Stab victim underlines all that is wrong in the game

Yesterday, I was involved in a typical Sunday morning football match. A few overage, overweight lads turned out with a dusty head from the night before and an enthusiasm that their legs could no longer match.

A couple of dodgy tackles went in from both sides, words were exchanged and then forgotten. At the end of the 90 minutes we all shook hands and headed to the pub to dissect what was a decent game played in the right spirit: competitive, yet fun for all involved. The plan was to have a beer or two and then get off to spend the rest of the day with our families.

Except we didn’t get as far as the pub because the police had cordoned off both exits from the ground. It was also a crime scene.

A footballer on an adjacent pitch had stabbed one of the opposing team’s players.

The Metropolitan Police have confirmed an altercation between two players took place during the game and again afterwards, at which point the victim was stabbed once in the left abdomen. He was discharged from hospital today. Four men in their twenties were arrested and charges are expected to be brought later this afternoon.

It makes you wonder. What on earth could possess someone to potentially kill an opponent, probably because of a squabble over sport?

I play football to stay fit, to see my friends, to let off steam from the previous week at work. I enjoy a rugged tackle – some you win, some you lose. I accept I may get a whack across my nose or a kick on my knee. Sometimes there’s a scuffle but it’s never more than a shove in the chest. That’s football.

But to treat a match as a matter of life and death, to abandon all morals – that’s crazy.

This episode raises several questions. Do we take our sport too seriously? Should the amateur game be policed better? Should players with a criminal history be allowed to join a team? Is park football just too dangerous? Is it worth it?

I don’t want to fear for my life when I turn out on a Sunday. I don’t want to look every member of the opposition in the eye and wonder which one has a knife. I don’t want my family to worry every time I play.

Perhaps I’m being melodramatic. Maybe this is an isolated incident but I doubt it.

Tell me if you have witnessed similar incidents. Because if you have, it’s time something was done.

Frank Praverman

Comments

[Kris Hall]

I to was playing on an adjacent pitch and was appalled by this incident, 20 years i've been playing adult sunday league and have never known anything like it. The player with the knife wasn't even registered for the team and was by all accounts not known to them!!!! Crazy, there was a time when the worst that could happen during a sunday morning match was a broken leg. What is the world(England) coming too. I think too many players are high and out of control from the saturday nights drug fest.

[LTS_3]

I play in the Teesborough League (based in Middlesbrough and surrounding areas). A few months ago we had a game in which one player on the opposing team was sent off.
During the process of being given a talking to and the red card from the referee, the player threatened the official numerous times. He eventually left the field and the game continued.
5 minutes later there was a break in play in which the ball went over a fence - a few things were said/shouted by both teams, which resulted in the dismissed player running from his team's sideline, across the pitch to our sideline, wielding a HAMMER.
He then threatened our manager with the hammer. After a few words he walked away without actually doing anything.
The referee abandoned the match.
The story made the local paper and the matter is still in the hands of the league/North Riding/FA and police

[Volkan]

I think you'll find its generally the uneducated, underachieving oiks who are responsible for the trouble. A football pitch is the only place where they feel successful, pathetic really.

[Mike Jones]

Whilst living in Mexico, I went over to Venezuela to visit a friend. At a football match over there one of the teams scored only to be followed by gunshots aimed at the oppossing supporters. Apparently this is not uncommon but experiencing it first hand was bl**dy scarry!

[ManchesterBen]

At University I play in many football leagues - 5-a-side 6-a-side, 11-a-side; yet all are self-refeered. A recipe for disaster you'd think but 99% of the time games pass off completely incident free. In fact, the only team who seem intent on fighting and causing trouble are the bunch of locals who play on a Sunday morning - perhaps it's not the sport to blame but the type of person who is playing. Read into this what you like, but I bet deep down many of you will agree.

[John]

I gave up playing in Manchester because it was nothing to do with football - the majority of the teams we're out to "prove how hard they were" There was at least 1 sending off per match, the referees were subjected to awful abuse and "fans" on teh sidelines would often lose control and start threatening opposing fans.

Personally I think it's an English disease. It's the same attitude as you see on a Saturday night in any town, scraps for the sake of fighting. Hard man syndrome.

Embarassing.

[Cam]

In the early 90's I used to play in a team called Nags Head United FC. The side was made up of British and Irish lads/drunks (and a sensible American keeper) and played in third third division of the New York Metropolitan League, a venerable old league that had been around since the 20's when Scandinavians and Germans fresh of the boat would band together in teams and earn money in a kind of semi-pro capacity.

Our home turf was Randall's Island ( New York's Hackney marshes where the Cosmos uses to play league games in the early 70's)

The league I played in was NYC in microcosm- Turkish teams, ethnic former Yugoslavian teams from all over the city (those matches were ripe) a Jamaican side called Shaka Zulu and an Albanian side called Belmont Rovers from the Bronx; worth noting for their horrible racism towards our five black players, and the way they 'objected' to us pulling back a two-goal deficit with ten minutes to go.

That match was abandoned and I spent 10 days in hospital with a hand injury.

Other notable incidents? One of our lads coming on as a sub and having his leg broken fivce minutes later on purpose, and one time when the Egyptian team we were playing all went to their cars to get wheel braces and other blunt objects after one of our guys celebrated scoring too heartily. (I think their silky skills were stifled by our own Billy Bremner and Norman Hunter types at the back.)

The same incident became more surreal when their centre-half pulled out a gun and a badge and declared himself to be NYPD. He wasn't there to protect and serve us that day.

There's no moral to this story. Just a recollection prompted by the stabbing. Sometimes the teams we played were friendly other times not. But Sunday morning hangovers can go either way on a footy pitch no matter where you are...

[Ian Tinn]

I don't think we take our sport too seriously. It is not about sport at all.

It is just that, as you say, we have abandoned all morals. You can see it everywhere.

[Mal Lee]

This is certainly not an isolated incident.

We have been campaigning against this for 5 years now and have over 30,000 active members who are combating this growing issue.

We have evidence of hundreds of similar incidents - refs attacked with baseball bats, kids beaten up by adults, adults beaten up by kids etc etc etc.

Our Campaign works, but we still have a long way to go as this story proves only too well!!!

[Jim Erricson]

This is very sad and just highlights what a crazy world we live in. That these psychopaths are out there because that is basically what they are. Football is an emotional game and sometimes it gets heated but to want to stab someone is just crazy.There are so many of them around and the ones i have come across i can remember playing as a teenager and having a disgreement with the opposite side,the boy instantly threaten to stab me after the game,that he wld as soon as the match was over. I just remember being shocked at what was coming out of his mouth even though i knew these type of people were around. Looking at him spouting all this abuse, and he was a young boy just thought what scum. Luckily for me my team were very supportive and we stood united at the end of the game but it just shows you how people will take something that is supposed to be a game and turn it into something tragic and violent. Over the sake of his upset of legally winning the ball off of him. And the amount of abuse some refs get is just a joke its a difficult job. Thats why it is unacceptable when u see the kind of behaviour from players like ex- Ashley Cole. He is paid hundreds of thousands of pounds,and yet he conducts himself in that way, a seasoned professional,that kind of behaviour shouldnt be acceptable frm a young boy let alone an adult. He was in the wrong and he knew full well what he was doing. I know this is not harming someone but he is a role model and these things have ripple effects into society and the F.A didnt even make an example of him. Some refs in sunday league take so much abuse. Who wld want to do this job with these thugs about,and also on the sidelines as well,sometimes it is a whole club that are like this,its just wrong.

[Hazry Hazer]

Well, it's almost just the same here in Malaysia. A full blooded challenge here, a little finger waging there and a bit of a mouthful to your opponents are not highly tolerated in the amateur scene here. Who you play against in these games really need to be scrutinised as you dont want to play against thugs that dont see it as 'if it happens on the pitch,leave it on the pitch.' Silly, really.

[Ben Graham]

Hello Frank. I was on the opposing team to you on Sunday. How your keeper stayed on the pitch was beyond me.

The owner of that ice cream van in the car park probably couldn't believe his luck, the queues were enormous whilst we waited for the police to let us leave.

But I'm trivialising what was obviously an incredibly serious incident.

I think the stabbing says a lot about the state of our society. Something like this goes against the basic principles of all sports, that it is important to act with dignity whether you win or lose. The battle is determined on the field.

When an incident like this occurs, you really appreciate how far Britain is descending into chaos. Who carries a knife to a Sunday League football match? Why? It is illogical, and completely against the competitive spirit.

[amfan]

In cardiff generally the hardest team not the most skillful wins the league, the team that will threaten to smash your teeth in. I happen to play with a bunch of idiots who argue with themselves more than anything, but who do on occasion threaten opponent players. the problem is how does one find a decent team worth playing for? where you don't have to deal with this sort of rubbish. it is unfortunately part and parcel...

[Shep]

I can recall a cup semi final on a Sunday afternoon in Leeds where three of our players were threatened with being stabbed after the game.

In the same league I also saw players waiting for the referee outside the changing rooms so they could beat him black and blue after he had sent one of them off.

Not what you want on a Sunday.

[Michael Kelly]

I retired from sunday morning football four years ago, at the ripe old age of 34, but my last game was less than the graceful bow out that I'd planned.

The player I was marking took offense at my gamesmanship, nothing serious just some jokes about how he's missed the odd shot here and there... eventually he snapped aiming a stream of expletives at me and was substituted just before the end of the game (before he was dismissed by the ref) and stormed off to his car stating that he had a knife in the boot and would be back to "sort me out".

When I was told this as the game finished I beat a retreat to the pub still in my kit... it's a game I love and still miss... but it's not worth getting stabbed for!

[Dominic]

This is why referees are disappearing fast. We are expected to try to control such dangerous thugs - who will and do turn on us. It is a miracle that one of us hasn't yet been murdered for giving an honest decision.

A couple of seasons ago one saturday parks league in West London had a spate of games where 'altercations' in car parks followed games, including the use of tyre irons, baseball bats and various other implements. The referees concerned managed to avoid the fights, but we won't always be so lucky.

[raff]

i play in the south manchester sunday league and i have been threatened with being shot when i pointed out that it had looked like the player had been shot as he went down. it isnt a threat you take lightly round these parts

[Steve Rumble]

I've played in the Reading Sunday League for nearly 20 years and have never seen any knife-wielding players. It's far from perfect, I'll admit, and refs should be shown a little more respect, but then that's a problem at all levels.

I think the biggest problem in local football is 'over enthusiatic' spectators (if you're unlucky enough to have any) who pick arguments with match officials and rival players.

[Trinca Viorel]

verry intresting , cool

[Andrew Gibbons]

There are regular threats of knives in and around the Reading and District sunday football league. I have heard of isolated incidents when someone has gone too far and lashed out, but only one confirmed incident where a referee was stabbed over a poor decision. Unfortunately it is a man's game and some men are idiots!