I rarely enjoy West Midlands games - I recall a lovely afternoon pre match at Coventry - fans sitting around chatting UNTIL the West Midlands coppers arrived, dogs barking at peaceful fans and generally needlessly needling the innocent of any wrongdoing footy fans. There again - I'm of an age to remember the West Midlands huge corruption scandals of the 60s and 70s - so probably I am a little biassed. Anyhow - that's my away game travels finito. Yesterday was the final straw.
You've had a rough deal with the cops this season, even Huddersfield have been clear about that. But it is a tough one for the old bill. Herts Police are generally light touch, and this generally works, but have been woefully underprepared for predictably tense situations in the past. The League Cup tie with L*t*n about ten years ago (they can only dream of qualifying nowadays), and the game which sealed QPR's promotion a while back spring to mind. They got slated for not doing enough, but would probably have taken more flak for going the other way. I don't know what happened on the day, so I can't condone or condemn specific actions, but numbers wise you can't blame them. That match could have relegated Barnsley AND promoted Hull. Even if the game had the two best-behaved sets of fans in the division (it might well have?), if that happened people were bound to get carried away, and given that BOTH sets of fans had so much riding on it, the opposite result might well have meant that they needed all those officers and horses.
I Absolutely Loved it in there! Great Atmosphere and the escort was a joke but it was an experience..
Coventry away in cup.police escort for city fans.1st time for me.We were dead ard us 15 year olds.We scored had the **** kicked out of us.Coppers not bothered. Police yesterday -cos of the result was ott.Had we won-? My experience off syp is that they are ****.They seriously beat up a mate of mine when we were 17 on a night out in Sheff top rank.WE had arsed about alot but it did not deserve what they did to him.When we all started to fight back they could not cope and escorted the coach(blues and twos) out of the city.We were 17 and half were females.Mind you one of the girls was nearly 6 foot and they got us back on the coach after she punched one in the face I would say syp epitomise most peoples negative views of police. At Rotherham they beat up a city fan who was evicted for being a complete arse.They then kicked him out without charging him.I wish they had chucked Dolan out with him.
