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I feel the same way. Can anyone remember anyone being killed or even significantly injured from a pitch invasion? If it's an army of Millwall fans tearing up seats at Kenilworth Road and advancing like Oliver's Army on the home fans that's one thing, but a handful of over-exuberant arrivistes spilling onto the grass in a high-octane cup game is obviously something else. Making it a criminal offence is just a barmy case of the law overreaching itself into football and symptomatic of the contemporary loss of all nuance and difference in regard to such things. Football is theatre, and, as it might have been Baudrillard who argued, essentially this kind of thing is its protagonists trying to take a bit of the stage. There should be some checks and controls to preserve a sensible degree of sanity and safety, sure, but these kind of new moralist fans who want to see football pitches as legally patrolled zones of state control don't understand the historical spirit of the game and need to take a chill pill - if not a bottle of them.
Fans on trees, sitting on the roofs of stands, and piling ecstatically onto the field after famous cup victories may not have been ripped from the pages from a health and safety handbook, but are part and parcel of the folklore of the game - before the politicians, courts, stewards and pen-pushers got hold of it and did their best to squeeze the joy out of it where they could. I feel the same way as the stupidity of players getting booked for celebrating with the fans who play their wages. Are the same joyless suspects whining about a bit of harmless high jinks at HQ also going to finger-waggingly deny that, in exactly the opposite direction, Cantona taking a Kung-fu kick or two at that Palace arse wasn't one of the most marvellous spectacles in a football ground?
Here's the glorious day of Hereford's historic cup win over Newcastle to warm anyone who's got a footballing soul, which also kind of puts events at HQ in context:
[Post edited 22 Sep 2021 9:30]
"Making it a criminal offence is just a barmy case of the law overreaching itself into football and symptomatic of the contemporary loss of all nuance and difference in regard to such things."
Didn't a match in France get abandoned after a pitch invasion earlier this season? If you decriminalise it and ignoring all the safety issues and other points people have raised for a second, what's to stop pitch invasions instigated to abandon a game if your team is losing?
P.S Taarabt with the ball at his feet is the most marvelous football spectacle I've ever seen, not Cantona kicking people, if I wanted to see that I'd watch MMA.
And such miscreants can and will be dealt with by the courts, as they would if they did so anywhere else. By your logic, however, none of us would be allowed to buy/use knives because of knife crime, go on dates because of sexual assault, or do anything because of someone. Would you favour retrospective punishment for those Herefordians gloriously invading their own turf? There's a kind of insecure incivility in too much safety. At the very least, it's all about context, as was pointed out recently re a steward's heavy-handed treatment of a kid who came on in a recent game to get Adomah's shirt.
I'd say, if anything, that, in the other direction (i.e players invading the stands), players diving into crowds on pain of coloured cards actually attests to a kind of compensatory movement, whereby their expression of their own need for a greater physical intimacy with fans is manifested. It's a kind of sporting/sociocultural rebalancing protest of sorts, if you will, i.e. saying the law(s) matter less than our letting our humanness run over. (Or, if you like, Cantona's 'excessive' retributive violence on that Palace toe-rag was a form of inverted love, as was Eric Dier's stomping across the stand to confront that fan.) Personally, I love the irrepressible theatre of it. Sadly, we don't even see the odd streaker any more either.
Will I be on the field if we go up this season as I was in 2011? Too bloody right, I will. And, I wager, so will hundreds if not thousands of my fellow Rs. But not you, I guess.
[Post edited 22 Sep 2021 14:14]
Sorry - where have i said any of that? I was just answering your statement of the law over-reaching itself.
As per comments already made, in 2011 you and others ruined one of the best days in our history for thousands of fans. I won't be running onto the pitch because I'm not 12.
Sorry - where have i said any of that? I was just answering your statement of the law over-reaching itself.
As per comments already made, in 2011 you and others ruined one of the best days in our history for thousands of fans. I won't be running onto the pitch because I'm not 12.
I don’t think the people who ran on last night will be watching any more games this season at the Kyan Prince at least.
I'm sure they will, didn't look like any of them were arrested
After a decent result on the pitch last night it’s a shame this was ruined by fans who decided to run onto the pitch to celebrate. We are now processing 13 individuals who will be issued with court dates very soon for the offence of pitch encroachment. #stayoffthepitch#QPR
if Illias Chair has is found guilty then he and QPR must be punished. Our very brave chunky stewards to a terrific job on a minimum wage . If Everton are re-instated and QPR thrown out , then Chairs not just let the club down, worse than that , he has let himself down !
After a decent result on the pitch last night it’s a shame this was ruined by fans who decided to run onto the pitch to celebrate. We are now processing 13 individuals who will be issued with court dates very soon for the offence of pitch encroachment. #stayoffthepitch#QPR
13 individual court cases for what happened last night is a massive waste of police and court time. Taking Kevin Friend away in a set of handcuffs, on the other hand...
On the subject of mass disorder, did anyone else see the furore when someone in the lower Ellerslie prodded the lino with one of those accident-waiting-to-happen flags that seem to be left around for people to use. Obviously well deserved, but the lino did not seem to like it 'up 'im'!
After a decent result on the pitch last night it’s a shame this was ruined by fans who decided to run onto the pitch to celebrate. We are now processing 13 individuals who will be issued with court dates very soon for the offence of pitch encroachment. #stayoffthepitch#QPR
if Illias Chair has is found guilty then he and QPR must be punished. Our very brave chunky stewards to a terrific job on a minimum wage . If Everton are re-instated and QPR thrown out , then Chairs not just let the club down, worse than that , he has let himself down !
Those flags are left by the sides of the pitch at regular intervals for fans or ball boys to wave when the players run out at the start of the game.But I’m surprised they still use them in these covid times.
After a decent result on the pitch last night it’s a shame this was ruined by fans who decided to run onto the pitch to celebrate. We are now processing 13 individuals who will be issued with court dates very soon for the offence of pitch encroachment. #stayoffthepitch#QPR
Stupid thing is, the stewards were shoulder-to-shoulder at the Everton end, but loosely spaced out the other three sides. Better to have have risked the Everton fans running on, then they would have got fined, not us.
I used to love an end-of-season pitch invasion - usually after finishing in midtable, but back then, the away fans were penned-in, and you'd have a load of coppers stood in front of the away end, and there was much less chance of it kicking-off. However, I don't think I've ever seen a pitch invasion involving more than one-or-two people, that hasn't resulted in some divs running towards either opposition fans to give it large, or have a pop at opposition players.
In 2016, Hibs won the Scottish Cup for the first time in 114 years, there was a mass pitch invasion with thousands of Hibbies on the pitch, of which, a few hundred thought the best way to celebrate would be to run up to the Rangers End and give them a load of sh it, which inevitably led to quite a bit of scrapping on the pitch. Hibs then weren't able to walk around the pitch with the cup to celebrate with the fans.
As others have said, the stewards/OB/players, have no way of telling whether the pitch invader is just a daft, giddy t wat, or is going to lump someone. And the more it happens, and the more it's normalised, the more often it will happen, because as you can see nowadays with football fans throwing beer everywhere in concourses up and down the country, there are a lot of sheep at the football.
As someone who grew-up in the era of fences, I'd sooner fans stayed off the pitch. Fences were sh it. I've gone absolutely mental at loads of goals and final whistles over the years, but I've never felt the need to go on the pitch.
"Making it a criminal offence is just a barmy case of the law overreaching itself into football and symptomatic of the contemporary loss of all nuance and difference in regard to such things."
Didn't a match in France get abandoned after a pitch invasion earlier this season? If you decriminalise it and ignoring all the safety issues and other points people have raised for a second, what's to stop pitch invasions instigated to abandon a game if your team is losing?
P.S Taarabt with the ball at his feet is the most marvelous football spectacle I've ever seen, not Cantona kicking people, if I wanted to see that I'd watch MMA.
Crazy scenes in Ligue 1 😱
Dimitri Payet was hit by a missile thrown from the crowd, and when he threw it back it all kicked off...
The match was suspended as chaos descended on the pitch, with the managers even getting involved! pic.twitter.com/Skk7VoLoIa
I used to love an end-of-season pitch invasion - usually after finishing in midtable, but back then, the away fans were penned-in, and you'd have a load of coppers stood in front of the away end, and there was much less chance of it kicking-off. However, I don't think I've ever seen a pitch invasion involving more than one-or-two people, that hasn't resulted in some divs running towards either opposition fans to give it large, or have a pop at opposition players.
In 2016, Hibs won the Scottish Cup for the first time in 114 years, there was a mass pitch invasion with thousands of Hibbies on the pitch, of which, a few hundred thought the best way to celebrate would be to run up to the Rangers End and give them a load of sh it, which inevitably led to quite a bit of scrapping on the pitch. Hibs then weren't able to walk around the pitch with the cup to celebrate with the fans.
As others have said, the stewards/OB/players, have no way of telling whether the pitch invader is just a daft, giddy t wat, or is going to lump someone. And the more it happens, and the more it's normalised, the more often it will happen, because as you can see nowadays with football fans throwing beer everywhere in concourses up and down the country, there are a lot of sheep at the football.
As someone who grew-up in the era of fences, I'd sooner fans stayed off the pitch. Fences were sh it. I've gone absolutely mental at loads of goals and final whistles over the years, but I've never felt the need to go on the pitch.
As someone who grew-up in the era of fences, I'd sooner fans stayed off the pitch. Fences were sh it. I've gone absolutely mental at loads of goals and final whistles over the years, but I've never felt the need to go on the pitch.
Exactly. I hated watching football from behind a fence, and I don't want the game to be forced back to that. The moronic pitch invaders should be forced to watch footage of the bodies laid out at Hillsborough.
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