Good morning, Wrexham, and happy Sunday.
Rob and Ryan have left town.
It feels much quieter now, doesn't it?
Very much so.
It's been a rather remarkable week
with Rob and Ryan in town, but there was a sour note.
Not only did the team struggle on the pitch,
but the Torquay match ended
on a desperately despondent note
due to several acts of
violence from our supporters.
We just don't want to see this.
This club is getting more and more high profile.
We've got strong family values.
We can't have this being ruined by mindless idiots.
Well, there was a couple of incidents
that have happened at the railway station.
One gentleman,
who is actually a Wrexham fan, stood on the platform.
Witnesses observed a group of other Wrexham fans
approaching the railway station.
They engaged in some verbals with him.
They were shouting things over to him.
They then come over this bridge.
On this side of the platform
is where this all was taking place.
And then out of the 20,
five, six, maybe seven, were throwing punches towards me.
This is what you become a football fan for--
these sort of occasions.
Your club getting the opportunity to perform
when the stakes are high.
It's nerve-racking, but it's exciting.
The teams have come out.
You can hear the noise. It's a fantastic crowd.
You'll have what people call "the happy clappers."
- Oh! - God!
- When things are going really, really wrong,
we'll still clap.
- And it's like, just * off.
You have moaning supporters like me.
The amount of times I've turned around
to say "will you shut your mouth"
'cause I just can't bear it.
Let's go, Wrexham!
- You get incredibly passionate lads.
- You're probably right.
And every club has hooligans.
* off!
So obviously, we had heard of hooliganism,
or hooligans, over the years,
but we didn't really quite understand what they were
or really what that meant
until now.
The word "hooligan" popped up in the 1890s
in London, two references to the name.
One was in a serial comics publication called "Nuggets"
that depicted an Irish family living in London
by the name Hooligans.
The other was in the London newspapers in 1894,
referring to a street gang,
the Hooligan Boys,
that was committing violent crimes in South London,
including one member committing murder in 1898.
It's believed they named themselves
after Patrick Hoolihan,
an Irish criminal who murdered a police officer.
While hooliganism is global,
it has often been called the English disease.
Every club has unsanctioned groups
of hooligan supporters referred to as firms.
Firms act as unofficial club enforcers.
They shout at, pick fights,
and chase down opposing club supporters.
They've been known to use things like rocks,
bricks, concrete slabs,
iron bars, and bottles,
as well as knives,
flare guns,
and petrol bottles.
Because of heavy gun regulation in the UK,
luckily, there are very few firearms.
But that doesn't mean it's not brutal
and sometimes deadly.
While hooliganism has been ever-present,
it rose to popularity in the '70s and '80s.
The British economy was reeling as it divested itself
of its empire and felt a crunch of global recession.
Heavy industry and blue-collar jobs
were going overseas.
In Wrexham,
coal, steel, and breweries went away.
Young, bored, disaffected men turned to violence.
...was what one might describe as a lower working class
council estate.
These seem to be communities categorized by...
- Jesus Christ.
Not the sturdiest that I've been on for this.
He's all right, yeah.
- Yeah, he's a good lad.
You can be honest.
- Are you sure?
- I grew up in Brymbo in Wrexham.
It's a little village,
about ten minutes from town,
up in the hills really.
I grew up there with my mum, dad, and my sister.
It was nice, 'cause it was quite quiet up there.
There was never any trouble or anything like that.
I used to have friends across the road
that we used to play outside.
There was a field down the road where we used to play football.
I was a bit of a tomboy back in my day.
But then I turned into a teenager,
and I went the girly way, I suppose.
My dad's in a band called James, and he's the drummer.
They were pretty popular in America in the '90s,
so when I was younger, he used to take me on tour,
and festivals, to recording studios, and stuff.
I wanted to be a tour manager,
I think, 'cause I loved being on tour.
I just wanted to do it forever, and I knew obviously,
eventually, Dad won't be touring anymore,
so I just didn't want it to end.
detective constable fast-track.
So you just got fast-tracked to detective.
You didn't have to be-- not a police officer first.
So I thought I would give it a go.
Didn't think I'd ever have a chance at getting it.
I just thought I'd put my name down.
And I got the job.
I couldn't wait. I was so excited.
Like, I'd watch England on the sofa
or Wales on the sofa
and put it on every three or four years,
but I wouldn't travel on a Tuesday night
to do it in the freezing cold.
I'm just not that excited about the club.
I'm dating a Wrexham supporter.
He's crazy about Wrexham,
but I just don't understand
how he's so crazy about a football club.
- The police were there, and they were blocking the fans
from getting to the away fans.
I was sitting my car waiting for the police to pass
'cause we couldn't leave the car park until they'd gone.
And next thing, I just see Jonny running down the road,
and I just thought, what an idiot.
- But you're banned.
- Why?
- So you're gonna keep buying the season ticket
on the off-chance they're gonna go up?
- Yeah.
- Come on! - Idiot.
Swung in right for the great wall.
This religious and interregional divide
was the catalyst for the 1980 Scottish Cup Finals riot
that was seen by millions on TV
and triggered the ban of alcohol at Scottish games
moving forward.
Another historically tragic incident
was on May 29, 1985,
when Liverpool met the Italian football club, Juventus,
in the European Final at Heysel Stadium in Belgium.
At the moment, we don't know.
We're just going on reports that are coming in.
At about 7:00 p. m., before the game even started,
the barrier between sections X and Z broke down.
Stadium and police forces were overwhelmed.
Crumbling insufficient infrastructure
and under-resourced policing
combined with the worst elements of hooliganism
and produced a tragedy that saw 39 fans killed
and 600 injured.
It's the most disgraceful scenes
I've seen at a soccer game live.
After the 1985 Heysel Stadium disaster,
Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher
set up a war cabinet to combat hooliganism.
Parliament subsequently passed
the Football Spectators Act of 1989
and the Football Disorder Act of 2000.
Laws such as these have helped,
but wherever you find young men with time,
poor economic prospects, and a love of football,
you'll find hooliganism,
which is why you find a heavy police presence at every match
and entire sections of empty seats
that separate opposing fans.
But even that can't stop everything.
And after two years of a pandemic
and economic uncertainty,
the question is, will it make a comeback?
- Would I say it's on the rise again? Possibly.
These days, most incidents tend to occur
at prearranged locations
as opposed to the matches themselves.
They are preplanned.
I think a lot of the issues that we tend to get,
at Wrexham, at this level,
is what we call spontaneous disorder.
So initially, we had bottles and coins
coming from this area, so here to here.
And then, when Torquay scored their goal late in the game,
we also had some bottles and drinks thrown
from this section, so above them in this area here.
As soon as we have identified all the individuals,
the club will be issuing interim bans
and revoking any season tickets
pending an investigation by the police.
We were not made aware of that
until after we had gotten back to the States.
And obviously
that's not something
we would ever condone or tolerate,
and we took the necessary actions.
It was just a shame that it happened.
I think it's highly regrettable
that a very small minority of fans
resort to the types of behavior that are driven by--
you know, are driven by emotion,
and some acts of lawlessness, really.
- Of course, pre-COVID and pre-takeover,
our crowds here at Wrexham
were somewhere between 3,000 and 5,000
depending on how the team was performing on the pitch.
Now that we do have these new high-profile owners,
the crowd has pretty much doubled.
You know, so we're just under 10,000 week in, week out,
which is fantastic to see, great for the club,
but unfortunately, you know,
that element of people who wanna cause problems
seems to have also been attracted with it.
Let's keep that going.
Let's not spoil it.
There's no place for violence anywhere.
Bread, if you want it.
- How long will this take? - 10 minutes.
I don't see what the fascination is with it.
Why would you want to get hurt?
And why would you want to hurt
someone else over football?
I don't understand. I don't get it at all.
Yeah. - What were you thinking?
- Yeah.
It affects the relationship because
we're arguing about it, he's lying to me.
I'm always checking up on him when he's there
'cause I'm thinking, what's he doing?
I don't--which ones--
I just hope he'll start behaving himself
when his ban's lifted so we can be
a bit more of a normal couple.
Well, there you go, guys.
Oh, thank you very much.
- Well, it wasn't just me.
It was Steph as well, really.
- I helped her. - Oh, thank you.
They don't want to change.
If they're only changing for you,
then they're never gonna properly change.
They need to want to change themselves, I think,
or do it for themselves.
If he's like, "Oh, I'll change.
If we had a kid, I'd be different."
Well, I'm not taking the chance to have a child
just on the off-chance you might change.
Yeah, I'm looking to do a career change myself
to go into the police.
I got offered the job as a detective.
And it was hard work.
There were so many tests and interviews.
And I didn't think I'd ever get the job.
And I got the job.
I can't carry on like this.
I just don't want a boyfriend
that's getting in trouble with the police,
and I just find it embarrassing.
I genuinely don't think he ever thinks I'll leave.
If he gets in trouble with the police again,
then that will-- that'll be--that'll be it.
We'll win games. We'll lose games.
I understand those
absolutely heartbreaking rules of football.
But the real battle here is not on the pitch.
It's in the town.
- We pride ourselves here on welcoming visitors,
um, and people coming here having good--
great experience at the town center,
good experience at the ground,
you know, win or lose,
shake hands at the end and you carry on, you know?
And if we're unable to improve things
for the people of Wrexham,
if we're unable to inspire them to a better future,
that's a real loss
'cause that's a human loss.
And it could be felt for generations.
You don't get another chance at it
next Saturday or next Tuesday.