Introduction: Football, Policing and the Excitement of Mundane Sociology

Abstract

If you were to ask just about any British male what is significant about 3pm on Saturday afternoons outside of summer, you would probably get the same one-word answer: football.¹ A good portion of the female population would also say the same thing, and just about anyone who lives in Britain, even if he or she does not follow football, could probably name at least three major domestic clubs and maybe also the current league champions. However, what no one in this pop survey would say is that non-summer Saturday afternoons are also the moment when the largest national mobilisation of police officers occurs in British urban areas. Football supporters on their way to, during and back from the matches that they love are the subjects of constant and pervasive police supervision. This is not a new phenomenon and yet there has been no detailed sociological study of police involvement at domestic football. This book represents the first attempt to provide such a study.