Crowd Control

In the wake of a recent increase of crowd disturbances in French football stadia the LFP has introduce a number of new measures intended to help route out the idiots. To be honest I'm not sure what they are so worried about as crowd trouble as we know it in England, Holland and Italy is for the most part non existent unless PSG or Marseille come to town. There have of course been other high profile incidents this season that may have forced the FFF and LFP officials into being seen to take some action, namely the missile throwing by Lille fans in the Champions League debacle against Man Utd, but it seems particular attention has been given to the lighting of flares within grounds. Pyrotechnics at French football is so commonplace that to the outsider it could seem that they are perfectly legal but in reality it is an offence which can land the perpetrater a prison sentence of up to two years. Like most things in continental football this rule is so under policed that a scarf around the face is usually enough to save the offender any risk of prosecution and despite warnings on tickets and over the PA before a game it seems that quietly the clubs actually like them. Whilst no one can deny that they contribute to the atmosphere, as seen by the above photo of Beşiktaş fans during a UEFA Cup tie at Bayer Leverkusen, two incidents in particular have led to a general rethink of policy. Earlier this season a young policeman had two fingers blown of by a flare thrown at him by a Marseille fan during the derby with Nice and then just a couple of weeks ago the St Etienne-Lyon derby was held up for half an hour as a lit flare was thrownfirst into the away fans and then sent hurtling back to where it came from. Sactions were promised after both incidents but whilst Marsielle were forced to play a game behind closed doors (hardly a long-term cure) St Etienne and Lyon seem to have been left alone.
Clearly then these things need to be eradicated from the stands (no matter how much I like them) as any object than can be used as a real weapon has no place in a football ground. Throwing an empty plastic bottle is one thing, throwing a lighted flare into a densly populated stand is a whole different matter. On top of the obvious dangers of blinding and burning on impact, a flare landing in the crowd could cause widespread panic and as we saw in the Lille-Man Utd game, many grounds still have riot fencing intact. The combination of fireworks, mass panic, riot fencing and over zealous policing is pretty much as big a nightmare as can be imagined and could well lead to a French Hillsborough.
So here then is the new legislation set up by the LFP for the policing of pyrotechnics in football stadia:

"Smoke-producing and projectiles.
To definitively eradicate the introduction of dangerous objects into the stands, it was decided to reinforce safety measures upon entrance and evacuation of the stadium. For this purpose, an operation will be carried out jointly with the Directorate-General of the National police force (DGPN) and the LFP for:
To train the stadium security authorities effectively
Audit the quality of controls to the entry of the stand
To systematize the evacuation of the stands and the whole of the buildings by the police force before the matches under conditions allowing the full effectiveness of this control.
The Commission of Discipline of the LFP received the directives to apply all the range of the sanctions concerned with its competence in the event of nonrespect of these provisions."

Basically that means that for the first time ever, authorities will conduct full searches on ALL fans entering the stadium - including the so called 'Ultra groups' who are responsible for bringing these things in. It is genuinely surprising that to conduct stringent searches on supporters and to practice evacution procedures in case of crowd trouble is NEW legislation. Surely you would have thought this to be a basic rquirement? Recent events in have Italy no doubt frightened the LFP into action, but one hopes French crowds will not be diluted into the boring 'sit-down shut-up' stadiums that we in England have to endure at extortionate prices.

Picture once again from the King of all ground hopping sites www.groundhopping.de

Bravo Bordeaux!!

Whilst Oxford flounder in a stormy sea of inconsistancy, Bordeaux ride the waves with a renewed vigour like a beautiful antique clipper with the wind billowing in their sails. "Champions League - ho!!! Cries First Mate Darcheville to Lieutenant Micoud, as out of nowhere 3rd place in Le Championnat becomes an surprise possibility. Having in the last four battles confidently disposed of the men from Montbelliard and Valenciennes and fought respectable stalemates at Sedan and Monaco more than matching the Monaguesque Kings finest troops at Stade Louis II, Les Girondins almost by accident sit 3rd in the table. Not that I'm for a moment questioning the ability of Admiral Ricardo's management, its just that even he couldn't really have envisaged that considering the woeful start to the season the soldiers of the Scapulaire would still have an outside shot at the big time with nine games to go. With Ligue 1 as tight as ever (only 4 ponts seperate Bordeaux from 11th Placed Rennes) and given the quality of the chasing pack (Lille, Marseille, St Etienne) finishing third would be quite some achievement, perhaps UEFA Cup football via either 4th place, the Intertoto cups or even winning next weeks Coupe de la Ligue will be the more likely outcome.













Top picture is from the official website www.girondins.com, the other is my own.

Forget it then.

Oxford 0-1 Kidderminster. They deserved it, we were rubbish. Daggers won at St Albans to go 11 points clear with a game in hand and basically clinched the title. Well done to them.
Tomorrow we go to Altrincham to begin the new objective of making sure we stay in the playoffs.

St Etienne vs Lyon = More fun than Oxford

Last week Lyon strolled to a 3-1 away at fierce local rivals St Etienne. This derby is possibly the most passionate in France - arguably eclipsing the PSG/Marseille rivalry. The game was held up for about half an hour after a flare was thrown into the Lyon fans!!






















St Etienne's ground in known as the Cauldren for reasons which I'm told speak for themselves if you see a game there. The supporters group 'Magic Fans 91' are some of the best in Europe and have a long standing friendship with the Ultramarines 86 of Bordeaux.

The pictures are taken from www.groundhopping.de which is simply the best football ground website on the internet.

Oxford United 0-2 Forest Green

Did that really happen?? Yes it did. We were beaten two nil at home by a part time team from a village. Daggers are still 8 points clear but now have a game in hand. We play Kiddy at home tomorrow and Dagenham play... actually sod it it doesn't matter, I don't want to talk about it...

Une saison contradictoire

What is going on at Bordeaux? For a start my 'easy money' 11/1 bet on them to win the league now looks like £5 down the Paddypower drain as they are currently in 6th place and a whopping 21 points behind runaway (again) leaders Lyon. Despite some impressive victories over the likes of Marseille at home and PSG at the Parc de Princes not to mention being the only club to win at Gerland the home of the mighty OL, they have struggled to find any real consitancy and have suffered some woeful results both home and away. The objective every season has got to be to play in a European tournament and since Les Girondins are hanging around the Inter-toto spot and still well in touch with the UEFA spots you can't be too harsh. Frustratingly whilst last year they were drawing games that they should have won, this season they are being beaten regularly in games where a draw would have been acceptable. Hopefully they will sort themselves out and put a winning run together to consolidate their place in the top half as the league is once again so tight that a run of three defeats could see you fighting the drop whereas three wins will probably put you second!
Unfortunately the European dream is well and truely over this year after being dumped out of the UEFA Cup by a 120th minute Osasuna goal. In truth Bordeaux never really looked like getting much out of this Basque 'derby' of sorts and the pitifully low attendance at the Parc Lescure leg summed up the genral feeling around the club. Now that the European distractions are out of the way perhaps they can concentrate on sorting out the faltering domestic season and ensure another crack at Europe next September.
At the end of the month it is the eagerly awaited Coupe de la Ligue final at the Stade de France against Lyon. I had come very close to getting tickets for this from www.francebillet.net but by the time I had ran a hotel and Eurostar search they had gone off general sale!! As Wayne and Garth would say "Denied!!!" Before the big final though there are three league games to contend with starting with Sochaux at home this coming saturday in a repeat of the fixture I managed to get to last year. Although Sochaux are much improved this year a win is both expected and imperitive.

The times they are a changin'

Having gone for what seemed like about 30 years without a win we have now won four in a row, going to show how quickly things can change in football. Unfortunately Dagenham have been on a similar run but we have now managed to reduce the 10 point gap to a more respectable 8.We've been to some dodgy places this season but as far as names go 'The Lamb Ground' in Tamworth is just weird. A small, tidy but unremarkable ground, the Lamb would not be out of place in Conference South and indeed probably will be next year as they sit firmly rooted to the bottom. I hope this doesn't seem like I am running Tamworth down as I'm not, I have a mutual respect for any football club from grass roots through to the Man Utd's and Madrid's of this world but the town, ground and crowd are nothing really to write home about. Not for the first time this season we packed out the away end selling our allocation of 850 a few days before the game and gave the team good vocal support from start to finish.
To walk a way with a 3-1 victory was satisfying as despite still not being right ourselves, Tamworth were awful and it is about time we started putting away teams at the bottom more convincingly. A good trip all round was made even better by a superb pre-match burger in a pub before and then taking only an hour and a half to get home. A fully successful day out!!A week later we played hosts to Stevenage Borough who are one of the strongest teams in this league and on a good run of form. It was generally accepted that this would be one of our most difficult game to date but for some reason Stevenage just didn't seem to turn up. Having ran us ragged with only nine men back at their place I was worried that they could pull off a result at Minchery but on the day they were uncharacteristically rubbish and we were uncharacteristically superb!! Although 2-0 doesn't exactly look like a thrashing we totally dominated the game and won at a canter.
For 44 minutes it seemed that despite battering Stevenage it was going to be another frustrating afternoon but when Matt Day headed home on the stroke of half time I and probably everyone else in the ground couldn't help thinking that was game over. The excellent Eddie Anaclet sealed the game with a deflected shot in the second half to wrap a thoroughly deserved victory, our third on the trot.As if to make a mockery of our woeful 11 game winless streak the boys in yellow and blue (yes I've decided I like them again) made the long mid-week trip to Merseyside to record an incredible 1-0 away win at Anfield. Having stunning the five times European Cup winners with a glorious strike from Danny Rose the travelling fans completely outsung the Kop for 90 minutes... Ok only joking it was Southport, but it was a great win and it was made even sweeter by Dagenham conceding a late equaliser at home to Stafford Rangers. Going 11 games without a win probably has killed off our season despite this revival but the fact is that watching Oxford is now exciting again. The fact that there is just a small chance that we can still do this has changed everyone’s outlook on the season and with Daggers still having to come to Minchery... Who knows...