Terrifying spate of pitch invasions & assaults must be crushed by football clubs

PENALTY TIME

THE terrifying spate of pitch invasions and assaults on players must be crushed by football bosses and clubs.

Jubilation is understandable after tense and crucial games at the climax of the season. But a hardcore of fans, drunk, coke-fuelled or both, have lost the plot.

The headbutting of Sheffield United skipper Billy Sharp was sickening. So was the goading of Palace boss Patrick Vieira by an Everton fan. The violent intimidation of Swindon players by a Port Vale mob was genuinely frightening.

Pitch invasions are illegal. But we can neither enforce that with fences nor expect a handful of poorly-paid stewards to hold back a tide of rampant fans.

It falls to clubs to get tough . . . with long bans, even life bans for the worst offenders. Police must arrest and prosecute more of those whose on-pitch antics go beyond giddy celebration.

Failing that, the FA must punish teams with fines and, for repeat incidents, ground closures. Yes, that looks harsh on innocent supporters.

But their anger is more likely than anything to control the morons who would further harm their club.

BORDER BILGE

HOW depressing to hear US politicians spout off over the Northern Ireland protocol with no clue what they are talking about.

The facile witterings of Joe Biden and now Speaker Nancy Pelosi appear to be gleaned solely from left-wing opinion columns or the Irish Government.

Pelosi even resorts to threatening Britain, America’s No1 ally, over trade.

She says we must not “choose to undermine” the Good Friday Agreement, which rests on “ensuring there remains no physical border” in Ireland.

What uninformed bilge.

Peace is undermined only by the EU’s vindictively officious policing of the protocol which even Sinn Fein admits has become “problematic”. Even so, no one is suggesting erecting a border.

And when Pelosi says “the children of Northern Ireland deserve a future free of the violence” of the past, who is she lecturing? Britain, not the US, was a constant target of IRA slaughter too.

Here’s a concept you CAN understand, Nancy: Butt out.

CRUST FUNDS

PANDERING to eco crusties isn’t just feeble, it’s eye-wateringly expensive.

The burrowing fool “Swampy” has run up an obscene £122million bill disrupting HS2. What a scandalous and pointless burden to impose on taxpayers.

Meanwhile Extinction Rebellion’s face-gluing village idiots and their even dimmer cousins Insulate Britain have cost cops another £54million.

Why do police indulge them? Cart the wreckers off to the cells the instant they disrupt work or halt traffic.

It would be far quicker — and cheaper.