War Zone

Remember my post about the proposed heavy-handed policing for the forthcoming South Coast Derby?

From http://www.portsmouth.co.uk

Well it gets worse. The Hampshire Constabulary are now planning to deploy 8-foot metal walls to keep rival fans apart. Fans who, remember, are innocent, law-abiding citizens until proven otherwise, who simply want to go and watch a football match.

Not only is this totally inappropriate for the level of risk involved, it will actually increase the likelihood of violence occurring: if you make the place look like a war zone, you're going to generate an antagonistic and confrontational atmosphere and give the hot heads an excuse to kick off.

Still, we probably won't have a club left by then anyway.

Why?

The football world is still coming to terms with the shocking news that Gary Speed has taken his own life at the ridiculously young age of 42. As the tributes pour in (and why do tributes always “pour” in?) the question everyone is asking is “why?” Why did a young man, at the top of his profession, with a wife and two teenaged boys, loved and respected by everyone in the game, decide to end it all so suddenly?

It would be unhelpful and disrespectful to speculate as to the reasons behind Gary Speed’s suicide – nobody truly knows what goes on inside the mind of people with mental health issues, if indeed that was the case. But, to me, the saddest aspect is that, whatever demons had taken over his mind, or whatever problems he had, he felt unable to turn to anyone for help. He was clearly a popular man and had a lot of friends both inside and outside the sport. But the extent to which the world has been utterly stunned by his death shows he was unable to confide in any of these friends.

It’s a sad reflection on our society that the stigma attached to mental health issues is so great that many people see suicide as preferable to admitting that they have an issue. And it’s also a tragedy that people don’t realise help is out there. Family and friends will listen, and they will understand, because they love you come what may. Mental illness is just that – an illness. It’s not your fault, it’s not a weakness, it’s just an illness that can affect anyone. And if you don’t feel you can turn to your loved ones, there are professionals who can help. Despite the government’s best efforts, we still have a wonderful mental health care system in this country and your GP should be your first port of call. But organisations like Mind, SANE and the MHF, and, if you do find yourself seemingly at the point of no return, the Samaritans, are also there to help.

As I mentioned in my last blog post, I’ve managed to get a place in the 2012 London Marathon. I’d already more or less made the decision to run for a charity, but Sunday’s events, and the realisation that, had I not turned to the professionals for help, that could easily have been me one day, have persuaded me that I should run for Mind. I’ll be setting up a fundraising page shortly. Hopefully I can raise some much needed cash and, equally importantly, raise people’s awareness of mental health issues and help break down the stigma surrounding mental illness. Your support will be greatly appreciated.

Gary Speed

8 September 1969 – 27 November 2011

RIP

Law and Disorder

I’ve just read with dismay an article concerning the policing arrangements for a forthcoming football match between local rivals Portsmouth and Southampton. Just read that again. It’s a football match. Nothing more significant than that. Yet you would think the police were planning a peace keeping mission in downtown Tripoli.

Obviously it is a bit more significant than just a football match, especially to the supporters of both teams. Apart from south coast bragging rights being at stake, there is a long and, at times, unsavoury history between followers of the two clubs separated by 20 miles of the M27.

The last time the two teams met in Portsmouth in 2005, there was violent disorder and five, yes FIVE, people were arrested. Five out of 20,210 at the match. That’s 0.02% of the attendance.

This, it seems, is justification for the Hampshire Constabulary to designate December’s encounter a so-called “bubble match”. This means if you are unfortunate enough to follow the red and white striped lot, you will only be able to attend the match if you board a coach at one of three designated stops in the wrong half of Hampshire and travel to Fratton Park in convoy, under police escort, being allowed off the coach only to go straight into the stadium. You will not be at liberty to visit any of the local hostelries or food outlets, or indeed do anything other than watch the match. If you don’t live in Southampton, you’ll still have to go there first to catch the coach. So, for example, if you live east of Portsmouth, you’d have to travel 20 miles past the ground and then come back again. And if this restriction of your civil liberties isn’t bad enough, the traffic conditions in and around Portsmouth will ensure that the convoy of coaches become sitting ducks for the unsavoury elements which unfortunately do exist in our island paradise.

Road closures and restrictions on pub opening will also impact the home fans. And don’t forget the inconvenience already imposed by moving the game to 1pm on a Sunday.

And all this to prevent the possibility of a repeat of the violence that led to FIVE arrests last time out.

"Superintendent Rick Burrows is leading the planning for the policing operation on December 18. He said: ‘The most important objective of the day is to ensure that it is a safe environment for everybody coming to the football.’"

Surely the most important objective of the day is to provide an appropriate response to the level of threat perceived to be presented by a small minority, whilst preserving the basic human rights of the vast majority of law abiding citizens planning to attend the match?

Still, football fans are an easy target. We always have been. That is why, for as long as I can remember, we have been assumed to be guilty until proven innocent. Treated like cattle. Treated as a mob, so that the police can assume all of us are guilty and just arrest the nearest person in any disorder, even if they’re an innocent bystander, because it’s easier.  In the week the release of papers relating to the Hillsborough disaster was debated in parliament, it would be nice to think that police (and society’s) attitudes had altered in the last 22 years.  The police’s contempt for the Liverpool supporters on that fateful day in April 1989 contributed significantly to the deaths of 96 of them.

Sadly, in 2011, nothing much seems to have changed.

The Generation Game

I took my son to Fratton Park on Saturday as a treat for his tenth birthday. Now many would say that Barnsley at home on a chilly October evening is less a treat than a mandate to call Childline. But there are many reasons why I'm proud that he chose a trip to the south coast and donned the famous blue and white on Saturday.

My family tree has roots in Portsmouth (that I know of) dating back to the birth of my great-grandfather Henry Joseph Duke in Rudmore in 1867. They almost certainly go back further. My grandfather was at Wembley when Pompey beat Wolves 4-1 in the last Cup Final before the outbreak of World War Two. My mother was a Fratton regular during the post war years when they were back-to-back champions of England. My father used to take me to matches in the eary 70s, before hooliganism drove him away, and I still have happy memories of rattles and rosettes, the waft of Bovril and trying to match the scores to the alphabetical placeholders on the half-time scoreboard.

Nowadays, when football is all about Sky TV money, overpaid international superstars and ubiquitous merchandising, it's really important that football stays in touch with its roots.

Football gives a town or city its identity. No disrespect to the burghers of the Metropolitan Borough of Walsall, but who outside the West Midlands would even know where Walsall was were it not for the appearance of the team from the Bescott Stadium on the Pools coupon? For a city of 200,000 inhabitants (smaller, in fact than Walsall) Portsmouth is disproportionately well known around the world. The football club - and its association with being the Navy's team - has to take some credit for
this.

But so what? Is civic pride important? Yes and no. One the one hand, it certainly contributed to the tribalism that was at the root of the worst of the "football" violence of the 70s and 80s. And extreme or inappropriate civic pride leads at worst to jingoism, nationalism and xenophobia. But on the other hand civic pride, often manifested as pride in a local football team, can give citizens a reason for getting out of bed in the morning and getting them through the day in a gloomy climate of economic downturn, social inequality and political corruption.

It's important, to me at least, that we resist the marketeers' globalisation and commercialisation of football. Not just from the point of view of it being generally a good idea to resist big business, but it's also important in football that we retain the diversity that is still on offer, from Manchester United right down the pyramid to Mangotsfield United. It's at the grass roots clubs that kids still have a realistic chance of becoming involved in the game, not only on the playing side but also on the supporting and social side. My son lives in a small village some 75 miles from his nearest Premiership team, and even that's only Swansea, but the Man Utd and Chelsea (and, even worse, Barcelona) shirts are everywhere. I'm so proud when he trots out onto the village pitch in his Pompey shirt. But why are there no Hereford or Bristol City/Rovers shirts on display?

Hello, Childline?

On a personal level, it's important to me that he supports Pompey. He was born in Bristol. He has never been forced to support Pompey. OK, apart from being enrolled as a Junior Blue at birth and being dragged along to matches in a papoose. But since he has been old enough to make the choice, it's been his own decision to be a Pompey fan. It gives us something to bond over. Every time I see him now, he asks me for the latest news, almost before he asks me how I am. It keeps a family tradition alive. It gives him something in common with generations of Hardys before him, none of whom he ever met, but whom he may one day decide to take an interest in. And it marks him as an individual, refusing to follow the Premiership sheep in the playground. He'll get stick for it from his mates, of course, but if he stands up to them over this issue, it will hold him in good stead when the playground bullies inevitably come calling over more serious matters.

The only downside is that, until he gets a bit older at least, I too will have to spend chilly October evenings watching Pompey take on the likes of Barnsley.