00:00 The recent Weartime Derby saw Newcastle United supporters escorted to Sunderland Stadium
00:08 of Light on buses provided to them by the club. This was in accordance with police rules
00:14 and regulations that allowed Newcastle to obtain up to 6,000 tickets at the Stadium
00:19 of Light. It was also done to prevent the two sets of supporters clashing, with no Newcastle
00:25 fans being allowed to travel to the match on their own or via public transport, suggesting
00:31 that the threat of violence was a very real one. When the Newcastle supporters arrived
00:36 in Sunderland, they were kept well away from their North East rivals. And more recently,
00:42 at the Black Country Derby, violence broke out within the stadium. Charles Haig Jones,
00:47 a Wolves fan, told me more.
00:49 Yeah, it was, you know, bad scenes. You don't really want to see that inside the ground
00:54 at a football game. It delays play and it gets people wondering. Of course, it was near
00:59 the family section as well. So things could have got a lot worse, I feel. I thought the
01:05 police and the stewarding dealt with it really fast and well. So, yeah, it's not nice scenes,
01:12 but certainly it was dealt, you know, the way it should have done. I think, you know,
01:18 it's hard to say that violence could be on the rise with how football was in the late
01:23 80s, early 90s. This was happening every week. So, yeah, it's tough to say that it's on the
01:29 rise. It may well be because just the occasions can get to some fans. Obviously, you know,
01:35 these fans haven't met for a while, Wolves and West Brom. Obviously, the last time they
01:39 played was Covid, so they didn't meet there. You know, the same could be said for Newcastle
01:44 and Sunderland. It just sort of bubbles over and, you know, travelling away, there's always
01:49 going to be fan warnings of safety on away games. And they can be very, very violent
01:54 places because of how the sort of police deal with them in different areas of the continent.
02:01 But yeah, I think sometimes the occasions can get to them. And, you know, we have seen
02:07 a slight rise since, you know, after the Covid season. You know, maybe there was just so
02:12 much built up whilst being stuck inside. They wanted to get back to the football and things
02:17 like that can happen. But yeah, as I say, I think the policing has certainly stepped
02:20 up at football games. There's a lot more control. There's a lot more, you know, getting fans
02:26 to and from the ground, from the train station, for example, at Wolves. I see them now. And
02:31 yeah, it's, you know, a lot more controlled. And I think it's definitely going to stop
02:37 violence rising. But, you know, it's always going to happen. I feel that it's never going
02:41 to end. There's always a few fans that will disagree and try to take it that bit further.
02:46 But yeah, the policing is always on point. They're always planning. And yeah, I don't
02:51 think there's a massive reason for it. But yeah, I think we are always going to see it
02:56 and it will slowly, slowly start to go down, I think, with the police presence.
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