Hampden safety & operations manager Brian Muir
“THE SFA are the hosts for a game like this, but they give me primacy over all safety and security issues throughout the match, although clearly if it was to get to the point where something was becoming a major crime situation or a major security situation, then I would hand primacy over to the match commander. Last year’s Scottish Cup final is the only time we have had to do that in the seven years I have been here.
Once we know these fixtures are coming, there is a thing called the networking group, which sits on a regular basis and works on the high-level stuff. There is a pre-operations meeting about a month out and then an operations meeting a few days out. These involve the clubs, police, fire, ambulance, and the merchandising, commercial, and communication departments at Hampden.
On match day, I am in the control room, where the police commander has his or her controllers and support staff and I have G4S staff who I direct. We also have medical and fire supervisors in there, communications staff, and people to control the PA stream and CCTV.
The SFA have their own security and integrity officer, Peter McLaughlin, but it tends to be the police who will speak to the players and clubs before the match, in this case match commander Alan Murray. I have done that before as a senior police officer, and the players’ eyes glaze over. There is a thing called the Lord Advocate’s Guideline. It is a pretty boring document and it is given to the players verbatim but the stance I used to take was saying ‘ look guys, it is a heat-of-themoment game, I get that, but please try to be aware of the effect your actions could have on the crowd’.
There is also a police briefing of the refereeing team about an hour before kick-off, flagging up issues such as which fans are where, and where any risk groups might be located.
The Scottish Cup semi-finals are probably the busiest weekend of my year – I will start around 7.30am on Saturday and Sunday and work through to early evening. After Saturday, everything has to be cleared again for the Sunday, and it is my call to open the gates, so I have to make sure all the checks are done and the stadium is absolutely safe. My name is on the safety certificate.
I don’t find Celtic-Rangers more challenging than any other game because the majority of fans are decent fans who know what they are doing. It is only the minority who are intent on noising up the opposition. There are risk groups within both sets of fans, who like to sing certain songs, display certain banners and occasionally let off pyros, so we have to look at searching them, and getting intelligence from the SFA, police intelligence channels and the club’s own safety organisations. That is all fed into the pot.”