20
Monday, December 22, 2009
The Daily News
COMMENT AND FEATURES
The man who tackles football hooligans Alex Campbell meets the safety officer determined to fight the ghosts of football’s past lan Bexon is a key player at a European Cup winning football club. In a few days time he will welcome 25,000 people into his place of work, and his performance on the day may decide whether or not his public go home happy – or furious. But Alan is not a football player. He is the safety officer at Nottingham Forest, a club struggling near the foot of the Championship. Win, lose or draw, the only reaction he expects will arrive in the shape of a sharplyworded letter.
Every time a fan is ejected from of the stadium, every time police swoop to make an arrest, and every time a hooligan is banned from coming to the ground again – it is Alan’s call. I dodge a bucket collecting dripping water on my way into his office. A hasty joke about the credit crunch and the club’s budget follows. “Oh, it’s been here longer than that,” he assures me. Slumped behind a cluttered desk, arms folded, he stares beyond his computer screen. I don’t blame him. Bexon’s view is not the usual collage of family photographs and post-it notes. Instead, looming large behind the glass is the moist City Ground turf – glistening in orange sunlight and guarded by a fortress of empty red seats. “I know you will probably come here with misconceptions, because things are said and things are written. I understand that,” he says. “A lot of people will tell you that I’m the man who bans people, the big bad wolf if you like.” In many respects he is. On a particularly feisty afternoon ten or more fans can be dragged out, often kicking and screaming, and some will not be asked back. It isn’t just games on his patch. After studying evidence of fans fighting at a game in Luton Town last year, Bexon issued 24 bans on behalf of the club, all to supporters who sat together in one block of the ground. “It’s a private ground,” he says. “I will do whatever it takes to protect my staff, and the other people in here. “We can have who we want in here and, if the message isn’t getting across, we’re free to say ‘you’re banned’.” The club is regularly contacted by police who have cautioned, or arrested, Forest supporters for fighting or vandalism at away matches. Bexon is shown video footage of culprits and he makes it his business to search them out. “That is the culture of Nottingham Forest these days. Football
Safety first: Nottingham Forest’s Alan Bexon (top right), the Heysel stadium disaster in 1985 (top left) and the City Ground, Bexon’s workplace (above). has changed”. Matching real people with the blurred images on CCTV is a daunting job. With the culprits arriving camouflaged by thousands of people wearing the same t-shirt as them it is rather like a twisted game of Where’s Wally. But Alan’s is no ordinary office. With the click of a button he becomes Big Brother. A battery of cameras around the stadium give him a fully zoomed-in view of any of the 30,576 seats. He isn’t just able to find people, he can check if they’ve shaved. Is it all necessary? The 21st century football fan seems a docile breed when compared with his forefathers. But the behaviour of the previous generation is a big part of the reason behind Bexon’s hard-line approach. “Traditionally, this club had big problems with hooligans. “Even going back as recently as six years ago we had a huge
hooligan group. Most of it has been disbanded now. There will be people who go along anyway, even if they can’t get in, but their patience fades. “If people have the opportunity to keep going to the games then there’s always a danger of history repeating itself.” It is not a history that football can afford to repeat. The sport was plagued by violence for decades; skinhead fashion in the late 1960s became full-scale gang warfare in the 1970s. Football’s image hit rock bottom when a teenager was killed after rioting at Birmingham City in 1985. Just over a fortnight later 39 people were killed and 600 injured in clashes between Liverpool and Juventus fans in Brussels. “It’s been a very slow process bringing the confidence back, but football needed to change,” Bexon says. It was the volatility of football
Credit Crunch Case Study
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Hillsborough changed the whole sport: there’s no doubt about that
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hooligans that lead to perimeter fencing being installed at grounds. It was designed to keep fans off the pitch, which it did with tragic consequences at Hillsborough in 1989, when Forest were playing a FA Cup semi-final against Liverpool. A young Alan Bexon started work at Nottingham Forest one year later. He arrived at a time when football – and government - were determined to avoid any further tragedy. “Hillsborough changed the whole sport, there’s no doubt about that. My job sitting here today is very different because of it. “Prior to that, matches were controlled by a senior police officer, the chap at Hillsborough had only worked there three games previously. By comparison, the senior officer at Villa Park for the other semi-final had done over 50 matches there. “It was probable, you could say,
that if it was going to happen, it was going to happen there. Jim at Villa Park would have known every square inch of the ground and exactly how to react.” Knowing the stadium is vital. Bexon is the man responsible for the safety of everybody inside the ground – more than 500,000 visit each season. In an emergency it is his job to tell stewards what to do and where to do it. If there is a serious injury it is his fault, no excuses. His responsibility does not end there. Every time a visiting supporter complains about rough treatment from stewards, or missiles thrown from fans above, Bexon receives a snappy letter from the FA. He has to explain quickly what is being done to stop any repeat – everything from the club’s safety certificate to the number of tickets it is allocated for away games is on the line. Prevention is preferred to
Why Scrooge is out of work The uncertainty and disappointment of Christmas with the credit crunch IT is printed on the pages of every newspaper and spread across the shelves of every supermarket. Even Ian Beale in EastEnders is getting worked up about it. Nonetheless, it is sometimes easy to forget what the credit crunch means to those who do not understand ‘the markets’ or what the FTSE index is.
For one West Midlands family the credit crunch means heartbreak – snatching lifelong memories from beneath their noses. Terry and Alison Wyke were planning on surprising their fiveyear-old son Alex with a Christmas break in Disneyland, Paris. But the increasing cost of living and the plummeting value of the pound has left the Wykes grounded. “We came within minutes of booking the tickets but, as it turns out, we would have probably had to stay at home even if we had them,” a matter-of-fact Mrs Wyke said, struggling to hide her disappointment. “Even if you’re over there, you don’t get the bargains any more because the pound and the euro are exactly the same,” her husband, who works for a stair-making firm, said. He isn’t far wrong. At their local Post Office today, where no commission is charged, £1 would have been worth €1.07. At this point in 2000 it would have been €1.70. “We know it isn’t anybody’s fault, but that doesn’t make it easier for us to take,” Mr Wyke said. “We know at the moment we’re lucky to still be in jobs, but what
Meltdown: the recession is hitting the family purse hard during the festive period gets to us is that if we’d tried to have this holiday a few years ago we’d have been able to afford it and food and drinks in Paris would have been half the price. “It isn’t just the fact that holidays are more expensive and there’s less savings, it’s the fact that a pound won’t go as far as it used to.” Fortunately for the Wykes, their son Alex was never told about the impromptu trip to Disneyland. But that doesn’t mean the credit crunch will not be lurking beneath the tree as he opens his presents on Christmas day. “There’s no doubt we’ve been more careful with what we buy this year,” said Mrs Wyke, who
recently started a new job as a receptionist. “It’s not that we don’t want to spoil him, we just can’t afford to. “I’ve spent a lot more time looking for the cheapest things instead of just picking up things I think he’d like to have.” The economic slowdown is not only a yuletide problem for families. Mrs Wyke said the weekly shop is leaving the family purse a lot lighter than it used to. “Where we used to spend £50, we’re now spending £60 or £70 on exactly the same things,” she said. “What the supermarkets are doing is keeping a lot of their prices quite low but putting the food in
smaller boxes. “At least I’ll stay slim over Christmas,” she said, laughing. “Sometimes they do two for one but the prices are double what they were six months ago,” Mr Wyke said. The Wykes are having to tighten their purse strings, but they are happy to acknowledge that they are lucky to have any Christmas cheer at all this year. Just under two million people in the country face a jobless Christmas – and for most of them a trip to Paris was never likely to be on the cards. Earlier this week furniture chain MFI ceased trading and made
1,400 people redundant. A further 30,000 face a bleak New Year when Woolworths closes its doors in a few days time. “It doesn’t feel like it but we’re probably a fair bit luckier than most people,” Mr Wyke said. “I’ve had mates laid off in the last few months, and I’ve got other people asking me if I know anywhere I can get them work because they’re worried about getting the chop as well. “Like it or not, we’ve got to be grateful for the fact that there’s a dinner on the table on Christmas” “Who knows, next year we might be thinking about whether or not we can even afford to stay in the house. “Or maybe we’ll be looking at Paris and actually getting over there- at the moment we just don’t know.” Mrs Wyke believes the only silver lining behind a credit crunch Christmas could be a return to a more traditional celebration. “I suppose it’s going to be less about boys and their toys and a lot more about playing games and spending time with family. “From our point of view, trying to raise a young child, I don’t think it will do too much harm for him to get used to Christmas being about family and not just presents. “But it’s a time for spoiling each other, and we’re obviously disappointed we can’t really do that.” Financial experts predict that the pound will continue to fall over the festive season, with more job losses likely to follow. The days of a plump orange filling up a roomy Christmas stocking might not be as far behind us as we thought.
reaction. “I would like to think that after 18 years, I know this place. You can predict things, you know how fans work, and you can see how things happen. It helps. “Having an instinct or a knack isn’t enough though – we have to have plans, real plans. We have procedures for a bomb, a gas leak, a plane crashing on the stadium. Everything.” Bexon’s filing cabinets are filled to capacity – his major incident plans are hefty tomes, and each banned supporter has a file of his own. Even so, Bexon would need a new cabinet entirely if he filed all his ‘feedback’. Not everybody who Bexon singles out for rebuke is a seasoned hooligan. Many people who receive temporary bans for minor offences besiege him with complaints – and he is regularly libelled on the internet. “I occasionally look at the internet forums. They’re incredibly negative. I know that some of the things suggested on the forums are nonsense, but you deal with it.” Bexon has to balance his yearning for a safe stadium with the knowledge that football remains an institution for many people. Hooligans are on the way out, but by no means are they taking the passion with them. With the cost of modern football, it is understandable that some fans react badly to being told that they’re barred for menial offences. “It’s not like any other association. You can change girlfriends, but never your football club. I understand that. “It is always part of my brief to the stewards that they should bear the passion in mind. “But there is another side to it. I see abuse towards the stewards that is absolutely unprovoked.” Bexon says he is as passionate about the club he works for as many of its supporters. But does this play on his mind when he hands out punishments? “I’m of the opinion that if it means someone misses a couple of matches of the team they love, and they behave thereafter, then it’s a success. “If they come and sit in a different stand with a cap over their face for those games then I still consider it a success, because they’re behaving themselves.” The abuse he gets in return, be it by email, letter or – quite literally – word of mouth, does not seem to trouble him. He is a man certain of the worth of his endeavour. “If you sit back and think about it, they don’t pay me anywhere near enough,” he says, dryly. As football continues its quest to shake off the manacles of its past, perhaps the ruthless certainty of people like Alan Bexon will prove to be exactly what it needs.
Perils of a plunging pound
2008 2000
£1 £1
€0.92 €0.57
The rising cost of holidays in Europe 2000
2008
A meal for a family of four in Pairs (€120)
£68.40
£110.40
A 4* hotel room in Milan (€150)
£85.50
£138
A large beer in a Spanish bar (€3)
£1.71
£2.76
Entry to a museum in Berlin (€6)
£3.42
£5.52
Adult entry to Madame Tussaud’s in Amsterdam (€20)
£11.40
£18.40
Lift to the top of the Eiffel Tower (€12)
£6.84
£11.04
Coffee for two in Spain or France (€5)
£2.85
£4.60