CLUBS HAVE TO STOP IDIOTS OF ANY AGE FROM CONFRONTING PLAYERS
IN the days of Erika Roe (Google it, youngsters), it was a novelty – now, it seems, there are t**s running on to the pitch every other minute.
One of the latest (below) got his comeuppance when Sam Kerr upended him with a shoulder charge straight out of Aussie Rules football.
Her violent intervention prompted one of my press box colleagues to wonder if we could already decorate the Chelsea women’s team striker with the footballer-of-the-year garland.
She would have my vote.
For decking the dimwit who sauntered on to the field of play, Kerr got a yellow card ( far right).
Actually, it should have been a red, but most of us would have given her a medal.
Yet, what if the clown who cantered among the players in the Chelsea-Juventus game had been a violent type?
What if he had responded by assaulting Kerr? There was not a steward or a rozzer in sight.
Randoms galloping on to the field of play is becoming a norm.
And it is not funny.
It is going to end in tears. A recent trend has been for kids, even toddlers, to scamper on, unaccompanied.
A nipper darted on and nicked the match ball after a recent Champions League game at Anfield.
An ankle-biter persuaded Bernardo Silva to part with his jersey after a match at the Etihad.
Parents are not sending their children down the mines any more... they are sending them on to football fields to get gear for eBay.
Sorry for the humbug at this time of the year, but it is NOT cute.
If you allow your little ’un to invade a pitch, you should be punished as if you had done it.
Only here, that would be next to nothing anyway. In
Australia, pitch invaders can expect $10,000 fines and life-time bans.
It should be the same here. At the end of the Merseyside derby earlier this month, the pitch looked like throwing-out time in Liverpool city centre.
Mohamed Salah had to be escorted away, but, thankfully, no one was hurt.
But it is only a matter of time. People will point to the pitch invasions of yesteryear and say it has always happened. True. But this is the 21st century. This is an era when who knows what an intruder could be carrying or wants to do?
This is not scaremongering. The field of play should be a sanctuary for the players. If I had my way, managers would not even be allowed on it.
And that is why clubs – and the law – should multiply their efforts to stop idiots, of whatever age, confronting players.
There was only one winner when Kerr kiboshed the character who thought it was a good idea to get a selfie while a game was in progress. That will not always be the case.
It was amusing when Erika Roe streaked across the Twickenham pitch almost 40 years ago.
But the people who are exposed now are the sportsmen and women who deserve safety in their workplace.