ABSTRACT
In The Roots of Football Hooliganism, we discussed a number of general policy issues particularly as they relate to the ‘roots’ and ‘causes’ of football hooliganism. By the nature of the case, that discussion was addressed primarily to central and local government and politicians. By contrast, most of the social policy recommendations in this final chapter of Football on Trial are aimed principally at officials and administrators in the English game. We decided on this focus because of the prominence recently given, largely as a result of the debates generated by the Government’s plan to impose a compulsory system of identity cards on the professional game, to the ‘community’ and ‘membership’ functions of clubs. We are concerned here, accordingly, more with the limited options available to clubs for contributing to an amelioration-however slight-of the ‘hooligan crisis’ than we are with the sorts of longer-term measures that would be necessary to tackle that crisis in a more fundamental way. But let us become more specific.
