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HOOLIGANISM is detrimental to football and thousands of genuine fans that paid their way into Barbourfields Stadium to watch arguably the biggest game in the domestic league pitting Highlanders and Dynamos will have found the disgusting events that unfolded on Sunday all depressingly familiar.

Sadly, people with no connection to the mayhem caused by easily identifiable thugs are deprived of the entertainment they would have paid for and their lives are placed at risk by the madness of the notorious minority.

Football loving fans cannot continue to be prisoners and live with this dysfunction each time they visit our stadia to unwind after toiling throughout the week.

Hooligans must simply be brought to justice, but they seem to win every time, as nothing happens to them whenever their riotous actions cause commotion and taint what is supposedly the beautiful game.

They are allowed to roam our streets freely and return to the stadium as they please and cause trouble with impunity. Year in year out, the actors of stadium violence play the same script without consequences and clubs continue to be impoverished through hefty fines, yet nothing happens to these hoodlums.

At the end of the day, it’s the reputation of the clubs and residents that always take a hammering in the aftermath of abominable acts of violence and vandalism, and not the perpetrators.

Violence and vandalism in any form and at any place are criminal offences and until we start treating them as such, attending football matches involving Highlanders and Dynamos will be playing Russian roulette with the lives of law-abiding fans.

Do we first want to count bodies after a deadly stampede to then act appropriately? The football community needs to get its act together and weed out these undesirable elements from our stadia.

What happened last Sunday should not be allowed to happen again, but this can only be achieved when hooligans are convicted and banned from all our stadia. We can’t allow a small group of violent fans to ruin our football as is the case at the moment.

Fans know who these hooligans are and where they stay and unless tough measures are adopted and implemented, genuine fans will soon shun our football, and worse still the current thin sponsorship will take flight.

The Premier Soccer League suspended all league matches indefinitely because of the developing violent culture in our game.
The PSL says it’s engaging all key stakeholders to find lasting solutions to this rising barbarism and has scheduled meetings with the police, club security officers, marshals and stadium owners.

We hope that meeting will come up with a clear decisive outcome that will stop this ruinous behaviour otherwise we will one day relive the tragedy of the 2000 National Sports Stadium stampede that left 13 people dead.

The behaviour of hooligans seems to be aimed more at gaining prestige although sometimes it appears to be caused by events on the playing field, such as contested referee decisions or altercations between players.

Referees and their assistants must also play ball by making the right calls because more often their dubious decisions spark violent reactions by fans.

To the hooligan this is all exciting and fun and the football authorities need to come up with an integrated approach to tackle the scourge.

Those manning the gates must do their job properly and not allow alcohol into the stadium. The number of beer bottles used as missiles at last Sunday’s abandoned game was shocking.

It seems no searching takes place and people can go into the stadium with anything on them. Marshals should also be well-trained for them to spot early signalling of potential trouble inside the stadium.

Clubs must also take their players and coaches for grooming lessons because their behaviour most often influences fans’ behaviours. Players and clubs have a responsibility to prevent any behaviour on the playing field that might provoke violence among fans.

In established leagues in Europe, clubs try to get to know their fans individually, which makes it easy to exclude unwanted behaviours from their stadium because they understand that the initiative for violent incidents is taken by just a few individuals.

Clubs must be watchdogs to call out individuals who indulge in negative acts for necessary sanctions to be taken.

If these unfortunate issues are not addressed as a matter of urgency, it may soon lead to the loss of lives.