Why Carlisle can't afford great occasion to end up in the gutter
Last updated 10:37, Saturday, 20 September 2008
Rereading the account of trouble on Carlisle’s streets after last November’s victory over Leeds brings a potentially startling interpretation of events.
“Fearful passers-by quickened their pace,” went this paper’s report, “as opposing fans were separated and contained by police with batons, vans and dogs, as well as horses drafted in from Cleveland.” Star of the right wing one minute, supplier to the force’s mounted section the next – is there any job United won’t ask the boy Taylor to do?
Ok, kill the gags there. A serious point needs airing at the onset of today’s match between last season’s play-off semi-finalists, and it’s that the fifth Carlisle versus Leeds confrontation of recent times needs to be remembered as 100 per cent thrills on the pitch, and zero sirens and bloodshed on Botchergate and elsewhere.
That sounds like a predictable request. And it is. But there are reasons why some old truths need to be pumped out again this afternoon, not least because of the mind-sharpening effect of Monday’s News & Star front page, and its story of another hideous outbreak of hooliganism in this city.
Consider the words of Michelle Casey, a 33-year-old mother of two, recalling the July afternoon last year when boneheads from Newcastle and Carlisle rearranged each other’s features and redecorated a pub after a “friendly” between the two Uniteds.
“I have never been as scared as I was that day,” said Mrs Casey. “My children are still talking about it. It has not been forgotten.”
That episode concluded this week with the sentencing of 10 Newcastle thugs (an aside: how lenient does a four-year football banning order sound for such behaviour?).
And today’s visit of Leeds spools the mental reel back 10 months, when 21 people were arrested in the wake of post-match violence in the city centre.
Of that tally, 13 were from Leeds, eight from Carlisle. And there might well have been a sense that the visiting yobs played the lead role in the trouble, both on that occasion and during the Newcastle skirmishes. But we’re not here to compare numbers.
You can’t have a battle without an opponent. And so the appeal goes out for Carlisle’s lunatic fringe to stay at home, and for the easily-provoked element to lay down their tools today.
Something snags in the brain when you can’t stage a third division football match at 3pm on a Saturday afternoon simply because certain supporters can’t contain their thirst for that long, or be trusted to keep their fists by their sides.
Today’s game is launched at 12.15pm as a matter of necessity, which is a fair leap down the moral hill from the Premier League games we all love to deride for starting at unconventional hours for the benefit of television and greed.
But yes, the early kick-off today is the right measure, and any city centre pub manager tempted to open especially soon this morning has to ask himself if the arrival of extra takings is really worth the candle, given what could come to pass later in the day.
The idea that football is free from the moorings to its history of fan mayhem has been trashed by events in Carlisle and other places over the past 12 months.
Encouragingly, May’s play-off games between today’s rival clubs passed relatively peacefully, but that’s no reason to lower the alert.
One figure which attracted minimal comment in the recent debate over Carlisle United’s finances was the rise of nearly £55,000 to cover “police, ambulance and security”.
The escalating price of policing, both at the ground and in the city on matchdays, is currently a live issue at Brunton Park and what the club needs least of all today is for a gaggle of blockheads to give the force a good reason to stick an even larger invoice in the post.
Stroll into any bookshop today and you’ll find a nice selection of ‘thug-lit’ from lapsed hooligans like Cass Pennant. Depressingly, instruction manuals for any riot you choose are not hard to find.
Choice, by the way, is the theme of this message. One of the most predictable public responses to most news of football-related trouble is to finger the police for the way they handled matters, as if thuggery happens by default, by instinct, and so it’s hardly worth discouraging or criticising.
But everyone has a decision to make when they leave the house today. Which way to turn depends on the sort of reputation you want to claim for your club, your city. Yourself.
