Chasetown 1

SCHOLARS WIN CAUSES HOOLIGAN HEADACHE

12-12-2007

Chasetown’s desire to play their historic FA Cup Third Round tie at home is giving the police a hooligan headache…as it could mean visiting fans from Cardiff and Millwall arriving in the West Midlands at the same time.

The nightmare scenario arises because the Scholars have drawn the Welsh club, while Walsall, just a few miles down the road, are playing host to Millwall.

Assuming both matches are 3 o’clock, Saturday afterrnoon kick-offs, there will undoubtedly be security implications as both visiting teams have notorious mobs.

It’s still possible that TV coverage will mean Chasetown’s game is switched to the Friday night or Sunday, but as last night’s match against Port Vale couldn’t meet Sky’s requirements (the floodlights are too weak for HDTV) those options may be limited.

The club’s chairman Mike Joiner is determined that, whatever the difficulties, the tie is played at School Road.

He said, “We have decided that we will keep going down this path until someone tells us we can’t. The FA are totally against reversing fixtures, so we’ll be doing everything we can.

“It’s a lot of work though. We’ve had volunteers working through till 11 o’clock every night for days to make sure the match could go ahead.

“Even then we had a last minute scare. We’d booked two doctors to be at the game, which is a minimum requirement, but at 4pm yesterday one of them was taken seriously ill.

“We thought how are we going to get two doctors at such short notice. But we did, and the game went ahead.

"Once it started, we rode our luck especially in the secod half, but everyone today is just delighted to be here."