Quote (Rocky) Bobby's Girl="(Rocky) Bobby's Girl"I feel inhibited from my own celebrations as well as resentful of theirs when sitting with opposition fans.
On our way out, my little girl was telling me about naughty men punching each other. Family sport, not so much last night. I probably wouldn't take the girls to GF again.'"
See, this is a genuine shame, and to me is as much the fault of the RFL as it is those who were doing the punching.
Too many people on here (and in RL circles in general) concern themselves with not wanting to get involved in what they describe as "football fans' behaviour". Needless to say very few of these people regularly attend football matches and therefore have no real clue what they're talking about anyway.
As it happens my football team got to both domestic cup finals this year and my RL team got to both RL finals this year, so I have attended all of them. I was also at all four semi finals, one of which was a very high profile derby match at Wembley which to all intents and purposes felt like a final. Both teams had one win and one loss each in their finals, so I had mixed emotions after leaving them all.
Now I'm not gonna lie - the atmosphere outside the ground before the match was unsurpringly a lot moodier for Liverpool V Chelsea than it was for either RL final, but the only actual kicking off I saw was after the Challenge Cup Final. That was the only one where I actually stayed and watched the trophy lifted, so if any of the others - last night included - got moody afterwards then fair enough, I wasn't there to see it.
However, the only match where I saw any trouble whatsoever INSIDE the ground was last night, and it was largely as a result of rival fans taking a dislike to each other. They should not have been mixed.
Newsflash for you: Rugby league is not lawn tennis. It is not watched by a primarily upper-middle class crowd sipping Pimms and eating strawberries and cream. It is a northern based sport, watched by a primarily working class crowd, many of whom - shock horror - like a drink. It is also a highly emotive sport where people support their team passionately and occassionally that emotion can get a bit hard to contain.
As such it probably has more in common with football than it does with any other sport, and therefore people need to accept that occassionally organising it in a similar way might be quite a wise thing to do.