Brentford Football Club will meet with the Metropolitan Police later this week to discuss the incidents during and after the npower League One match against Portsmouth on Saturday, April 13.
Saturday’s match saw a number of Portsmouth fans in home areas and disorder after the match as away supporters invaded the pitch.
This meeting will take place on Thursday due to the resources needed to police the funeral of Margaret Thatcher, which takes place on Wednesday.
Mark Devlin, Chief Executive of Brentford Football Club, will be in that meeting.
Today, on behalf of Brentford FC, he has issued the following statement:
“We were all really disappointed with what happened at Griffin Park on Saturday.
“A day that should have been one to remember for all the right reasons – a fantastic win, a promotion push gathering momentum, two late goals – was marred for some supporters.
“We know there were a number of away supporters in home areas and the pitch incursion was visible to all.
“The plan for ensuring safety and security at the match was drawn up, as it is for every game, after discussions between the two clubs involved and the two police forces.
“The intelligence suggested there was no recent history of trouble between the teams and Portsmouth fans had caused little or no trouble at matches this season.
“With those factors taken in to account, it was felt a nominal police presence was needed for the match.
“However, there were still more police inside the ground than when we played Chelsea without incident in the FA Cup Fourth Round tie in January.
“It was our decision to make the game All Ticket for Portsmouth fans.
“When the away allocation was quickly sold out we took the decision to make the game All Ticket for all supporters and impose restrictions on who could buy tickets.
“In hindsight, this match perhaps should have been All Ticket immediately and we should have restricted ticket sales only to those supporters known to us.
“We believe there are three main ways Portsmouth fans got in to home areas.
“Firstly, they bought before we imposed restrictions on who could buy.
“Secondly, they bought during a short period when our ticket systems provider made an error in allowing supporters to buy who should have not have been able to.
“Thirdly, Portsmouth supporters were bought tickets by those on the Brentford FC ticket database.
“The first two of those are errors that can and will be corrected in the future.
“We want to see matches played in a friendly atmosphere with as little police presence as is needed, after taking advice from the authorities.
“It saddens me that some Portsmouth fans chose to take advantage having been treated like adults by both the Club and the police.
“We believed by welcoming Portsmouth fans in to our away end and not restricting their movement around the town they would act accordingly.
“I am sad that we had a return to the days when fans would act in the manner they did on Saturday and I commend Brentford fans for not reacting to provocation and causing a larger problem.
“From now on, there will be a zero tolerance policy with regard to away supporters in home areas.
“This means any visiting supporter in the wrong area will be removed.
“We will also take their ticket from them and reserve the right to take action against any Brentford supporter buying a ticket for an away fan in a home area.
“Ejections from the ground are carried out by a security team or the police and are supervised by our CCTV system.
“Stewards are primarily in the ground for the safety and comfort of supporters, it is not their job to remove fans.
“In future, there will be more security staff in the ground for our high profile games.
“We ask for help from our supporters to make sure events like Saturday never happen again.
“The Club will need to make more games All Ticket if we feel there is a possibility that there will be a very large travelling support, this will particularly apply if we are promoted to The Championship.
“There will be restrictions on who can buy tickets and reserved seating will apply.
“We ask all Bees fans to join our membership schemes to make sure they can get tickets for these games.
“It also makes our security operation easier if tickets are bought early so we can judge a potential attendance.
“The Club would like to apologise to any fan upset by the events of Saturday and we will do our utmost to ensure it doesn’t happen again.”