I'm not condoning what happened, but the chain of events matters. If the pitch invasion hadn't happened, and if policing had been better, things might have played out very differently — that's the simple point here.

Chain of events matters

To be fair, football is driven by emotion. When a crowd is charged up and something sparks — an invasion, a bad call, whatever it is — it can rapidly escalate. The sequence matters more than a single moment. If one side breaches the boundary first, everything that follows gets seen through that lens. You can see why people feel the reaction was inevitable after being on the end of that sort of provocation.

Rivalry fuels the reaction

We all know the rivalry is bitter. I don't share that level of hatred, but plenty do, and when you mix that with a painful defeat and previous bad results the tinderbox is set. It's not an excuse for disorder, but it helps explain why some supporters reacted the way they did. You ask what outcome anyone would expect after that chain of events — honestly, given the history and atmosphere, a heated retaliation was sadly predictable.

Where responsibility sits

Responsibility isn't one-sided. Fans who invade the pitch are responsible for their actions, and we shouldn't gloss over that. At the same time, the argument that policing and initial provocations play a part is reasonable. Saying both things doesn't mean you're defending the worst behaviour; it means you're trying to look at how it started and how it spread.

Truth is, none of this makes the mess any better. Lessons need to be learned about stewarding big games, about crowd control and about cooling off moments before they turn nasty. Fingers point in every direction, and that's natural. But if we're honest, the sequence of events — who went onto the pitch first, how the stewards and police reacted, the intensity of the rivalry — all fed into what followed.

At the end of the day I don't condone violence or disorder. I do think context matters, and when you put the pieces together you can see why some people felt the reaction was coming, and why they reckon it would happen the same in reverse.

Written by Stevie_G_new: 9 April 2026

Tags: squad