Don’t know where to start on yesterday’s events. I can only describe it as my worst experience at a game since 1978 Ipswich away in the cup, I don’t go to games which don’t involve pools.
As a 16 year old with three other 16 year olds, we went the wrong way leaving Portman Road and asked a ‘police officer’ if he could direct us to a certain point and his reply was the worst piece of officiating I had witnessed until yesterday. We asked can you tell us where such and such a place is, we were getting picked up there, his reply astounded me as a 16 year old kid “I don’t know son but I wouldn’t stay around here it’ll be bad for your health”. Something i’ll never ever forget.
That’s where we were yesterday back in the 1970’s.
It was awful but all preventable. The referee’s decision to award a penalty incensed certain sections of the town end, must admit most of them were closer than the referee to the incident. Was it Effiong who slid into Cunningham(?) didn’t look like a penalty from where I was in the town end, but the person with the whistle thought it was.
Effiong dispatched the spot kick expertly and could easily have turned to his team mates and celebrated within the boundaries of the playing area. He chose not too, instead he chose to incite an affray by celebrating along the touch line with a gesture intended to increase tensions amongst an already baying crowd.
He was allowed to do this by the referee and his team mates where allowed to join him outside the white lines without intervention from the officials. All it needed was the referee to blow his whistle approach the player and have a quick chat. He didn’t, he watched as the players taunted a baying public then continued to watch as events unfolded and ended in an absolute shameful shambles. There is no excusing what transpired, absolutely appalling behaviour from fans and so called professionals.
“The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is that good men do nothing”
This is exactly what the referee did ‘nothing’, other than watch and he looked on as though he was enjoying it. He was as far removed from a good man as Idi Amin however evil did well and truly triumph.
Dover players taunting the home fans and doing just enough to get the reaction they [Dover players] wanted, sparking a display of gesticulating and holding back each other of midnight Saturday down church street proportions. Pools players engaging with our own public etc. All avoidable.
From this point on his vendetta toward HUFC was laid bare for all to see, his decision making was so unilateral it wouldn’t have been out of place in the communist manifesto.
Behaviour like this will keep me away from the vic if it continues, the so called professionals in this league are anything but. This is the second incident of incitement I have witnessed from a National league player in the last 9 months, the previous being an opposition player engaging in banter with the crowd and it ending with him losing his sh*t and spitting toward a section of the crowd.
Again non of this excuses the events of yesterday but so called professionals have to display a certain amount of holding their sh*t together. They have to decide whether to just walk away or provoke a reaction.
