Pitch invaders, particularly in football is becoming a more and more frequent issue.
Whilst it is only a minority of fans who are conducting the invasions , the incidents are becoming more violent and dangerous, as opposed to an attempt at a light-hearted selfie with your favourite player.
On Saturday, the football league was hit with the same issues, after Cheltenham Town’s Will Goodwin was involved in an altercation with a Plymouth fan in their 4-2 loss to the league one leaders.
The incident saw the Plymouth supporter approach Goodwin with ease, as no security or stewards attempted to intervene or stop him, before he taunted Goodwin and appearing to make an attempt at pulling the striker’s shorts down.
Cheltenham Town manager, Wade Elliott, was understandably outraged by the incident especially at the lack of intervention from the stewards at Home Park and was eventually booked for his reaction, to which he believes was a natural instinct to protect his players.
“I got booked! I’m looking at a 20-year-old kid and there’s a punter on the pitch having a swing at him and my instinct is to go on.
It seems like the only reaction to it is to book me. I don’t know where the officials are and I don’t know where the stewards are.”
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There has been a outpour of praise for the young striker and how he handled himself in the situation, when a different reaction could have spiralled the situation further.
“What’s Will [Goodwin] supposed to do?” Asked Elliot.
“Just let a fella run onto the pitch and we’re supposed to stand on the side and say ‘yeah no problem mate you kick on’?”
Since the incident, Plymouth Argyle have released a statement in which they claim they have ‘identified the supporter and issued an indefinite ban’ and ‘would like to apologise to Will Goodwin and all associated with Cheltenham Town’.
Recently, the Premier League saw two incidents of poor fan behaviour within three days of each other just a week ago, beginning with a disgruntled Tottenham Hotspur fan kicking the back of Arsenal goalkeeper, Aaron Ramsdale, during their North London Derby loss.
Just three days later, in a midweek fixture between Crystal Palace and Manchester United, a United fan approached midfielder, Casemiro, in order to take a photo with him. This incident was allowed to happen with no attempt from security to stop it.
Whilst thankfully there has been no damaging incidents as of yet, there seems to be a growing issue with the effectiveness of security and the measures in place to stop this behaviour.
