There may be trouble ahead at Stoke

Dec 9 2007 by Neil Farrington, Sunday Sun

I’D rather dabble in heroin than politics.

Unless they affect me or mine, I’m supremely indifferent to the supposed shortcomings of Government or Opposition.

Fortnightly rubbish collections, mass immigration, anti-social behaviour, benefit spongers, ID cards . . . to those who have lost trust in state and system, they’re the thick end of the wedge.

But until I feel the thick end of it, I’m not unduly bothered.

Such is life lived through, around and – it sometimes seems – for football.

No, other than if I come across some numbnut hogging the middle lane or parking in a parent/child space at ASDA, it’s when the powers-that-be leave their scar on the Beautiful Game that I come over all Citizen Smith.

I just hope not too many Newcastle United fans are bearing literal scars when they wake up – wherever they wake up – on January 7.

For only then, the morning after the night before, will we be able to measure the folly of the decision to switch United’s FA Cup tie at Stoke to a Sunday evening.

It should come as no surprise that football’s lawmakers agreed to the game being delayed for live BBC TV coverage.

The fixture list makes their indifference to the plight of travelling North East fans clearer every year.

Why expect people who happily send supporters of Sunderland to Reading on December 22, Newcastle to Chelsea on December 29 or Middlesbrough to Birmingham on Boxing Day and Portsmouth three days later, to care how several thousand Geordies get back from the Potteries on a work night?

(The 9.45pm train from Stoke gets into Newcastle – that’s upon Tyne, not Under-Lyme – at 10 to three on Monday morning. So that’s all right then . . .)

However, I had reckoned on the actual law – the police, that is – having rather more to say on the subject.

That’s what with them having first-hand recollection of what happened the last time the Magpies visited Stoke.

I can only assume that most of the coppers unfortunate enough to get caught up in by far the worst trouble I have seen in 15 years covering Newcastle have been retired on medical grounds.

And when I say by far the worst, I mean by light years.

I’ve seen plenty of punch-ups and macho posturing in that time, but the night of October 25, 1995 was my only first-hand experience of women and even children being attacked.

Geordie women and children, that is. By natives supposedly provoked by talk of a local girl being assaulted by away fans.

That talk was false. The reality, as their enduring reputation for thuggery suggests, was of a bunch of provincial meatheads putting on their idea of “a show” on the rare as hens’ teeth occasion when a big club came to town.

So I ask again: what are the police playing at? And is football so beholden to TV that it shirks all responsibility for public safety?

I’ve no problem with this game being moved to a Sunday. It’s a potentially decent cup tie with obvious upset potential.

Equally significantly, it means no clash with the visit of Cardiff (Stoke’s biggest hooligan rivals) to neighbouring Chasetown or Port Vale on the Saturday.

But is it too much to ask that it be played at a time on a Sunday when a) Newcastle fans can get home at a half-decent hour and b) get home safe because the local Neanderthals haven’t been fuelled by a day’s worth of lager?