ANY right-thinking sports fan will find the decision to impose harsh restrictions on Hull City fans puzzling, frustrating and a potential infringement on their human rights.
West Yorkshire Police fear there could be trouble when Hull City travel over to Huddersfield to play Town at the John Smith’s stadium on Easter Saturday.
Now only 1,500 tickets will be issued to Hull fans – and they must travel from the KC Stadium on official coaches only. That means a Hull fan living in Huddersfield would have to travel to Hull to come back to Huddersfield for the game and then go back to Hull before travelling back to Huddersfield and home again.
Clearly it’s a complete nonsense and forces elsewhere in the country deal with far more potentially troublesome matches with bigger crowds.
But what this does highlight once again is the high cost of policing sports fixtures at a time when the force has to save millions of pounds.
That issue is currently with the courts but it’s a system that may well need a radical rethink in the very near future.
