Originally Posted by
BLUETIT
We took 27 of our staff and senior stewards to the stadium in an effort to defuse any situations and welcome our supporters with familiar faces. The home club welcomed us, and we were there alongside their stewards in the away end. Within 15 minutes of the opening two smoke bombs had been let off in the upper and lower concourses. Many fans decided to stay outside by the Guinness bar having a drink and a sing song, no problem at all.
The home supervisor assisted me in getting at least a dozen fans in who either had ticket issues (needing reprints) or issues with covid passes, every request I had the Bristol guy helped with.
Once the outside areas became quiet, I went into the away end with a senior member of our staff to use the toilets only to be confronted with a totally wrecked facility, unusable, unsafe, and unacceptable. I had used the same toilet 2 hours earlier when we first arrived and it was heated, clean, well lit, had soap dispensers and hand towels and plenty of urinals and cubicles for that area of the stand, to see it like this was embarrassing to be honest as we had to call the control room to get it closed off and condemned, unsafe to use.
On 18 minutes our fans were great with their applauding the life of poor Bradley Jones, a city fan who sadly lost his life aged 18 last week, it was good of our fans to do that and what we should be all about.
At half time I heard reports that more toilets had now been damaged in different areas of the stand including a ladies toilet block, where the lighting was broken, we were directing some female fans to the disabled toilets, again totally embarrassing to see.
At full time we went to inspect the damage again and it really was worse than you can imagine there were also broken seats on display and one Cardiff fans with the stewards who had been caught on camera breaking the seat, no doubt more will follow, there are state of the art cameras in their control room and others are bound to be identified, as well as the ones that threw objects onto the field.
We had to go to a de brief after the match with the Bristol safety officer, who, in all fairness, was very magnanimous in the way he spoke with us considering the mess our fans had left. For us though, it was embarrassing, and we felt ashamed of some of our so-called supporters.
We had reports of disorder outside the stadium before and after the match, unfortunately this is always likely to happen with local Derbies but in these days of camera technology it is idiotic because there is so much evidence available, whether from the police or fans them selves with their smart phones, this was the case yesterday and more arrests and club bans are bound to follow. This is something we expect to see, we don’t like it but expect some sort of disorder throughout a day like yesterday.
However, smashing up facilities, whose sole purpose is to assist our own fans, is mind blowing really.
The videos show the damage but the one where the people causing it, is the most alarming really, they were not kids, they were revelling in the fact they were destroying the toilets, laughing, and joking, no doubt half hour later busting for a piss with nowhere to go lol. 40 years ago, our fans used to smash up trains and we would be held up for ours after emergency stop cords were pulled, eventually the “specials” were stopped, so its not a new phenomenon but one I had hoped was confined to the history books.
Can we prove it was the guys on the trains that caused the damage, not really, but the ones in the video are apparently not known to our travel club? What we do know is that the disorder outside the stadium and in the city, was not attributed to the 16 coaches, or two minibuses parked over in the industrial estate.
Repercussions could be that next time we play Bristol tougher measures will need to be put in place which will affect all of our fans including the vast majority and it also means we move further away again from removing Swansea restrictions, a step backwards. We will also be put on the radar now for all our away games, which means more stewarding, more police more scrutiny more hassle for our genuine fans.
Implications could be that the fans pay a financial cost by way of increased booking fees to cover damages caused by a minority of idiots, again this will affect the genuine majority.
Alongside the club measures and police procedures We are going to have to self-police and report or try to stop people if possible, doing this vandalism and self-destructive behaviour because it affects us all. We need to get it out that this behaviour is not acceptable and make it clear that club bans and the more severe custodial bans are being issued, we have to make sure the deterrent that the bans are designed for, are known to all our fans especially the younger element and the fact that they are being issued.
