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Extreme violence in Millwall end has football fading into irrelevance
The fighting at the FA Cup semi-final was the most widescreen, big-occasion bout of hooliganism in the Premier League era
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Barney Ronay
Barney Ronay at Wembley
The Observer, Saturday 13 April 2013 22.01 BST
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Millwall fans
Police officers attempt to stop Millwall supporters fighting among themselves during the FA Cup semi-final at Wembley. Photograph: Laurence Griffiths/Getty Images
What a strange, and indeed disturbing, occasion this was. Wigan are in the FA Cup final for the first time in their history after beating Millwall 2-0, but this Wembley semi-final will be remembered instead for the extreme, concentrated outbreak of violence among spectators at the end behind Millwall's goal – the Millwall end – during the final 10 minutes of the match, apparently a continuation of two smaller second-half flare-ups in the same area.
It was a genuinely vicious spectacle, captured in jarring close-up detail by the television cameras and clearly visible from the press seats nearby: a group of up to 30 men of varying ages throwing punches and kicks, with blood spilt, boots put in and at least one policeman attacked in the aisle. Indeed, the absence of the police, so visibly mob-handed outside the stadium, while the outbreak of well-schooled and genuinely vicious violence rumbled on inside it, scarcely did the Met much credit. If there was some bemusement too at Wembley's stewards hanging back limply in their high-vis jackets, it must be remembered first that these are £7-an-hour freelance ushers, rather than security guards.
Plus, if there are excuses for a failure to intervene, this level of violence simply seemed so utterly jarring at teatime among the made-over corporate environs of the new Wembley Stadium; a moment of startling primitivism within the sealed perimeter of New Football made all the more bizarre by the fact that the match, complete with burbling PA announcements, continued while teeth were being extracted and noses crushed, all of it watched by a brigade of soldiers craning their necks with mild interest 20 metres away.
Not to mention garnished by half a stand of Millwall fans chanting "Wankers!" at the men swinging punches and launching kicks in their midst while parents in the surrounding rows shielded their children from the men hurling each other across the aisles. Oh brave, old, largely forgotten world that has such people in it.
It is important to be clear that this was a small group rather than a concerted and contagious movement, or a stand of rushing combatants. There will be the inevitable "Back to the dark ages" headlines. There will be some truly horrendous images to emerge from a moment of high-visibility, semi-professional thuggery. Not to mention the temptation to link, with florid abandon, a moment of distinctly 1980s-style public violence with the ambient Thatcher mnemonics of the past week. There was even something a little darkly comic, and indeed imaginative, in the police isolating the anti-Thatcher demo in Trafalgar Square immediately afterwards; as though these neo‑hooligans would as a matter of course, political antennae twitching, head for the nearest ideological hotspot.
Violence is often a great deal less complex than this. For all football's carefully stewarded self-reinvention, people have continued to punch and kick one another beyond, and even within, its managed borders. There were rumours in the aftermath of an infiltration of West Hams supporters in the Millwall end (it is a toxic rivalry) but to what extent football – clubs, fans, governing bodies – should feel themselves responsible for such moments of darkness remains open to fruitless discussion. What does seem certain is that this was the most widescreen, close-up, big-occasion moment of extreme crowd violence at a football match on British soil since the straitenings of the Premier League era, a rare sense of genuine contagion within this hermetically sealed environment.
Millwall will doubtless, and rightly, be heavily punished for the fact that the violence occurred in their end. The club has made concerted efforts to eliminate the unpleasant elements of its support, and yet the fact is it remains a magnet for those who go out looking for this kind of thing, including some who travel in from London's periphery (witness the white vans to be seen pulling up and disgorging their day-trippers close to The Den before home games).
And for all its urban location this is still a strangely isolated club, buried in the industrial inner suburbs, hard to get to, detached from gentrified new-build London. It must also be said there was a sense of isolation, almost a weariness to the club response immediately after the game. The manager, Kenny Jackett, claimed not to have seen the incident and stopped short of condemning anybody for anything. Millwall's media officer made it clear, in not so many words, that there are those who might point the finger at the police for not intervening quicker. The Millwall chairman, John Berylson, mused that you can never be sure who's sitting where on these occasions. Perhaps proximity to such things frays the nerves and dulls the reflexes, but given the genuinely shocking nature of the violence, something more is required. There will be calls for fines and bans. A greater show of backbone from those in authority at the club would be a good place to start.
And to think that up until the 80th minute of this match, the talking points seemed likely to be ticketing and two expertly worked goals by Shaun Maloney and Callum McManaman. But both issues seemed to fade into something close to irrelevance as Wembley turned its face from the pitch and towards the fists being thrown in the stands.
www.guardian.co.uk/football/blog/2013/ap...INTCMP=ILCNETTXT3487
Of course Millwall are the only club that has there own fans fighting each other 
well bravo for me 
