\n But the trouble which flared at the end of that encounter \u2013 police officers and stewards were helpless to prevent large numbers of Celtic<\/a> fans from invading the pitch to celebrate after the penalty shootout out or hundreds of Rangers<\/a> followers storming onto the playing surface to confront them \u2013 also showed that it needs to be addressed.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\n<\/p>\n \n The Taylor Report, published in the wake of the Hillsborough Disaster in 1989, may have led to every Premiership ground in Scotland and many in the leagues below becoming all seated and senior football becoming far more family-friendly environment than it was in years gone by.\n<\/p>\n \n However, Professor Pearson stressed that major concerns about crowd safety still remain.\n<\/p>\n \n \n \u201cIt\u2019s much more difficult to get the sort of overcrowding that leads to mass fatalities now that the old terraces with perimeter fencing have been done away with,\u201d he said. \u201cBut there are still risks.\n<\/p>\n \n \u201cBringing in safe-standing sections has helped to alleviate many of the problems. I was a member of\u00a0the team that recommended to the government that safe standing should be\u00a0introduced.\n<\/p>\n \n \u201cWe observed larger safe standing\u00a0sections in other countries to look for potential problems. So we were very informed about the different types of\u00a0strategies that have been used to prevent the dangers associated with\u00a0standing in seated areas.\n<\/p>\n \n \u201cOvercrowding in seated areas where there isn\u2019t rail seating is considerably\u00a0more dangerous than overcrowding where there are rails. The rails\u00a0stop progressive crowd collapse. That is one of the reasons why they were introduced.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n \n \u201cBut in the areas where you don’t have the rail seating there is a danger that people will fall over if you get overcrowding. That can lead to serious injuries and even fatalities.\u00a0If you don’t have rails, then the risk is that when there’s a goal or another exciting moment, somebody will trip over the lip of a seat, fall into the people in\u00a0front of them and cause a collapse.\n<\/p>\n \n \u201cIf you’ve got an away end that is two thirds full and people are gathered in the middle of that section, then you’ll have a situation where, even if there are empty seats at the front and sides of the stand, an area will be overcrowded.\u00a0It’s far more likely for a progressive crowd collapse to happen if you are stood by your seat.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n Read more:\n<\/p>\n \n Professor Pearson continued, \u201cOvercrowded grounds are far less safe than\u00a0grounds that are only filled to capacity. It can affect evacuation procedures\u00a0and getting out of the ground. It can cause problems in terms of the\u00a0police going into the stands to make arrests or medics going in there to treat somebody that’s\u00a0having a heart attack.\n<\/p>\n \n \u201cOvercrowding in concourses at half-time can be a massive problem. That can be quite dangerous as well. When overcrowding occurs, you also see aisles getting blocked and that can cause progressive crowd collapse. So there are risks even though the threat of that mass collapse has\u00a0diminished.\n<\/p>\n \n \u201cWhere you have overcrowding, you are going to\u00a0inevitably get blocked gangways and stairwells and that is dangerous as well. Even in away ends which aren\u2019t overcrowded, a lot people with tickets end up standing in aisles. That creates those same risks.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n Professor Pearson explained that preventing overcrowding and fan disorder has become a far greater challenge in British football in the last few years as a direct result of both the Covid pandemic and Brexit – and the quality of stewarding decreasing dramatically.\n<\/p>\n \n \u201cWhen you get a group of fans congregating in one area of a stand it requires very, very good stewarding,\u201d he said. \u201cUnfortunately, one of the problems we have in the United Kingdom at the moment is\u00a0the security industry is struggling to get both the right amount of people into it as well as the right\u00a0amount of expertise.\n<\/p>\n \n \n \u201cWith the combination of both Brexit and Covid, a lot of the really\u00a0good security people left the country or got different jobs. Without their know-how, it’s far more difficult for security\u00a0operations to stop people congregating in certain areas and aisles getting blocked. That is when overcrowding and the risk of progressive crowd collapse\u00a0happens.\n<\/p>\n \n \u201cWhen Brexit happened, a lot of good security people went back home. Then there was Covid and a lot of them got made redundant because there weren’t any events for them to steward. They got jobs as delivery drivers and what have you and thought, \u2018This is a lot better than\u00a0standing outside and being abused\u2019. A lot of them didn’t return to stewarding when restrictions were lifted. That is still a huge problem.\n<\/p>\n \n \u201cA lot of experienced safety people have been lost. I’ve spoken to a lot of\u00a0stadium safety officers in England and Wales. They always say, \u2018We appoint more stewards than we need because we know that on the day a large number of them won’t turn up\u2019. They\u2019ll appoint 120 per cent of what they require and quite often they’re still under what they need.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n Professor Pearson added, \u201cUltra culture has developed more in Scotland than it has in England and Wales. We don’t\u00a0really have the equivalent of the Green Brigade or the Union Bears south of the border. Their behaviour, particularly gathering in one area of a stand in large numbers, demands\u00a0a good stewarding operation.\n<\/p>\n \n \u201cIf they try to grab the central\u00a0sections in stands, stewards have to intervene early on. It is at that point the steward has to say,\u00a0\u2018Right, let’s have a look at your seat number\u2019. If a person isn\u2019t in their allocated seat they either turf them out of the ground or make sure they have evidence of who\u00a0the individual is so they can be banned from getting future tickets. That is possible,\u00a0but you need the right security there.\n<\/p>\n \n \u201cOf course, the other solution is that you work\u00a0together with those ultra groups. If you decide they are good for atmosphere, you allocate them a\u00a0block in the centre of that section and make sure there aren’t people from outside of the groups in amongst them.\n<\/p>\n \n \u201cThere are crowd management benefits from that. A club can\u00a0train their CCTV cameras on those sections. So\u00a0there are two solutions. But I would suggest the second one, working with those fan groups,\u00a0is the better one.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n Read more:\n<\/p>\n \n The Unauthorised Entry to Football Act 2026, which was passed by MPs at Westminster back in January, made it a specific criminal offence to enter a football stadium without a ticket in England and Wales but not Scotland. A fine of \u00a31,000 and a five year banning order can now be issued to anyone found guilty.\n<\/p>\n \n Hopes are high down south that the legislation, which was introduced as a direct result of the overcrowding at the Euro 2020 final, will act as a deterrent in the same way that the Football (Offences) Act 1991, which was brought in after the Taylor Report and made throwing missiles, indecent and racist chanting and invading a pitch designated crimes, has.\n<\/p>\n \n \u201cIt is certainly something that you could consider in Scotland,\u201d said Professor Pearson. \u201cUltimately, we will have to\u00a0see whether it has any impact in England and Wales. The argument against this law\u00a0is that it’s already a criminal offence to break into a stadium when you’ve not got a ticket.\n<\/p>\n \n \u201cHowever, if it is a specific criminal offence the authorities can advertise that and it\u00a0might deter that kind of behaviour. That\u2019s arguably what has happened when it comes to invading the pitch. We don’t know for sure, but that is\u00a0quite possibly what\u2019s happened.\n<\/p>\n \n \n \u201cThe other argument for the legislation is that if it is a defined criminal\u00a0offence it makes it easier to secure a Football Banning Order as it goes on to the list of\u00a0scheduled offences. A clear line has\u00a0been drawn by the authorities.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n Professor Pearson has seen how changes to how big matches are policed has also led to a reduction in tailgating and overcrowding since the Euro 2020 final and is hopeful it will become less of an issue in the seasons to come than it has been.\n<\/p>\n \n \u201cHigh-profile events in England and Wales now have external\u00a0ticket checks,\u201d he said. \u201cBefore a fan even gets to a turnstile, they’ve already been through a ticket\u00a0check. That certainly happens at high-profile European games where they are large numbers of visiting supporters.\n<\/p>\n \n \u201cFollowing the Baroness Casey\u00a0review, a far more rigorous external ticket check has been introduced at Wembley to try and reduce the risk\u00a0of people being able to tailgate. If somebody doesn\u2019t have a ticket outside the ground they are told to be on their way. There is a heavy police present in case a dispute between security staff and a fan occurs.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cIt is an issue that has always been prevalent,\u201d said Geoff Pearson, a law professor at the University…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":563971,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-563970","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-gb","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-news","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/563970","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=563970"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/563970\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/563971"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=563970"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=563970"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=563970"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Police officers arrested a man at the Euro 2020 final at Wembley (Image: SOPA Images)\n<\/p>\n
A flare is thrown into the Celtic end at Ibrox last month (Image: Stuart Wallace \/ Shutterstock)\n<\/p>\n
Police officers at Ibrox last month (Image: Shutterstock)\n<\/p>\n