The sense of shock about what happened

The sense of shock about what happened when football-related violence erupted at Lansdowne Road for the first time during the Ireland v. England game still lingers, almost a week on. In the immediate aftermath, one phrase was repeated again and again by Irish fans: it was unbelievable. Watching events unfold on television certainly lent them a surreal quality: it didn’t seem possible at first but here was a mob dismantling the West Upper stand apparently unopposed, and lobbing the debris in the direction of the pitch, and onto the heads of those positioned below. The TV cameras had been focused on the football action right up to the moment when the referee made the initial decision to pull the players off the pitch. There had been no build-up of fear or tension. Suddenly, it seems, the stadium had been plunged into mayhem. Inevitably, the match was abandoned.

People who were at Lansdowne Road experienced it very differently. Outside the ground beforehand, a bunch of loutish English supporters were engaged in a bout of Paddy-bashing. Hunting in small packs they ran along karate-chopping unsuspecting Irish fans from behind. One tri-colour bedecked individual got a friendly tap on the shoulder: he turned around and was met by a fist in the face which sent him staggering to the ground. One concerned observer was appalled to see about eight gardai standing around chatting and joking a few yards from where the attacks were taking place. He pointed out that they’d be better off mingling with the crowd and making their presence felt.

The mood inside the ground was unusually ugly. In general Irish international matches are played in a spirit of light-hearted bonhomie. Foreign supporters have always been absolutely safe here. There are headbangers and eejits among the Irish followers but very few have been infected with the virus of supporter-itis – that condition which is endemic to football in Britain, where it becomes a necessity to hate the opposition and those who support them. It is not as if this phenomenon doesn’t exist in this country: some puerile fans who support League of Ireland clubs exhibit the English disease and clashes between rival supporters are far from being unknown. Some fools even boast about them. But the stage on which they operate is so small as to make their efforts pathetic and they are too few and too isolated ever to achieve critical mass in the international context.

Hopefully it’ll stay that way because the vast majority of Irish soccer fans seem to understand sport for what it is: only a game, and certainly not something that’s worth risking injury or a prison sentence over.

On the opposite side of the coin, having attended nearly every home international match over the past fifteen years, I remember only one occasion when visiting fans seemed to represent any kind of threat – and that was at the last game against England in the run-up to the 1990 World Cup. Then the English fans were also located in the West Upper stand. I was a dozen or so seats away from the line that divided them from the home supporters and on that occasion I remember feeling that it was a long time since I’d encountered the sheer ugliness which humans are capable of evoking at such close range. The choreographed mob expression of malevolence and aggression chilled me to the marrow, and I remember sensing that violence might erupt among them at any time. Fortunately it didn’t – in retrospect we can probably put that down to the fact that the English scored first – but later, in town, there were numerous incidents in which English supporters were involved.

This time around, according to people who were at both games, the mood was uglier by far. The scattered violence outside Lansdowne Road had set the scene but inside, long before a ball was kicked in competition, the crude intent of the dedicated followers of fascism had become obvious. There had been a stabbing in O’Connell St. the previous night, as well as a number of fracas involving English fans. The window of the Flowing Tide pub, off Abbey St., had been smashed at lunchtime in an internecine clash between rival English gangs. And now, at the ground, a small group of ticketless supporters stormed the turnstiles to gain admittance. Inside, meanwhile, the orchestrated aggression familiar from English terraces was already in full flood, and the tide was rising.

It seems clear now that the Garda authorities had more than sufficient advance warning that trouble was brewing. It is stomach-churning to read the detailed descriptions of known thugs which were sent to them by the British National Criminal Intelligence Service Football Unit in advance, and to realise that they did so little in response. Taking a benign view, the Gardai may have felt that if you treat people like human beings, maybe they’ll behave that way. Equally, in theory, someone may have reasoned that if you mount a strong police presence and violence erupts, you will inevitably be blamed for having taken a heavy-handed approach. But neither interpretation stands up once you come to terms with the fact that there were only 57 police officially on duty inside Lansdowne Road when the game started. That figure suggests that between the Gardai and the FAI, someone had decided that if any trouble did develop, that it would happen outside the stadium or in the centre of Dublin afterwards. It proved to be a disastrous miscalculation.

The reality is that the English contingent – or a large proportion of them – came determined to provoke a confrontation at the match. One Irish fan who came into the Hot Press office the day after the match had sustained a very severe gash about a half inch from his eye. He exhibited the 50p piece which had been fired at him – it had been filed down and sharpened meticulously to transform it into a viciously dangerous weapon. It almost took his eye out. Against that background, the fact that no-one seems to have suffered really serious injuries must be put down to sheer luck, and the willingness of Irish fans to disperse quickly and peacefully. But that relatively fortunate outcome cannot exonerate those in charge of security on the night from blame.

Clearly, the English FA have a case to answer in relation to the sale of tickets, and the fact that so many of their allocation ended up in the hands of experienced, known football hooligans. Is there no one else in the FA Travel Club? So have the F.A.I., in that ultimate responsibility for the safety of people going to international matches here rests with them – and no amount of cant about ‘information gaps’ can disguise that. If they didn’t know about the security threat then they should have – a basic checklist of questions to be asked of the FA, the Gardai and if necessary the British authorities could have ensured that. Besides, no one in the Association seems to have responded, even in the slightest way to the mounting sense of disquiet around Dublin through the 24 hours leading up to the match. Tickets were sold to Irish fans which placed them in the heart of the English mob. And reassurances were given regarding their ‘safety’ on the day of the match. What kind of strategy does that reveal?

But the most serious questions will have to be answered by the Garda authorities. They were certainly aware, in advance, that the mob coming to Dublin were being organised by sinister right-wing groups – including Combat 18, the notorious quasi-paramilitary white supremacist group. They were provided with the name, rank and serial number of dozens of supporters with a history of violence. In the context it defies logic that they were so ill-prepared for what took place. The objective of maintaining a low profile is certainly defensible – but the paltry allocation of personnel inside the ground suggests that this was anything but an informed tactical choice. Both the F.A.I. and the Gardai courted disaster. They were lucky, all of them, that the toll of injuries wasn’t far worse.

In the context it is imperative that the full facts should be made public so that proper accountability can be established. The tendency in the past has always been to protect the Garda Siochána, so that the force’s failures and abuses have been buried under a blanket of secrecy. This is not acceptable. The details of the internal Garda inquiry should be made fully public. And in his separate inquiry, the former Chief Justice Thomas Finlay must be absolutely rigorous in establishing and making public how decisions were being made in the run-up to the game, who was making them and on what grounds, so that the public can know who should ultimately shoulder the greater burden of responsibility – the Gardaí or the F.A.I.

That there is a political dimension to all this is inescapable. The sick mementoes and calling cards left behind by the right-wing thugs whose machinations made the outbreak of violence inevitable tell their own sorry story of twisted prejudice. There is no doubt that football is exploited as a fertile ground for direct action, publicity-seeking and recruitment by organised low-life with an agenda which is racist, fascist, xenophobic and driven by ignorance, malevolence and hatred. But the agenda which they pursue in a crude and violent form is barely distinguishable from that which is being widely espoused within the Conservative Party in Britain at the moment. When you hear true blue MPs stand up in the House of Commons and sound dire warnings about the dangers of being over-run by immigrants, you realise that they’re dealing essentially in that same currency as the yobs who do the monkey chants and throw bananas at black players on Saturday afternoons. Not that this phenomenon is unique to Britain. Fascism is a threat throughout Europe. We all have a part to play in opposing it.

There is another more intimate dimension to all this. Not long after I left school I was driven away from football by an acute embarrassment at the values of the game and more specifically at the irridentist, male-dominated, testosterone-drenched atmosphere of thuggery in which it was so often steeped. It took me a long time to come back but eventually I began playing again, revelling afresh in the wonderful possibilities of what is undoubtedly the finest team game ever invented and, I believe, the greatest sport on earth. At its best, soccer is an arena in which qualities of intelligence, imagination, athleticism, vision, authority, passion, commitment, poise, balance, anticipation and control are exercised in a way which is extraordinarily subtle. It isn’t a question of who’s the fastest – though it can be. It isn’t a question of who’s the toughest or the strongest or the most graceful – though these qualities count. It is about a harmony, among eleven players, of all of these qualities and more. But it is also an arena in which thuggery becomes organised, and is very often condoned by officials.

On a number of occasions, playing in the A.U.L. in Dublin this year, I have heard members of the opposition vow that they were going to break someone’s leg. One referee was head-butted by a player. When another official sent an opposition mid-fielder off, one of the latter’s hard-man colleagues took this as a justification for deciding that he was going to fucking kill someone. In cold print it sounds merely absurd. Even at the time it had a ludicrously cartoon-like quality. There was a challenge for a loose ball in midfield and I was upended. As the ball spun off towards the other side of the pitch I was on my back. With the referee following the play, his back was turned to where I lay. There were only seconds involved but I suddenly realised, with my worm’s-eye view, what was happening. The small-time thug who had threatened to kill someone was stamping on my unprotected shins. He was looking at the referee as he did it to make sure that he wasn’t spotted. As a result, he didn’t quite muster the conviction which might have resulted in a broken ankle or leg. I remember being powerfully struck at how sly and stupid the action was.

But it was more than that. It was also vile and dangerous and potentially extremely costly. It was nothing new either. People who write about a golden age when violence didn’t exist in football are suffering from amnesia. Football has always been an area through which thugs find an outlet for their aggression. In that sense it is part of the game. That is what originally drove me away from soccer. Now I believe that what is positive in the sport far outweighs the baggage – and that applies at a professional level as well. The challenge, for everyone concerned, is to minimise the threat to the safety of players and fans from players and fans alike.

To achieve that will involve a profound change in culture and in the nature of these things it will take years. For anyone who’s involved, the best place to start is with your own team, your own club or your own supporters club.

Responding to what happened during the Ireland v. England game involves accountability and will require political decisions. It is important that any actions considered on the basis of this one incident are scrupulously fair, balanced and do not involve giving a carte blanche to the police or the authorities to behave in an undemocratic manner. The truth however is that anyone who loves soccer as a sport will want to see it liberated from all this sick baggage. On that level everyone involved can be part of the solution or part of the problem . . .

• Niall Stokes

Editor