Fans’ ugly behaviour is not just about football – it’s about society

Roker Park, the final game of 1989-90. Sunderland were sure of their place in the playoffs; Oldham knew they would miss out, largely because of the strains of an extraordinary season in which they had reached the League Cup final and the FA Cup semi-finals. Oldham won 3-2 and, as the final whistle went, home fans invaded the pitch.

Slowly they made for the corner of the Roker End where the away fans were housed. I was on the terrace a few yards away and remember clearly the sense of sudden anxiety as my dad gripped my arm and started to make for the exit. But then something remarkable happened. The invaders stopped a few yards from the corner flag, raised their hands above their heads and clapped, a salute for Oldham’s extraordinary season that would end with nothing.

As Mike Keegan’s book on that season, This Is How It Feels, makes clear, that moment entered Oldham folklore, confirmed to them that the rest of the country also respected what they had achieved, those performances against Arsenal, Everton, Aston Villa and Manchester United. It remains one of the most surprisingly moving things I’ve seen in a football ground.

That was a very unusual invasion, and it was never clear at what point the decision was collectively taken to applaud the away fans. But even the more common-or-garden invasions can be glorious, an ecstatic release of pent-up emotion at the end of a tense game at the end of a season. The temptation is to say: “Let it go,” that football cannot simultaneously celebrate and market the passion it generates and then protest at these euphoric outpourings.

But the problem is, some fans can’t be trusted, and no matter whether the crowd numbers a dozen or several thousand, it takes only one to make an invasion