What’s behind the rise in football disorder and how can it be tackled?

Crowd behaviour and the issue of player safety on the pitch has returned to the fore after a series of pitch invasions over recent weeks.

Here the PA news agency looks at what has happened, and how the authorities could look to tackle the problem.

What’s happened?

End-of-season matches in the Premier League and the EFL have been blighted by pitch invasions, with some fans confronting and even assaulting players and other club staff.

A Nottingham Forest fan headbutted Sheffield United player Billy Sharp earlier this week, and has already been jailed for 24 weeks.

Other incidents following matches at Everton, Northampton and Port Vale this week are also the subject of police investigations.

So is this all just connected to the excitement and emotion around clubs being promoted and relegated?

There has been a spike in pitch invasions over the last fortnight, but in truth disorder has been on the rise all season.

Data released by the UK Football Policing Unit earlier this year showed there had been a 36 per cent increase in reported incidents of disorder in the first half of the current campaign, compared to the same period of the 2019-20 season.

A Leicester fan received a jail sentence for invading the pitch and assaulting three Nottingham Forest players during an FA Cup tie in February, so this is not a new phenomenon.

What’s driving it?

Alcohol remains a factor, but police believe cocaine is increasingly fuelling football violence, with excessive consumption of the class a drug cited as a contributing factor in the disorder at last summer’s Euro 2020 final at Wembley in an independent report by Baroness Casey published last year.

The UK’s football policing lead, Chief Constable Mark Roberts, has welcomed the Government’s