Therailwayendisuponus. wrote:I wonder if any fines will be dished out to clubs, or is that reserved for Cas?

'Fines are given to the clubs that are in control of the crowd.'

Don't recall that being the case when Donny played Queens.
The RFL decide who they want to find guilty and that's it. Consistency is not in their vocabulary I'm afraid.

You make a good point about Doncaster there

Presumably the RFL are "in charge" at the Challenge Cup Final, presumably they won't fine themselves ?

Why would you want to be p!ssed when you're watching one of the greatest moments in your clubs history? Fair enough have a pint or two before the match. But being p!ssed: you won't remember half of what happened, there's a decent chance you'll be annoying the people around you and you'll be constantly getting up to go to the toilet.

I always figured that the people who go to matches bladdered don't really enjoy the sport, use it as an excuse to drink and/or need to be p!ssed to get through the match.

It's much better to watch when you're not drunk and you can have a few after the match to celebrate/drown your sorrows.

I don't for one minute think it was football fans. Don't get me wrong there will have been football fans involved at some point in time, they are everywhere cinema, ballet, boxing it is the national sport after all, but we have to swallow the fact that these are people that are there to see rugby league and do this kind of thing. If this was Leeds United fans intent on violence, which I'm not saying for one second it was, then surely they would go looking for it away from the ground at a pub or club rather than the hi-tech Wembley with camera's at every turn. They could probably have got a lot more, risk free from being arrested violence in this way. That is the way a group intent on trouble like this with no tickets would work. Going into the ground to cause trouble in football has long since gone and many with that mind set will not risk it even at football games.

Alcohol certainly plays a part but what do you do? Ban it in the stadium and it cuts down a small percentage of the overall intake and in many cases sees a last minute speed up in drinking to compensate. I also think it is the individual that it is down to. That is why you see the same old faces causing drunken trouble in pubs and clubs up and down the country on a weekend night. I bet those of us that go out have somebody in mind now who we could put their antics down to them as a person. Alcohol just brings out their inner nature that more readily.

What do we do about it? I think as the tickets are on sale all year to split the draw early doors, like Wimbledon. Then allocate each side of the draw each end of the ground. This way you'll know where your team will be if they get there and it will mean fans will not buy tickets in the wrong areas accidentally if this is thought to be the case. Personally I do not, which is why I buy my tickets on the side where there is usually a good mix of fans. Buy them on an end early enough and the chances are you're going to be in a partizan area with a large group of one clubs fans. Being a Crusaders fan I can safely say quite early it isn't going to be our club . The splitting of the draw takes some of the magic and randomness of the draw away but might be a small price to pay. This split could be held back until maybe quarter final or semi finals and could go some way to stop those problems.

In my opinion the biggest deterrent would be to use the camera system that is in place at Wembley and take action against those involved. It happens in football all the time. My football club, Cardiff City, have put faces of fans on front and back pages of papers down here before, identified and banned those fans. It wouldn't cost a lot to do the same in league. As I say it would be the biggest deterrent. It would also send out a big message to those at games that they are being watched and can't do such things. Maybe a piece in the programme and on the websites of all league clubs for a few games before the final telling them how many camera's are in and outside Wembley stadium and exactly what they can see and with how much detail might be the helping hand that some need not to cause trouble.

Imagine a town of 85,000 people. In that town, would there be any crime and arrests in the course of day? Now put that town of people on top of each other in half a square mile, and make sure many of them have had plenty of booze. Add in a dash of tribal rivalry between one half of the townsfolk and the other. It's remarkable, and a credit to Rugby League and a huge, huge majority of its supporters, that there was so *little* trouble and in the vast majority of the "town" people mixed with no problems.

(This is not to condone trouble-makers, or take away from it being unfortunate that some people had a great day spoiled by idiots, but to get in perspective exactly how bad or widespread the trouble was.)

dead set the amount of chat about a single fight on here is amazing

It wasn't just a scuffle though, quite a few were involved for quite some time.

I dare say if the stewards had not got involved it could have escalated into something a far lot worse. No side were backing down, let's put it that way.

The fact that it happened at all, especially at a rugby league match, should be a cause for concern.

But some people on these forums..................

6 page thread on a single fight?


this thread is a beat up

Well you could see this single fight from the other side of the stadium. The whole block seemed to be involved.