The recent spate of pitch invasions has provoked the usual, not-so-much knee-jerk hysteria, as full-body spasms from the perma-trigged hacks of Fleet Street. More bitch occasion than pitch invasion. Even the term drops straight from a late 60s tabloid, carrying associations of warfare, as well as a tinge of fire and brimstone. They could quite easily be called on-field celebrations or, less pithily, non-player boundary incursions, but the British media’s eidetic memory of campaigns that successfully flogged newspapers means the tawdry tales of football hooliganism in the 70s and 80s can now be recycled. What worked then will work now. For the editors, it’s low hanging fruit; for the readers rotting windfall. After all, scaring the living crap out of their readership is an unwritten part of its remit. Divide and conquer. As if this collection of stuffers, spinners and churnalists is any less tribal and vicious than your average supporter cavorting across the turf.

Despite the media portraits, football fans prove to be unrelentingly human, with all the unfortunate foibles, emotions, and hubris that human beings regularly evidence—even journalists. A reality the press seems to be blindsided by, despite referring to the passion of fans, despite stoking those emotions with breathless commentary, and ludicrous hyperbole. There are limits to this relationship after all; people need to know their place. Yes, we want singing, we want flags and cheers and celebrations. We want your cash. But for god’s sake don’t break any rules we made up while we took your hundred quid. And don’t try and rub shoulders with the gods we think we created. 

About the only thing more reliable than negative pitch invasion press is the ensuing sanctimony that echoes in the wake of it. I’m trying to think of a term that covers it. Mass self-righteousness maybe? Howling duplicity? Or perhaps we could call it a hypocrisis. Because something must be done! For this precious green rectangular is sacred; only the high priests of football are allowed onto its hallowed surface. The common muck that pays for it all are relegated to the stands to be bombarded with advertisements or admonished for daring to stand-up during play. Golf has the same spiritual insistence on its own territory. Taking over vast swathes of land, that only a fraction can ever walk on again, let alone play the bloody game. Football’s territory is a smaller crucible altogether, hence the ludicrous over-policing that starts with the commentariat and filters down to all manner of authoritarian actors. 

It is the presumptuous arrogance of the commentary that riles. When a beautiful protestor streaks across the pitch and the cameras move away, they tell us, “Nobody wants to see that”. May I suggest they don’t know football fans?

But who wouldn’t want to invade the pitch to celebrate something momentous? These are football fans to whom the game is close to life and death—why curtail their bliss? What other way have they to release the pent-up tensions of not just a match but a whole campaign. For those fans fighting relegation, a successful battle to stay up can produce catharsis and joy. For those winning a trophy, it may be the only time in their lives they get to experience these heady summits. The air becomes thinner. Mania descends. It’s osmosis. It’s ecstasy. They are hugging their heroes and their fellow fans. They are dancing on the very ground that legends played on. 

Fans can only take so much emotional charge. Like electricity it needs somewhere to go. Cheering just doesn’t cut it. And of course, you’re not allowed to go on the pitch which makes it even more alluring, as if a boundary, a liminal space is being breached with abandonment—freedom and joy being ever close bedfellows. 

Of course, it’s not all good but the media likes to fixate on the negative, unless someone important is making good money out of it. So, fans are fair game. Football owners, advertisers, sports commentators, not so much. And yes, terrible things can happen. As in any large group, there are some truly awful folks. For some happiness can never eclipse anger and they use their pitch infringements to harass opposition players and managers. Others, like the cowardly idiot that chose to do a running headbutt on a defenceless Billy Sharp, deserve everything they get: custodial sentences; lifetime bans. Throw it all at them. Criminality, whether it be assaults or intimidation shouldn’t go unpunished but there are hundreds of stewards and police near the pitch when these events occur. They can’t secure the welfare of two dozen players and staff? Nobody deserves to be assaulted at the workplace—there’s no grey area there. But statistics point to the rarity of its occurrence. The research proves that players are more likely to assault crowd members, kick the ball at fans, and injury each other. And making the football pitch a no-go area for fans post-game only increases the likelihood that people act transgressively when they infringe upon it. Treat people as unthinking, violent thugs and guess how they behave? Call them names, give them a reputation and people will live up to it.

If Patrick Viera was goaded by an Everton fan, so too are the fans goaded by the media. And while we’re on the subject, at what point are the laws of the country suspended on a football pitch? Whether he was provoked or not, Viera can only cite it as mitigation. He still tried to assault someone. Pitch invasion or no. We all sympathise, but it doesn’t totally absolve. Violence is violence and should be condemned, even if it proved to be just a minor scuffle. But surely, what’s good for the goose is good for the gander. If we are to treat all celebrants the same as the worst amongst them, shouldn’t we treat all managers and players the same? We’re a hairsbreadth from collective punishment here. From trial by media.

The establishment’s attitude to football fans has historically increased hooliganism not decreased it. Caging supporters like beasts, treating them as less than human, and casting them in a light of savagery and opprobrium made disasters like Hillsborough, and the ensuing stitch-up, more likely not less. Roles, neither the media, the politicians or the police have ever taken any responsibility over, so don’t expect any self-awareness now as the cookie-cutter copy rolls in. The police take their cue from the powerful: politicians, FIFA, the newspaper editors, and TV broadcasters, with a cursory, swaddled ear turned to Tory-voting pensioners. Everyone else isn’t so much drowned out as to be effectively non-existent. So, we can expect the heavy-handed politicised policing and demonisation of fans to turn full circle again. 

Alternatively, we could start toning down the anti-fan rhetoric. After all, in any group of 650 football fans there are probably fifty-six under investigation for sexual harassment, several allegations of serial rape and sexual assault and numerous acts of financial impropriety, fraud and tax evasion, and at least one fan that will spend the game watching porn on his phone. Oh sorry, that’s members of Parliament, but you get the idea. And now I come to think of it, an invasion of citizenry into the Houses of Commons wouldn’t be a bad idea at all, although there’s doubtlessly less to celebrate.