“Police State Stadiums” In Our Future As Clubs Get Set To “Unanimously” Reject Strict Liability

Today, on his way out of the SPFL meeting to discuss league reconstruction, the chairman of Alloa told reporters that clubs will vote “unanimously” to reject the SFA’s plans to introduce Strict Liability regulations in Scottish football.

These appalling plans, which will seek to punish clubs, with sanctions ranging from closure of stands to points deductions, for the behaviour of small numbers of fans, have been the subject of much discussion on the forums and blogs, with the SFA’s Stewart Regan coming in for special scrutiny and condemnation, as he seeks to create football’s own Offensive Behaviour law.

Today’s announcement comes as no surprise to those of us familiar with this issue – clubs know there is no way they can legislate against a few cretins and have rejected these types of proposals on two prior occasions – but it continues to worry many people that they’ve again reared their heads.

What is even more infuriating is that according to reports, the SPFL will now seek to lobby the Scottish Government for the funds to install “facial recognition software” at games.

Quite what good this will do, when so many of the miscreants cover their faces with scarves, remains to be seen, but this certainly has broad, sweeping implications that go well beyond football.

Scotland has never had a hooliganism problem like other countries, but we’re now clearly heading for a place where policing measures are every bit as harsh as they were in England during the 80’s when football fans were amongst the most photographed and filmed people in the country outside of the celebrity jet-set.

Quite what the vast majority of fans have done to merit such scandalous intrusion and scrutiny I don’t know, but it’s just another brick in the wall, just another step towards sanitising our grounds completely of any behaviour certain people don’t like.

We already don’t allow alcohol in stadiums, although you can buy a beer at concert, a darts match, a rugby game or indeed any other similar pastime.

Football fans are already the subject of draconian laws, which make criminal in a football ground (or on the way to a match) that which would be perfectly legal anywhere else.

How much more of this do fans have to put up with?

At a time when more Scots are attending games than have in a while, at a time when our national sport and its clubs are in the best health they’ve been in for years, the very people charged with promoting the sport seem insistent on driving away as many fans as they can.

You’d almost think this was payback for something, wouldn’t you?

The simple truth is that football fans are, and have always been seen to be, “fair game” for the authorities.

We have no high profile lobby batting for us; no-one wants to stand on our side of the fence.

We are treated, and viewed, as social outcasts by large swathes of the population.

Confessing to being a “football supporter” – especially from Glasgow – is still one of the surest ways to stop a conversation in its tracks in certain parts of Scotland.

We are stigmatised like never before.

We are targeted like no other social group.

God alone knows how much tax payers money has already been spent “policing” football fans in this country in the past few years, and how much court time has gone to waste dragging young guys who’ve never committed a crime in their lives in front of the beaks.

Now our own governing bodies want more?

I wouldn’t trust the SFA and the SPFL with that kind of power.

God knows what they’d use it for.

When do we say “enough is enough”?

Who speaks for ordinary football fans?

Nobody.

Nobody at all.

That’s how these people keep getting away with it.