29 January 2024 , 13:03
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There were 400 police officers on duty to keep order at the Black Country derby.
Four hundred. To keep order among a crowd of 25,000 on a Sunday morning. If that doesn’t give an idea to the casual observer of just how highly tensions were running at the Hawthorns, consider this.
Looking through social media footage during the past 24 hours, yours truly can find evidence that the whole fracas may have been kicked off by one individual. A lone old gold voice amid a sea of navy blue and white - and the outcome was an afternoon of ‘entertainment’ ruined.
First eye-witness accounts said it was ‘two or three’ Wolves’ fans sitting amid West Brom’s supporters in the corner of the Halfords Lane stand. Then, it was two. It still might be.
But for a match to be suspended for over half an hour, players wading into stands to rescue loved ones, umpteen bottles thrown, bloodied heads, the police struggling to maintain order in two sections of the ground, six arrests - one of which was for carrying an offensive weapon, it seems a ridiculous price to pay.
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Fuelled by 12 years of enforced abstinence from the fixture, there was always the potential for this to happen. For - potentially - just one rogue individual to bring the whole house down just emphasises how thin the line is between order and chaos.
Initially, there were eyebrows raised that the kick-off time had been brought forward to before noon. Usually, this has a dampening effect, curtailing the amount of time for pre-match alcohol consumption.
Imagine, for a moment, what might have happened had this started over four hours later? It was always going to be a tricky one for police, particularly with 4,000 Wolves fans - around 1,500 more than the usual away allocation - allowed to travel to the fixture.
That meant the visitors had access to the Halfords Lane to gain admission and, long before problems inside the ground, the two sets of supporters were trading insults as they made their way into position. In itself, that’s nothing unusual.
It will happen at stadia amongst men - it usually is men, although one woman was hauled across the pitch by police on Sunday. Calls inside the ground that abusive behaviour would be punished were akin to someone howling at the moon. No one took any notice.
It would be going over the top to say it was the default position of many. But not by much. It’s against this backdrop that the Football Association says it will be conducting an investigation. They will no doubt find culpability with West Bromwich Albion.
West Brom defender Kyle Bartley went into the crowd to rescue his kids (Getty Images)But it’s difficult to know how to police one or two individuals who have taken it upon themselves to sit among home supporters on a day when patience on both sides of the divide would have been wafer-thin among the group that was on the losing end.
Nowadays, closed-circuit television - and the prosecutions it supports - has been used to eradicate problems. Supporters know there will be consequences to their actions. Sometimes, even the threat of that can lead to level-headedness flying out of the window.
Sunday was one such occasion. The FA Cup tarnished, the reputation of a region damaged and a support-base being called to account for its behaviour. We expected fireworks at the Black Country derby. But not at this expense, surely?