Just what T&T needs: hooliganism

It is possible that the referee’s decision to award a goal to Presentation College of San Fernando could have been an error, but the abhorrent conduct of players, parents, supporters and team officials of the opposing St Mary’s College smacked of the hooligan behaviour that no sport should encourage.

There is enough lawlessness around the country for us to tolerate the smallest sign of it in sport and in student related activities in particular. After all, this defeats the purpose of friendly, but competitive rivalry between schoolboys.

Hooliganism is of not new to sport. It is a term used to describe “disorderly, aggressive and often violent behaviour perpetrated by spectators at sporting events”.

And, there is no better term to describe the events at the Big Five final: hurling of water bottles at match officials by the St Mary’s players; verbal assault of the referee by team officials; refusal of the St Mary’s players to receive their second-place medals; and verbal abuse of the linesman by parents, players, and supporters at  at the game.

It was Matthias Krug who wrote an editorial for CNN entitled Soccer violence: Referees under siege in which he reported these acts of hooliganism: in the USA a referee had been punched and later died; in Europe, a linesman had been beaten to death while his son looked on as a member of the opposing team; in Germany a match official had to be hospitalised after being attacked by spectators; and as recent as 2013 at a football game held in La Liga between Getafe and Deportivo La Coruna a referee was verbally abused by fans for the entire game because he sent off a home player.

All the while, in every instance there were small children who sat nearby listening to the verbal abuse and witnessing the unruly mobs’ display of primordial conduct unbecoming of human beings’ actions to one another.

This is not the objective of sport, recreation, and collegiate rivalry. The conduct of the St Mary’s players,  officials, parents, and supporters signals the prospect of this culture seeping into our schools and penetrating other activities within and between schools. It also points to the risk of a deepening of the lawlessness in the society once a new round of perpetrators has been recruited; descending to the depths considered by Krug may not be far fetched.

The sporting body responsible for football discipline at this level must act immediately. Indeed, governing bodies are expected by government to recognise their broader responsibilities partly by virtue of the recognition of their governing body status by the State.

Accordingly, whoever is to blame, the SSFL must send a clear message that this type of behaviour shall not be tolerated. It is their responsibility as the recognised governing body at that level to ensure a just and appropriate outcome.

Moreover, if this behaviour is left uncorrected, unchallenged, and unfettered the consequences will be twofold. First, it will send a message of acceptance to the present generation and second, it will confirm to future generations that aggressive behaviour from participants in and supporters of sport is the norm. The SSFL must levy sanctions on St. Mary’s and its supporters in the expectation that punishment will send a strong message to both parents and “syco-fans”.

Even before this, one wonders why the principal of St. Mary’s has not come out publicly and denounced the behaviour of his charges? Why has he not stood up and said this is not the behaviour that is expected of our students? In the absence of such a reprimand, parents of prospective St Mary’s students may reconsider their plans for sending their boys to this prestige school.

In Krug’s CNN report, he also disclosed that the Spanish Football Federation acknowledged that “parents have become some of the worst culprits in aggressive behaviour towards referees in Spain”. One of the techniques used to address such a problem was to move spectators further away from the touchline, thereby reducing the parent’s access to the referees.

But this technique fails to address the root of the problem. Given this country’s challenges with law and governance, corrective action cannot be cosmetic. We must insist on what is right and set the right examples when it comes to behaviour, ethics, and principles. How else are we to fight this society consumed by lawlessness? The police must get involved when disorderly behaviour and colourful language are put on display at public events.

There is no question that the law can be enforced at these sporting events. Grayson wrote in ‘Sport and the Law: A Return to Corinthian values” that, “all non-accidental injury causing acts during sport are contrary to the rules of the game and should be punishable by the criminal law”.

And Grayson is absolutely right. There is no place for unsanctioned violence on or off the field of play. In the celebrated case of R v Lloyd, the Court explained that, ‘sport is not a licence for thuggery’. The behaviour of the St Mary’s players, parents, officials and supporters was tantamount to thuggery and hooliganism, and must have broken the law.

Causation is irrelevant to the offence. There is no excuse for the acts of hooliganism. We must act to remove aggressive and disorderly behaviour from sporting events. Talent, creativity, discipline and fair-play must always win when schoolboys come out to play. These special characteristics of sport are supposed to encourage and define our cultural existence, not destroy it.

Christophe Brathwaite is an attorney at law who specialises in commercial, corporate, intellectual property, entertainment and sports law.