Cushy Number

Is there another police force in this country that has it as cushy as Northamptonshire? No rough inner cities. No frontline in the war on terror. No border controls to enforce. Sure, there’s Corby, a couple of houses given over to the growing of pot and the odd smash up on the M1, but all in all they have it pretty good. Not quite “Heartbeat”, but certainly not “The Wire”.

Can this be why whenever it looks as though there might be more than a couple of thousand people at Rockingham Road they act as though the end of social order might be imminent? Riot vans, horses, helicopters. No expense is spared (and then passed on) when it comes to quashing the civil liberties of a few hundred football supporters.

The all-ticketing nonsense we are being plagued by can squarely be laid at the door of Mr Plod. Just because the team we are playing used to play in the Football League doesn’t necessarily mean that every man, woman, child and pet in Kettering will be systematically raped and pillaged come 3.00PM on a Saturday.

What utter breakdown in law and order could be caused by a pensioner paying his money to gain access to the home end of the ground just before kick-off? How would society’s fabric be torn if a bona-fide Club Member showed his card at the ticket office at 2.30PM and bought a ticket?

Have our police got so little to do that they can spare so many of their number to jackboot their way around Rockingham Road? It makes you wonder how Northamptonshire Police would handle the situation if there were a genuinely large club in the County. Imagine for a moment if there was a club of, say, Leicester’s size within their territory….There would be no way to safely police games of that size without resorting to dawn raids, strip searches, waterboarding and organised death squads surely?

It’s not even as if the police are any use at our football games anyway. Where are they when the game is over and the supporters they have separated for 90 minutes are suddenly thrown together? The answer is of course, nowhere. Probably off counting their overtime pay and congratulating themselves on the fact the game between Kettering and Eastbourne hadn’t descended into a bloodbath.

Mind you, the way things are heading we may well be only the third largest group within Rockingham Road soon after away fans and the cops. Perhaps fourth if you count Board members!

.

.

.

.

.

"That's good work boys."