West Ham v Millwall violence was worst I have ever seen, but it is wrong to say the bad old days are back. By Darren Lewis

By Darren Lewis in Mirror Football Blog

Published 11:24 26/08/09

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Yes. It really was that bad.

Grown men, masquerading as pillars of the community by day, ripped off their masks and ripped into the police like animals last night.

Bricks, bottles, seats, coins, anything that could be used as a weapon was against the enemy - be they from either club, the stewards or the police.

And even now, the morning after the horrendous night before, I can't believe some of the appalling scenes that I witnessed.

Trust me, the pictures you have seen on the telly do not even tell the full story.

Like everyone else, I've seen the footage from the '70s of the trouble back then. But in all my 15 years as a football reporter I have never seen anything like last night first hand.

And despite the strong words from the FA you wonder whether they actually CAN do anything about it.

What can you do when rival factions - adults, not kids - pre-arrange to meet in their hundreds and kick seven bells out of each other?

What can you do when people have no compunction about attacking the very riot police there to keep order.

I even feel sorry for West Ham, on whom the FA are set to come down hard in the wake of the mayhem.

It's not their fault that supporters without tickets turned up hell-bent on hurting people.

It's not their fault that inside the stadium snarling fans turned on the very people there to ensure their safety by keeping them away from the Millwall end.

There is talk of having future Carling Cup matches involving the Hammers played behind closed doors. But it's doubtful as to whether that would make any difference as the people at the centre of the disgraceful scenes outside the ground had no intention of coming to watch the football anyway.

Inside the ground its a different story. There should have been a far greater police presence than there was. The owners of the pub next door to the ground, The Boleyn, had boarded up their windows hours before kick-off.

In fact, every business in Green Street took exactly the same step and the Bobby Moore statue was also covered up and boarded up.

So if everyone else could see that there was trouble brewing they why couldn't the police?

Because what TV viewers who were not at the game saw was just snippets of the sustained violence that was so shocking you could barely keep your eyes on the game.

I have never been to a game where I have received so many text messages from people enquiring after my safety.

As the carnage developed outside the ground and news of the stabbing emerged, messages flew in from relatives and friends of people at the game, checking to see how they were and warning them to take care.

The more the violence escalated, the more the mobile phones kept beeping.

And then it started kicking off inside the ground. Idiots in the bottom corner of the West Stand fighting with stewards in a bid to get at the 2,300 fans packed in the lower tier of the Sir Trevor Brooking stand.

Some broke through and were wrestled to the ground, watched incredulously by many of the well-behaved Hammers fans that were sat in the upper tier of the stand behind me. Others were kept at bay but only just.

It seemed as though all of the police were outside battling the other thugs because it took an age for reinforcements to arrive. And incredibly the game was still continuing.

In fact, on any other day the racist monkey chanting aimed by the Millwall end at Hammers' striker Carlton Cole would have been a back page story in itself.

But when young Junior Stanislas scored three minutes from time, there was an even bigger problem as all hell broke loose. Fans piled onto the pitch from every side and we in the press box were amazed that referee Paul Taylor did not take the players off to protect their safety.

You wondered what on earth the stewards were doing. You wondered what happened to the rule that anyone encroaching onto the pitch would be banned for life.

But it was clearly apparent that on a night when all anyone was concerned about was their own personal safety, the men in the fluorescent jackets didn't want the aggravation of a ruck with anyone, particularly if there was a chance they were carrying anything.

It wasn't until the third suspension of play, after Zavon Hines' goal, that a West Ham security official ushered the Lions stars towards the touchline, helped by Millwall boss Kenny Jackett.

At the final whistle, however, the fans were on the pitch again, surrounding the Millwall players in scenes that could have turned even uglier had there been any confrontations.

Nobody could quite believe, in the circumstances, that distraught midfielder Jack Collison, who lost his father on Sunday, was being allowed to walk around the touchline in tears, applauding the home fans amid the bedlam. But then it was that kind of night.

As I and my colleagues in the press box wrote furiously, piecing together the events of the evening, helicopters circled overhead and sirens wailed in the distance as reinforcements headed for the trouble zone.

There was also an unmistakable smell of burning although no-one could quite get to the bottom of exactly where it was coming from.

In the press conference both Jackett and the West Ham boss Gianfranco Zola looked stunned, unable to believe what they had seen.

And yet every reporter was just as concerned for their safe passage home with anarchy reigning in the streets outside. Thank God everyone made it back and the inquest will go on for days.

But I for one do not believe the bad old days are back, no matter how anyone wants to chillingly dress it up.

When these two teams met a few years ago the police presence was so massive that there was no opportunity for the build-up of fans that appeared to overwhelm the good guys last night.

That is as it should be in the future. Zero tolerance outside and inside the ground. English football has shown that it can beat the thugs before. There can be no room for complacency if we are to ensure that that remains the case.

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