) is largely demolished from the game, isn’t it? I mean, it’s very, very rare. And if it is, it’s well away from the ground.
-Male football fan, Swansea
A group of Burton Albion supporters stated that hooliganism had been an issue but has been greatly reduced, now happening only in certain or “odd” circumstances:
We’ve experienced it but mainly from the away supporters, to be honest. You’re going to get the odd one that’s drunk and such, but it is the away supporters that are bad.
–Male football fan, Burton FC
But there’s an odd club where we go sometimes, they bring firecrackers with them and they don’t think of the person lower down and they throw it, and the sparks have known to catch me before.
-Female football fan, Burton FC
A Scottish couple stated that hooliganism in Scotland had been an issue; however, it had gotten better over the years:
I think it is controlled a lot outside of the games with the police.
-Female football fan,Scotland
Most trouble is now away from the ground, there is very little danger in actually visiting a ground now. The fighting itself… I think during the 70s there was fighting particularly bad with Celtic and Rangers, but there was fighting in all stadiums but it was smaller groups and it was away from the ground. It was through the 80s where they started the casual movement and getting gangs who got to know each other who ran about together who actually trained for fighting together and that was more of a dangerous situation. But even then that tended to be away from the games, very little happened at the games, you would see them coming because they never worn colours, nothing much exactly happened at the games
-Male Football fan Scotland.
Club representatives all agree that the hooliganism and violence is much reduced:
While I’ve been here — touch wood — not much trouble.
— Club representative
In general it has changed from the 80s and 90s. It was so much more open then. It still happens but like with Leeds and Millwall and clubs like that with the history. You will have the odd fight, the odd incident, but it is very rare but not inside the ground. It normally happens away from the ground…It has definitely changed. People come and they do not want to be thrown out of the ground.
- Club representative
It’s decreased over the years. In the 1970s, we had a really big problem, inside and outside the ground… As I say you do not get it much anymore. It’s been clamped down by more stewards, police , media. You do not get it very much at football at all…It makes my job much easier
- Club representative
My perception is that we have come a long way from some of the scenes you would have seen at the ground in the 70s and 80s.
- Club representative
The majority of interviewees stated that while there were some incidents of racism, in particular, it was not as rampant as the national press might have one believe. Isolated incidents still do occur, but are dealt with quickly by the safety officers and stewards in the grounds:
We used to have a lot of racist shouts, few years back, at the old ground, across the road there. I don’t think we get a lot now though.
-Male football fan, Burton
We’ve rarely seen any problems in racism on any level.
-Club Representative
Thus, overall, stakeholders do believe that England (and Scotland) has come a long from the dark days of the 70s and 80s. With more police and stewards stationed around the grounds than before, and a change from terraces to seating at some grounds, people agree that, although there are still incidents that occur, it is much less than before, and these incidents now occur primarily outside the grounds of the football stadium.
Reasons for Continued Hooliganism
When fighting still happens now, fans and club representatives feel it is influenced by:
· particular clubs;
· particular types of fans (drunk fans, younger fans, fans from the traveling — “away” — team); or
· particular match-ups between teams with long-standing rivalries.
Particular clubs: Particular teams, regardless of league, seem to be more prone to hooliganism; for example, Millwall or Grimsby. As one fan states:
Probably it (hooliganism) has crept back in again in the last few years, but it’s not every club, only certain clubs, I think. I think overall it’s a lot better than it was, say, 20–30 years ago. That’s what I’m saying….it’s the odd club.
— Male football fan
The Burton club rep reported one incident a couple of years ago against Grimsby Town. It was at the end of the season, and Grimsby Town had been relegated, frustrating their fans. The upshot was that many of the traveling Grimsby supporters were arrested and eventually given banning orders for about three years.
Other teams, regardless of league level, are not prone to violent incidents, although there may be bias in the opinions of club representatives trying to protect the image of their club as peaceful. Fulham Football Club representatives stated that Fulham had not had a history of hooliganism. In fact, the club had won the Premier League fair play award for supporters on multiple occasions. Wycombe FC had very few incidents of hooliganism or fighting.
Particular types of fans: When it happens now, it tends to involve either individuals (racist incidents, drunken incidents). For example, The Scunthorpe rep reported an incident where a supporter who had too much to drink tried to jump off the entry/exit ramp in the stadium and seriously hurt himself but no one else.
Both fans and clubs representatives report that it is largely away supporters (traveling to another ground to watch their team play the home team) tend to be more apt to instigate fighting. Wycombe club rep reported one case of an away supporter who was trying cause trouble inside the ground. The club had discovered he was someone who was trying to cause trouble at other grounds across the country, as an “away” supporter. Eventually the supporter was banned from all football grounds in the country. The Scunthorpe club rep reported an incident of group fighting that took place in the Scunthorpe town center, instigated by away fans intent upon avenging their rivalry, where 40-plus people were eventually arrested after throwing bricks, fighting with pool cues, breaking the windows in the pub where Scunthorpe home fans were drinking after the game.
This tendency for “away” fans to be more volatile than home fans is interestingly depicted in the terrace/seating arrangements at the Scunthorpe club, where home fans are allowed to stand in terraces at their “end”, while away fans are required to sit in seats in their end, thereby reducing the potential for standing away fans to get agitated and start trouble in the terraces.
Another reason for continuing hooliganism is that the reach of clubs’ policing can only go so far, and fans have gotten creative in setting up premeditated incidents of violence away from the stadium. For example, one fan reports how hooligans “firms” now use technology (mobile phones, Facebook) to try to set up fights beforehand.
You do get gangs meeting but you can’t do much about that if they are meeting 2 miles away. And they’re doing that by their mobiles, phoning each other up and arranging a fight. That happens. But you don’t get it around the grounds. And what more could you do? I don’t think you could do more, can you? I go to a lot of football, and I haven’t seen any incidents in grounds for years. Not in grounds.
-Male Swansea supporter
We’ve only had one example of crowd violence. That was against Grimsby Town two years ago. It was the last match of the season. Grimsby town going out of the Football league into the Football conference. They were just hell bent on coming to cause as much hassle as they could on the day.
- Club representative
Individual acts of hooliganism or violence may be more based on age: youth are more into it, and older people feel they are too old for it, especially if they have been “banned” from coming to games for awhile:
So one’s (one hooligan) got a life ban. It’s elder ones coming to me because they all come and speak to me when they return and they said to me, “I’m getting too old for this. Why am I am doing it?” Because you have a drink and you do not think and go out for the craic with everyone else, and you forget what you are doing. Whereas you’ve got somebody who was the organizer and he ended up getting arrested and got a ban and then came back got arrested and got the second ban and then come back and got third ban….They do not want to be thrown out of the ground. But with our youth… We’ve got one youth we’ve got at the moment — it was not anywhere near the ground, it was down the road and near the council estate over there and he was get his group together
- Club representative
Perhaps youth feel that getting banned for a temporary period of time does not matter as much since (a) they will have time to come to the games later, and (b) if they like the hooliganism more than the games, they can still do that away from the grounds. However, older people may feel more sharply the loss of not being able to attend the games.
Particular matchups: Interviewees felt that hooliganism was still more likely when two teams (e.g., Millwall and Leeds) had historical rivalries. For example, Scunthrope and Grimsby is an example of a rivalry that is passionate and strong but not as strong as Leeds-Millwall or Celtic-Rangers. In these cases, safety officers at both clubs try to keep each other informed about potential trouble brewing so that they can take action to reduce it, but this is not always possible if the violence is organized away from the grounds, where safety officers have less authority:
After the game I got intelligence from the Grimsby intelligence officer to say that Grimsby were coming back from their game and were going to have a fight with ours.
- Club representative
These longstanding, historical and deep-seated conflicts between people are hard to squash. For example, religious conflict may be more prevalent in certain areas than in others. Fans from Scotland stated that it was a big issue in Glasgow where both Celtic and Rangers football clubs are based but not as much in other areas.
Reasons for Reduction of Hooliganism
In addition to the changing of terraces to seating, supporters and club representatives mentioned the following reasons for the reduction of hooliganism in football:
· Public awareness campaigns
· Better security and policing at grounds, including cameras, texting to stewards
· Reduced access to alcohol
· Punishment (banning) for those who cause violence
· Separating home and away supporters before, during and after the game
Public awareness campaigns: One of the factors influencing the reduction of hooliganism and violence, at least in the eyes of the club representatives, are the public awareness efforts made to send the message to fans that football should not be associated with violence. For example, the Football Association started a national campaign at all levels called “One Community, One Game”, as described by one of the club representatives:
We closely support the annual campaign, which is called “One Community, One Game”. That is supported by other PL clubs, not just Fulham FC, and what you’ll find is that every year, normally every October, there’s a designated fortnight when one of our games will be nominated for our One Community, One Game program. And it’s always good to highlight the positive work. There are various things that can happen (during this one game). What you tend to find is that from our Fulham FC foundation, we will go out in our outreach program and we would try to engage and promote social inclusion. So engage with young people social harmony as well. so it doesn’t necessarily mean that we discount the tickets, but there’ll be a concerted effort to run a series of activities in line with these programs. And it’s supported by our governing body, the Football Association, and the Premier League as well.
-Club representative
Better security and policing: Another factor frequently mentioned are improved safety measures and policing in and around the football grounds. This starts with better training for stewards.
That’s my aim: to keep everybody safe but also that people have this atmosphere of coming without too much abuse.
- Club representative
Stewarding has gotten a lot better now. Stewards are now trained up to NVQ level 2
- Club representative
Another policing measure that clubs use routinely these days are cameras in all grounds. These cameras give public safety officers and club stewards the ability to catch potential troublemakers before, during or after the violence breaks out. This gives police, safety officers and stewards a better ability to penalize those who participate in hooliganism, since the cameras effectively extend the “eyes and ears” of the security staff:
We ended up arresting 24 people, all off of video. We viewed the video. We had arrested some at the time and we dealt with those by arrest. In the (next) morning getting them all in, and people were dealt with and received bans.
- Club representative
At least some clubs are now using mobile electronic devices to enlist the fans’ help in identifying violent incidents, racist language, or potential troublemakers. The clubs paste posters around the grounds (even in the toilets), providing a text number that fans can use to text the stewards if an incident of violence, racism, etc. is happening at the game:
There is a kind of text number. Fans can text to the stewards so they know what kind of foul language or any kind of racist language or any kind of homopohobic language or anything. So then they are able to remove people from the stadium.
- Club representative
Reducing access to alcohol: New policies for reducing alcoholism have also made a difference, in the opinion of many safety officers. For example, clubs now have the ability to ban alcohol consumption in view of the pitch sold for football (although rugby and cricket fans, watching games in the same grounds, can still drink in view of the pitch, a sign of the different history of violence and hooliganism associated with football in particular).
If fans arrive and they are drunk — they had too much to drink — then our safety manager, he will or his team of stewards will turn fans away if they are drunk be cause they cannot be in the stadium if they are too drunk because problems can happen.
- Club representative
We provide drinks within our stadium but not in view of the pitch.
- Club representative
Punishment for those who cause violence: It appears that there is much less tolerance for acts of hooliganism. Clubs now have the ability to ban individuals from coming to football games, for years or for life, not only at their home club but, in serious cases, at every football stadium throughout the country. This could serve as a powerful deterrence for true football fans. Even when the ban is lifted, the safety officers and stewards watch those fans carefully for the slightest infraction:
What happens when someone comes back off a three-year ban is myself and the police intelligence officer… we know when people are coming off the ban, and as a club we will send a letter to that person saying, “if you wish to come back, we want you to sign an acceptable behavioral order, which is a club one.
- Club representative
Separating home and away supporters: Clubs have organized elaborate mechanism to keep away supporters and home supporters strictly separated…on the way to the grounds, and at the grounds. At certain stadia, fans are separate even as they walk from the subway station all the way to the grounds, so that there is less chance of them “mingling” and starting trouble. Once in the grounds, almost all stadia are organized with specific sections designated for home fans and other sections designated for away fans. The prevalence of this separation is so entrenched that one team — Fulham — is unique for having a section of seating where any fan can sit:
At Fulham we have that neutral zone. There’s a lot of work that goes into the club’s safety and stewarding department security, as well as working with the local authorities and the police as well. So all of these partners get together to set up the neutral zone, which has been going for I think about six or seven years. It gives the club the flexibility to be able to sell tickets to tourists, for example, who may happen to be in London and want to catch a Premier League game, so this has helped the club try and gain new support as well, and a lot of that is testament to how the club wants to be perceived as a Football club.
- Club representative
At every other club in the Football league, there is segregation among supporters, signaling a major effort to reduce hooliganism by simply keeping rival team fans physically away from each other. This quote shows the seriousness with which some clubs can take their mandate to making attending the game a safe activity; they want people not to feel threatened by going to a match.
Summary of Data
Hooliganism and violence, fighting between teams on the grounds, has lessened considerably over the past 20 years, according to fans and club representatives I interviewed, and most feel that it is due to the efforts of the clubs and league to crack down on it through policing, public awareness, and changing the policies in the stadium, including removing terraces, not selling alcohol, and using video cameras and text numbers to record disruptive acts. Football leagues and clubs have put in more safety measures, such as public awareness days (“one game, one community”, Kick it out). There is now much less tolerance for acts of hooliganism, and individuals can be banned for years or for life from attending any live game in the country, if necessary. Individual acts may be more based on age: youth are more into it, older people feel they are too old for it. At some clubs with a serious history of violence, away supporters and home supporters are strictly separated on the way to the grounds and at the grounds, in an attempt to reduce proximity that leads to friction that leads to violence. This is very different from U.S. professional sports where, by and large, fans buy tickets anywhere in the stadium, regardless of who they support. However, there is at least once club — Fulham Football Club — that has been so successful at reducing hooliganism that they have even established a neutral seating zone for fans from any club.
When it still happens now, it happens now, it appears to be either caused by individuals (racist incidents, drunken incidents) or it happens away from the grounds among fans of teams with historical rivalries, instigated mostly by “away fans”. Particular teams, regardless of league, seem to be more prone to hooliganism; example, Millwall, Grimsby. Particular matchups of two teams (e.g., Millwall and Leeds) seem to be lead to more hooliganism because of longstanding rivalries or because of an intrinsic characteristic shared by fans of one team (Protestant) vs. fans of the other team (Catholic), and these identifications do not pass away slowly. Away supporters are more likely to cause trouble (although this may be a bias on the part of club reps who are defending the reputation of their club or their own fans). Supporters now use technology (mobile phones, Facebook) to try to set up fights beforehand, which makes it hard for the clubs or leagues to police, since it’s not on their grounds.
There is acknowledgment that removing the terraces has had an effect in reducing hooliganism and violence within the grounds at football games, and therefore it seems unlikely that terraces could return, at least at the premier league level where the most serious violence occurred in the past. However, hooliganism has not been reduced by removing the terraces alone; club efforts to use tools such as video and better policing and punishment, and policies such as reducing alcohol sales, have also made a difference, according to those I interviewed. This comes at a cost, though, as most fans would prefer to stand on the terraces to enjoy the games. Thus, while removing the terraces has made attending the games safer, it has also had an effect, fans feel, on their enjoyment of the game.
Chapter Four: Discussion
Both fans and club representatives agree that violence and hooliganism associated with football is less now than in previous decades, at least within and near the stadium. Frosdick and Newton reported three types of hooliganism: crimes against people, crimes against property, and crimes against the state (major riots). Interviewees report the reduction of such crimes. Fans seem to be aware of the efforts to reduce hooliganism, but of course the club representatives are steeped in all of their efforts. All interviewees agree that changing from terraces to “sitting room only”, at least in the Premier League and in clubs with a history of hooliganism, has made a positive difference. Other actions and policies appear to have made a difference: All club reps talked about educational efforts, such as “One Game, One Community”, where there are activities at specific games to remind fans of the importance of anti-racism and social inclusion. In addition, it was previously the case (as reported in my literature review) that fans from opposing teams were not segregated outside of the grounds. However, I discovered that there is strict separation of fans of opposing sides that clubs with high incidence of violence in the club (e.g., Millwall); one club representative described how fans from opposing teams are separated even getting off of the Tube (subway) and are not allowed to mingle even in the walk from the Tube station to the stadium. Teams have raised the price of tickets to exclude fans from the lower classes who, they believe, have historically instigated violent behavior. I observed that tickets to even lower league games were almost as expensive as tickets to Premier League games.
Technology since the turn of the century has also affected the level of violence and hooliganism in the grounds, and this came out strongly from the interviews. One, CCTV allows club safety officers to keep an eye on the crowds at all times, before durin and after the games, and to identify on sight those individuals who cause trouble. This technology gives them the ability to remove troublemakers during the match, thereby reducing the possibility of full-blown hooliganism during the games. Two, some clubs — such as Wycombe — have instituted and advertised phone numbers to which fans can text messages about real-time incidents of racist language, fighting, belligerence, other fans who are exceedingly drunk, etc.
However, interviewees also agree that football does incite passion and excitement, which can lead to conflict and disruption, especially outside of the grounds where the football club has fewer tools (cameras, texting from fans, etc.) to control outbreaks of violence. Hooligan gangs — “firms” — have not disappeared. Such firms exist even in support of very lower division teams, such as Grimsby, and these firms, according to interviewees, now use cell phones and text messaging and social media to arrange fights with other firms far outside the grounds. Also, the longstanding social issues that accompany hooliganism, such as religious and ethnic tensions, and alcoholism, still exist and can play a role in inciting hooligan behavior.
Religion
Foer (2004) indicates that this is more strongly associated with football in Ireland and Scotland than in England. For example, in Scotland, the “Old Firm” includes Celtic fans, who are traditionally Catholic, and Rangers fans, who are traditionally Protestant. There has been a long history of rivalry, sometimes associated with violence and conflict; Foer, in his 2004 book, called it “an unfinished fight over the protestant reformation”. However, the Scottish couple I interviewed confirmed that there’s still tension but that, from their perspective, more has been made in the media of it than really exists at the local level. For example, they reported that there is some cross-over: some Protestants are Celtic fans, and some Catholics are Rangers fans. Although it is possible that there is some inclination from the interviewees I talked with to make the problem less serious to protect their local reputation, Foer does report that both teams, as of his 2004 book, want to be seen as entertainment conglomerates and not only as adversaries, so they initiated education programs. Perhaps these are having an effect, at least according to the Scottish interviewees.
Racism
Racist incidents between players and between fans and players still occur, as evidenced by the recent Suarez/Evra and Terry/Ferdinand incidents, both of which have been documented in the press in the past year. Interviewees in this study report that, similar to the reports of religiously based tensions, racism is not as prevalent as it seems to be painted in the media, although several interviewees mentioned recent incidents of racism that their clubs dealt with immediately. Still, the fact that interviewees can cite incidents in their memory of racist language indicates that, at least from the small sample of people with whom I talked, racism has not yet disappeared from football.
Alcoholism
Club representatives feel that banning alcohol consumption in the stadium in view of the pitch during football matches has been important. However, there is still the possibility that alcohol consumption will just transfer to the outside of the grounds, either before or after the game. Incidents in local pubs can still happen, as confirmed by the Scunthorpe club rep, who talked about a rival club entering the town center to attack Scunthorpe fans in the town center and in their local pub. Reducing alcohol on the grounds, according to interviewees, has reduced the incidence of hooliganism in the grounds, but incidents of drunkenness still occur outside of the grounds.
Terraces as a factor in hooliganism
The literature on football violence is plentiful with stories of hooligan activities while standing in the “ends” with their own club supporters. In particular, Frosdick and Newton (2006) reported on these incidents. The Taylor report urged removal of terraces in all first division (Premier) league stadia, where violence and injuries on terraces were more rampant, but lower league stadia were not required to implement this policy. The result, as I witnessed, is a mix of terrace/standing ends and seated ends in different stadia. In some lower-league stadia, such as Burton’s, which has a new stadium, three of the four sections are standing terraces, while the fourth is seated. In other stadia, such as Scunthorpe’s, the home fans can still stand on terraces, but away fans must be seated in their end, an indication that the clubs don’t trust away fans to refrain from violence as much as they do their own home fans. Because of changes to the terraces, I heard of no recent incidents from interviewees of “taking someone’s end” (groups of fans invading the stand where supporters of the other team are standing). It is certainly harder to invade an “end” where people are seated than where they are standing, but other factors, such as improved club security, training of stewards, and use of closed-captioned TV, may also contribute to the reduction of “invasions”.
However, all interviewees feel that, while they miss standing to watch a game, at least at the Premier league level, changing the terraces has been beneficial to reducing hooliganism and violence in the grounds. Together with other policy changes (video cameras, texting reports of disruptions, not selling alcohol, ability to ban perpetrators for lengthy periods of time), club representatives report that violence used to be both inside and outside of the football grounds (stadium) but now the violence, when it happens, is outside of the grounds and sometimes, very far outside of the grounds.
Conclusion
If Frey (1991) is correct that sport offers “highly crystallized forms of social structure not found in other systems or situations” (504), then this study indicates that those structures are not completely impervious to change. Hooliganism, violence, and religious and racial conflict may be weakened through structural (removing standing terraces) or policy changes (not selling alcohol, establishing banning orders).
That said, all fighting may be a difficult aspect of English football to extinguish. Currently, hooliganism and violence does seem, at least in the perception of fans and club representatives with whom I spoke in March 2012, to have abated from its peak in the 70s, 80s and early 90s. People, at least at the lower levels, now report that they go to the games to watch the games, and are much less nervous about being caught up in violence. They know it can still happen, but it doesn’t deter even a woman in a wheelchair from attending every game of her favorite team.
What will the situation be in five years? Football is a mirror of society; people imbue it with their own feelings, reactions, frustrations. The 70s and 80s were a time of austerity in England; high unemployment among the working class, which make up the majority of football fans at that time, probably contributed to a certain proportion of the violence, at least among under- and unemployed males. Now, however, the economic situation has not been as dire, and so perhaps efforts to reduce hooliganism have dovetailed with less “aggravation” amongst fans from their daily life.
Thus, while currently it seems that hooliganism and violence is much more under control than in decades past, the riots last year on England’s streets show that violence could flare up again, at least outside football grounds. However, the changes made by the Football Association and the football clubs — such as restructuring the terraces into seats, using video surveillance, not selling alcohol, fan texting services, separating fans before, during and after the games, and better policing by the stewards — all may continue to work to reduce violence over the long term.
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Appendix A: Informed Consent Form
My name is Peter Crispin, and I am a student at Union College in New York state, U.S.A. I am inviting you to participate in a research study. Involvement in the study is voluntary, so you may choose to participate or not. Here is a description of the study:
I am interested in learning more about efforts that the English Football Association and specific football clubs have made to reduce hooliganism and violence at and around football games in England. You will be asked to answer some questions about your opinion on this topic. This will take approximately 10 minutes. There are no risks to you of participating in this study. If you no longer wish to continue, you have the right to withdraw from the study, without penalty, at any time.
All information will be kept anonymous and confidential, and your responses to the interview questions will only be read by me and the transcriber who works for me. I will not use your real name in my study report, and I will destroy the tape recording of your voice as soon as the interview is transcribed, so no one will be able to identify your voice.
I understand that even though all aspects of the experiment may not be explained to me beforehand (e.g., the entire purpose of the experiment), during the debriefing session I will be given information about the experiment and have the opportunity to ask questions.
All of my questions have been answered and I wish to participate in this research study.
_________________________________________ _________________________
Signature of participant Date
_________________________________________
Print name of participant
_________________________________________ _________________________
Name of investigator Date
Appendix B: Fan Interview Questions
1. What team do you support?
2. How long have you been a fan?
3. On a scale of 1–10, how passionate are you as a fan (10 being “rabid”, “1” being “I follow them sometimes”.
4. Do you think the frequency of hooliganism, violence, racism, or religious conflict connected to this club/team is more, less or the same as 10 years ago? 5 years ago?
5. Do you think the severity of hooligan, violence events…..connected to this club/team is more, less or the same as 10 years ago? 5 years ago?
6. How familiar are you with efforts made by the FA to reduce hooliganism, violence, racism, and religious conflict within football in Britain? (Name some of the changes they’ve made in past 10 years…)
7. How successful do you feel these efforts have been in reducing hooliganism…? Why or why not?
8. Specifically, what do you think of the FA’s requirement that all standing terraces be removed from Premier League grounds in order to reduce violence and injuries result from crowding?
9. How successful do you feel the removal of terraces has been in reducing hooliganism? Why or why not?
10. What other actions, if any, should the FA do to reduce hooliganism…? If so, what?
11. How familiar are you with efforts made by your club to reduce….? (Name some of the changes they’ve made in past 10 years…)
12. How successful do you feel the club’s efforts have been in reducing hooliganism…? Why or why not?
13. What other actions, if any, should the club do to reduce hooliganism…? If so, what?
14. Why do you think football in England has incidents of hooliganism, violence, racism or religious conflict?
15. Overall, how do you feel about hooliganism, violence, racism, or religious conflict in football in England?
Appendix C: Club/Team/Athlete Representative Questions
1. How long have you worked with or for the club?
2. Would you say that the club has had a problem with hooliganism and violence over the course of its history? Why? Any specific examples?
3. Would you say that the club has had a problem with racial, religious or political conflict during its history? Why? Any specific examples?
4. Would you say that the club has had a problem with alcoholism over the course of its history? Why? Any specific examples?
5. Do you think the severity of hooligan, violence events…..connected to this club/team is more, less or the same as 10 years ago? 5 years ago?
6. What are some specific efforts that your club has made to reduce hooliganism, racial/religious/political conflict, violence, and/or alcoholism in or around matches?
Example 1:________________
When did you take this action?
What effect do you think it had immediately? Over the long-term?
Why do you think it had the effect it had (positive or negative)?
What feedback have you gotten from fans about this action or initiative?
Do you have another example (2):____________
When did you take this action?
What effect do you think it had immediately? Over the long-term?
Why do you think it had the effect it had (positive or negative)?
What feedback have you gotten from fans about this action or initiative?
7. How did you publicize these actions or efforts so that fans knew about them?
8. What other efforts, actions or initiatives do you think the club might need to take to reduce hooliganism, etc.?
9. Overall, what are your feelings about the relationship between hooliganism and football in England?
Appendix D: Debriefing Statement
Thank you for agreeing to be interviewed for my study. My major in college is sociology and I am very interested in sports and the role it plays in people’s lives. I have been following English football for years, and I have been interested to watch the changing nature of the sport, particularly following some of the devastating incidents (such as the Hillsborough disaster of 1989 and the recent incident in Egypt where scores of fans were killed) at games.
I have studied the efforts of the Football Association, after the Taylor Report, to reduce religious, racist, and political tensions at games, and to reduce hooliganism and violence, specifically coming from the standing terraces at the ends. Some of these efforts included getting rid of the terraces and putting in seats, reducing alcohol sales, installing closed circuit televisions, starting public awareness campaigns (such as the anti-racial pledges made by teams at the start of games), etc.
As a sociology student, I was interested to know whether these efforts have really changed the game, in the eyes of the fans, the athletes, and the club representatives. So I am over here collecting people’s opinions, through these interviews, to gauge whether people feel that these efforts have made the football spectatorship safer, less religiously/politically/racially tense, and/or more enjoyable for family’s and children to attend.
Your responses in the interview will help me to understand your viewpoint as a current-day fan of football in England. Thank you again.
[1] https://members.weforum.org/pdf/GAC/issue_descriptions/RoleofSportsinSociety.pdf
[2] Just a note: my father and I participated in the Pan Mass Challenge in 2006, riding on a tandem bike together from Needham, Massachusetts to Cape Cod, and we raised almost $8,000 for the Red Sox Jimmy Fund.
[3] I remember walking down a street in San Diego, California, wearing a Red Sox cap, in the summer of 2005, after the Red Sox had won the World Series for the first time in a century in the previous October. Numerous people, some Californian and some not, would call out, “Yea, Sox!” Some were even wearing the jersey of another baseball team, but were expressing their support for the Red Sox team’s accomplishment. Thus, complete strangers find a kinship through the team “kit” they wear.
[4] All photographs by Jon Crispin, 2012, used with permission.
