SOCCER STANDOFF

The seeds of the demise of open terraces and standing fans were sown during regular bouts of crowd hooliganism in the 1960s-1980s. It was not a pretty period, but how it happened, and why, is best left to others to try to explain. All I can say is that I saw hooliganism on numerous occasions, and was inadvertently caught up in it at least three times. And, yes, there was a moment when I did wonder if football itself was doomed. It felt just like a knell.
I first came across it at Millwall when gangs of Den fans inexplicably rained abuse and missiles into the away section. After the game a policeman came to the Press room to show us some of the 'weapons' they had collected including, I recall, pennies with their edges filed to a wicked sharpness. Apparently some of the Millwall fans had found pleasure in skimming these lethal coins into the visiting fans' ranks. Later, a few hundred of them evidently gained additional pleasure from aggressively chasing the Norwich contingent through various Tube stations and trains all the way back to Liverpool Street, where lines of police were waiting.
Aggro, for a time, became a part of the game. At Oxford, the 'soccer special' trains from Norwich were met by police, and we visitors were closely guarded as we processed in a long column from the station to the ground. At Cardiff, such was the venom that supporters' coaches and the Norwich City team bus had to be escorted away from the ground by a cluster of police cars. It was a relief, I remember, to get to the airport; but it was only after our Dakota had landed at Norwich - when we had seen fire engines and rescue vehicles beside the runway - that they told us there had been a 'bomb scare' and there might be a bomb on board.
The worst example by far was the Manchester United fans' riot at Carrow Road. I was a spectator in the City half of the old Barclay End terraces when United fans launched a 'medieval' attack, hurling missiles, smashing the timber partitions at the rear of the stand, and physically breaking down the metal barriers and netting between the two sets of fans. One idiot even got on to the roof and broke through. In the event, the Barclay stand was smashed to pieces, and had it not been for the heroics of ten or a dozen policemen (and one policewoman, I recall), who linked arms to create a thin blue line between the retreating Norwich fans and the aggressive Manchesterites, thus allowing the home fans to escape the onrush, there might easily have been a much more serious outcome.
So, standing areas at football grounds once again? Well, perhaps. It was noticeable earlier this season, at Old Trafford, that many Norwich fans hardly sat down at all. In fact, every time the ball went into the United half the City folk in front of us stood up, anyway, so we saw absolutely nothing. And some of the 'standers' were not seriously interested in the match, either, for they stood with their backs to the pitch watching and gesticulating at other sections of the crowd.
If standing areas are to be allowed once again, then please, let them be small areas, fenced off from everyone else, and please, please, let them be at the back of the grandstands. Then we would all be able to see the match.