gone are the days when a non league side reaching the 1st round proper and drawing a league side means some sort of financial windfall.
this is from havant and waterlooville site.
"The Hawks have been told that they cannot stage their FA Cup first round tie against Millwall at Westleigh Park for safety and security reasons. The club’s board expressed their sadness at the decision this morning, and stressed that while the ground itself was passed as suitable for the game by the relevant authorities, the local Havant Police are not prepared to allow ticketless Millwall fans wander around Leigh Park on either the Sunday or Monday. "
according to notw the cost of policing the game at fratton is £35,000.
if the ground is deemed safe enough, are millwall fans gonna be any harder or easier to police where ever the game is played? (or any fans for that matter).
i don't know how many tickets millwall would have got at havant, but they will now get substansially more.
so is policing the probable 1,000's of millwall fans that will now make the trip gonna be easier than the probable 100's that would have got tickets had the game not been moved.
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Where the hell they think thousands of Millwall fans would descend on Havant on a Monday night, on the off chance a few Pompey turn up, i really don't know.
Now they move it to Pompey, encouraging the trouble element.
Havant may well get a little taste of the fact that being a league club is something they will never want to achieve.
From the report it doesn't seem to be the problem of having fans inside the ground, but the risk of Millwall fans running around outside the ground where they can't be controlled.
Given the rep of Millwall fans can you blame the local plod for making this decision?
doesn't the hampshire constabulary cover both areas?
my point is now they have to police a lot more people before and after the game.
havant fans will be 'travelling' to the game so probably arriving and leaving by fratton rail station as well.
there is also the potential of the pompey hooligan element getting involved hiding behind the 'havant' banner, and the millwall hooligan element seeing it as a millwall v pompey challenge, and making the trip especially for that reason.
I don't know what Havant's capacity is but let's say it's around 5-6,000 and so a quarter of that is 1250-1500. Hampshire OB are worried that say 2,000 Millwall fans (or more than be accommodated inside the ground) will turn up and cause trouble if they can't get in. Then they have the fun of policing Millwall fans inside the ground, as well as those on the loose outside the ground.
Taking the game to Fratton Park will mean that there is sufficient room inside the ground for all Millwall fans and that should allow Hampshire OB to keep their eye on all the scotes who should all be in the same place at the same time.
Plus I presume the infrastructure will be better - I reckon they'll have more cells in Portsmouth...
the police say they expect 2,500 visiting fans and are going to police it accordingly.
if millwalls estimate is right, then there will be as many police on duty as visiting fans with solely havant paying the policing bill. in turn this means the crowd will have to be 7,800 for havant to break even.