Darren and his team of spotters were racing around the towns and villages of Sussex, identifying known troublemakers holed up in these bars, trying to predict their next move. Prewarned is pre-armed, and with his knowledge of the dynamics of most groups who followed the Seagulls, supported by his Crystal Palace counterparts, we knew Darren would have the best chance of smoking out any conspiracies to start a fight.
As the afternoon wore on, groups from both sets of supporters started to drift towards the city centre. The ground itself is four miles north of downtown Brighton. However, apart from a country inn and a pub famed for being the domain of strictly local drinkers, there aren’t many places to have a beer in that neck of the woods.
The streets around the main Brighton railway station, on the other hand, are crammed with bars. It is bewildering how many survive such intense competition, but survive they do and on match days they transform into waiting rooms for thirsty football fans.
Normally supporters are jovial, if a little rowdy, but on this day they were seething with animalistic tension. The normal banter had been replaced by muttering. Darren’s presence, usually welcomed by the Albion fans, became despised as drinkers went to great lengths to whisper away from his ears.
Queens Road is the main thoroughfare from the station to the city centre. When it reaches the imposing Clock Tower it becomes West Street, the heart of Brighton’s club land.
The Albion fans were in bars along Queens Road. The Crystal Palace fans had congregated in West Street’s Weatherspoon’s pub, just few hundred yards away. This posed a massive problem for the police.
For the visiting supporters to reach the railway station to embark on the final leg of their journey to the stadium, they would have to pass within feet of the waiting and baying Albion fans. Other routes were available, but it was proving impossible to persuade the crowd to add another fifteen minutes onto their journey when a short walk up the hill would take them quickly to their train.
We knew in the planning stage that we would need to move hordes of fans around the city, but the when and where would always depend on the dynamics on the day. The strength of any plan is in its flexibility.
Had she been a smoker, Chief Inspector Jane Derrick would have used the back of a fag packet to draft her swiftly devised orders. A seasoned marathon runner, she was unlikely to have one, but the cover of her notebook served just as well.
Jane was one of my first choice of commanders on any operation. You would pass her in a crowd but she was one of those officers who just seemed to have got better and better as she rose through the ranks. Having paused her career to bring up her two boys, she returned as an inspector to run the Hove Neighbourhood Policing Team when I was the superintendent.
Her promotion to Chief Inspector came soon after and this quiet, assured and supremely perceptive officer topped the tree of firearms and public order leaders.
She became a good friend; one of her sons helped my son Deaglan in his successful application to read Natural Sciences at Cambridge University, and I mentored her progress to Superintendent.
Jane called her unit commanders around her and showed them the hastily scribbled map of the area, setting out how she wanted to move the visiting fans and where she needed her troops. She stressed that it was essential that no pre-warning be given to the Albion fans.
This grated with Darren, whose reputation hinged on the trust and openness he showed the football community on match days. He understood though that extraordinary circumstances call for extraordinary measures — the home fans would find out soon enough what was happening.
He carried on as normal, popping into the pubs, making an effort to chat to his regulars; just being his usual genial self, setting the tone, trying to keep the mood light. His poker face gave nothing away. If they detected anything different in his manner, they would smell a rat and the result could be carnage.
The first to realize that the opposition were being escorted in their direction were the smokers. Loitering outside the pubs they spotted a mass movement in the reflection of the shop windows down the road. Flickers of the red and blue colours of Crystal Palace flashed in the huge plate glass shop fronts flanking West Street as it became Queens Road. The mirroring effect created an illusion of an army of a thousand men marching to the top of the hill.
Darren was in the Royal Standard when word spread that battle was about to commence. Not the largest of pubs, it is the most southerly of the ones favoured by the Albion fans who were to be at the vanguard of the defence.
As the crowd drew nearer, a line of police officers supported by police horses formed a cordon between the pubs and the road. The human barrier was less likely to withstand a rush than its equine back-up, but it showed our intent.
In the pub the mood started to turn ugly. The fans were fuelling each other’s anger. ‘They’re walking past our pub.’ ‘What a fucking liberty. We ain’t having that.’ ‘Come on, let’s kill ’em.’ Darren attempted to get through to them. As if reasoning with a stubborn child, he repeated their names and sought to get them to see sense.
If they heard his words, they ignored them. A fierce, savage force had taken them over. They were ready for a fight.
They swallowed what was left in their beer glasses. Some ordered more and downed the drinks in one gulp. Never was alcohol’s illusion of invincibility more needed than now.
As the Palace supporters neared, their battle cries became deafening. This just spurred the Albion fans on even more. All had experienced a rush of adrenaline through their veins. They had waited six years for this.
Once the enemy had passed by the side street that would have provided the last chance of escape, the crowd in the Royal Standard and in pubs closer to the station rushed into the road. The hostility hurled across the police lines was vitriolic. People who led perfectly respectable, often professional, everyday lives had turned into a howling pack, simply because another football club was in town.
Bottles and glasses intended for the Palace fans rained over the brave officers. The cry of ‘Missiles’ rose from the police ranks as the officers drew their batons and attempted to push back the crowd. As this happened, the officers escorting the visiting supporters broke into a trot to encourage their charges to hasten past the hostile reception committee.
The wail of sirens rose above the chants as more public order officers raced to support their beleaguered colleagues. Time was against them as the escort was nearing the bigger, fuller and angrier pubs directly outside the railway station. If reinforcements didn’t arrive in time, this would be a bloodbath.
With seconds to spare, three police vans screeched to a halt in the carriageway between the Queen’s Head pub and the station concourse. Normally packed with buses, taxis and cars, this, one of the city’s most important arteries, was swamped by riot police. Quickly throwing themselves in a line across the road, they created a sterile area for the Londoners to pass through to reach their train to Falmer. The anger from both sides was growing and it was imperative to get all the Palace supporters into the railway station, where British Transport Police were waiting, and away.
Outside the station the line of police held, while inside the visitors were guided onto a train that whisked them off to the stadium.
With the Palace fans safely gone, the time had come for the Brighton supporters to be marched up to a separate train and away. This is the thing about football policing at its worst; so much time is spent separating opposing fans only to deliberately bring them back together later on. That said, we have more control at the Amex stadium, not least because it sits in an island flanked by a railway line, a fast road and acres of farmers’ fields.