There’s something not quite right about modern sports fans. Not all of them, mind you, but a significant enough proportion that the rest of us get to bask in the reflected glory of their collective stupidity.

Exactly why it is not enough just to go and watch a sporting contest is a complete mystery. It says something very significant about a society that requires riot police to attend sports to separate the fans. It says even more when people are killed for supporting their club or when trying to intervene to protect the innocent.

Thankfully, we rarely see tragedies such as those at Heysel Stadium in Brussels (1985), where 39 fans lost their lives after rioting between Liverpool and Juventus fans. These terrible affairs should be a thing of the past, but recent events are starting to hint at a re-emergence. The tragic events in Italy led to games being cancelled or played in empty stadiums after a police officer and a manager of an amateur side were killed in separate brawls.

Soccer fans have traditionally been the ones most readily associated with anti-social behaviour at matches. English supporters were widely regarded as the elite when it came to hooliganism, but it has spread much wider now. In fact, crowd violence at English Premier League matches is rare these days. The same cannot be said for the rest of the world.

No one should assume that this is a new phenomenon. As early as 1365, Edward III banned football because it was too violent. It was, however, the on-field violence that was the cause for concern. Today’s game is so sanitised that maybe the more animalistic urges that were previously satisfied by watching the on-field violence, are now expressed by fans attacking each other.

Football is one of those sports that is capable of generating intense drama. There is tremendous tension that can build up throughout a game, often without release when games end in a scoreless draw or narrow loss. Football clubs also evoke fierce loyalty from their fans who become almost tribal when amongst other like-minded individuals. The combination of these two elements, it seems, can lead to the eruptions that regularly make the news cycle. When the matches are international, the stakes are ratcheted up a notch.

Although football historically gets the most attention for bad behaviour, sports supporters all over the globe are getting in on the act. Even the comparatively genteel sport of cricket has had its controversies. Recent taunting of South African players by Pakistani fans led to the infamous Herschelle Gibbs outburst. South African fans apparently returned the favour, causing Shahid Afridi to strike out at one of them with his bat.

Crowd violence erupts regularly in the sub-continent when games or decisions don’t meet with crowd approval. Only last year, a riot broke out when an England-India match was abandoned after heavy rain.
Surprisingly this anti-social trait has even been evident in China. Crowds at basketball matches have spat and hurled bottles and other rubbish at players and officials. Interestingly, officials mention these acts in the same sentence as booing, suggesting that slightly different standards of behaviour are expected, but it seems that nowhere is immune to this problem.

The Mexican wave has been banned in Australia to curb loutish behaviour. While this may seem like the ultimate case of the fun police getting out of control, it has become necessary because it has been hijacked by idiots who want an excuse to launch projectiles into the air. Although the stuff thrown is usually unlikely to cause injury, the geniuses who do this fling beer, pies or even cups full of urine into the air – not what you would want to be covered with while watching the cricket.

Also in Australia, Rugby League has had its share of violence at matches over the past few years, spearheaded by Canterbury Bulldogs supporters. AFL football, too, is not immune from the poor behaviour of its fans. It is now considered completely acceptable to issue forth with streams of abuse and swearing vivid enough to make a sailor blush – and that’s just from little old ladies. But the violence is restricted to isolated incidences with individuals,  not gangs. The point is perhaps worth noting that Rugby League and Australian Rules football are both very physical sports and corresponding crowd violence is low.

Actual violence in sports crowds is very rare in Australia and battles between large groups of fans is unheard of – with one notable exception. Australian soccer has a chequered history with regard to crowd violence. Administrators went to great lengths to break the nexus between clubs and ethnic groups – forcing the removal of all ethnic references in the club names. Sides such as Adelaide Juventus, Sydney Croatia and South Melbourne Hellas were forced to change to Adelaide City, Sydney City and South Melbourne. The name changes were simple, habits of generations are much harder to change and brawls between opposing fans persist.

Crowd violence in North America is also very rare, particularly between groups of opposing fans. The most recent examples of extreme crowd violence all occurred in Canada after ice-hockey games. The violence was perpetrated against property and police who tried to intervene. In two of the three cases the riots were celebratory after Montreal won the Stanley Cup. Again, North America is home to two of the most violent sports on earth, ice hockey and American football and yet has little in the way of crowd violence. Coincidence? Maybe not.

Making football a more violent sport probably isn’t the answer and the reasons behind the anti-social behaviour is obviously much deeper than a simple correlation with the physicality of the sport. English grounds now resemble high-security prisons with the amount of surveillance that is present. That, coupled with some family-oriented marketing and remodelling of grounds into all-seat stadiums, have enabled the sane people to recapture the stands.

It seems sad that it has got to this stage, but maybe that is what is necessary and maybe it’s not that big a price to pay to enjoy our chosen sport in peace. Whatever the solution, deaths at sporting events should never be tolerated and let us hope that we never consider it a normal occurence.

Do you feel there is the right balance between surveillance and liberty at sports events? Send your views to Sportingo.