Online and side-line abuse: "Nobody is safe. The monster never sleeps"

Are there parallels between the unstoppable spew of mud and effluent from overflowing gutters, flooded parks and stuffed drains and the seemingly insuperable tide of online and side-line abuse?

The question arose during a bleak conversation up on Hog Hill, as weather despair took hold.

It resurrected memories of a February battle in Lansdowne Road long ago, when Ireland played England. It was billed as a friendly but turned out to be anything but. After Ireland scored the first goal, English football hooligans started ripping the stadium apart. The violence was extreme and clearly organised – and the game had to be abandoned.

Condemnation was immediate, in both Ireland and the UK. Football people were aghast. There was anger and sorrow. What should have been a great occasion was corrupted, ruined.

Ordinary decent fans were robbed. Thousands of kids who hoped to see two sets of idols strutting their stuff were showered with beer, bottles and stadium seats by thugs.

It was a warning sign that football hooliganism was being co-opted by the far right.

They haven’t gone away, you know. A generation later, they’re much more numerous, more co-ordinated and far closer to their goals: gutting Europe, regenerating right-wing nationalism, racism, intolerance and exclusion.

Ironically, just ten days after the match, the then-Taoiseach John Bruton and British Prime Minister John Major launched “Frameworks for the Future” in Belfast – a seminal moment in the nascent peace process. Within weeks, Sinn Féin leader Gerry Adams was to visit the White House in Washington for St Patrick’s Day 1995. Change was afoot.

The notion of a peace process and new relationships between Ireland and the UK was anathema to the English football hooligans, all of whom wanted to have a go at Ireland. Some even wanted us recolonised.

Inexplicably, anti-immigrant and racist Irish “nationalist” groups now make common cause with viciously anti-Irish English hooligans, sharing information, tactics and actions. Sticks in the craw, doesn’t it?

ABUSIVE BEHAVIOUR

Another football commotion had preceded the Lansdowne Road riot by ten days, this time in Selhurst Park, home ground of Crystal Palace. The central character was Eric Cantona.

He was shown a red card for kicking Palace defender Richard Shaw, who had shadowed him out of the game. Then, as he left the pitch he launched himself feet first over the fence to kung-fu kick Palace fan Matthew Simmons. He landed a few punches too.

Simmons had run 11 rows down to the front of the stand to shout abuse. Some witnesses reported him yelling “you dirty French bastard! Fuck off back to France”. (For the record, he claimed otherwise).

It was a sensation in every sense of the word. The global commentariat was convulsed. Polite society demanded action and got it.

Cantona was suspended by United until the end of the season and fined £20,000. The Football Association then extended his ban and fined him a further £10,000.

That wasn’t all. He was charged with assault, which he admitted, and sentenced to 14 days in prison. This was subsequently overturned by a judge who ruled that he shouldn’t be jailed simply because he was a public figure. He was given 120 hours community service instead.

Simmons had his season ticket revoked by Palace. He was also charged with provoking the attack, was found guilty, fined £500 and banned from the stadium for a year.

It didn’t end there. Immediately after the verdict, Simmons assaulted the prosecutor and had to be restrained by six police officers. This earned him a week in jail and a further £500 fine, plus £200 in legal costs.

Matthew Simmons

He got away lightly. Today, his rant would be regarded as racial abuse and he’d get a much longer sentence. And Crystal Palace would be slapped with a partial or full closure of the stadium.

Yet, for all that, in 2026 abusive behaviour is rife at sports events, at all age-grades and skill levels. And what’s said beside the pitch is a mere trifle compared to the monstrous, global-scale abuse and verbal violence spewing out of social media platforms and forums on an hourly basis, targeting individuals, clubs, organisations and elected representatives with equal spite.

Nobody is safe. The monster never sleeps.

COMBATIVE APPROACH

How are we to respond to this vast, endemic, corrosive verbal and physical abuse?

Current thinking, in Europe and the UK at any rate, seems to favour regulation, legal constraints, limits on access to social media for under-16s, and so on.

But these are worthless without enforcement and, given the multiplicity of platforms and the ingenuity of both users and abusers, regulation is a challenge. Other complementary approaches are necessary, some perhaps more direct than others.

None of us would go so far as to advocate kung-fu attacks on side-line or online tormentors, though Cantona said in 2011 that the attack on Simmons was “a great feeling” and a memory he is happy for fans to treasure. But he added that it was also “a mistake.”

Also, while the sight of one Garda beating the bejasus out of a couple of English hooligans at Lansdowne Road back then drew tut-tuts from the righteous, plenty of others quietly approved, acknowledging that it was rough justice but at least it was decisive.

But direct action has to be precisely targeted and within legal bounds.

A more general approach is required and up here on Hog Hill we think the French Foreign Ministry’s new, spiky social media approach is nailing it. Their view is that if you want to win the information war you have to fight the battles.

This new, confidently combative approach is similar to that pioneered in Switzerland by Operation Libero to fight far-right populist initiatives and promote a progressive, pro-EU, and open-minded Switzerland with wit, youth-focused messaging, fact-checking and direct campaigning.

To take one example from many, after Trump started threatening to take Greenland, French Response posted this: ‘Breaking: Statue of Liberty reportedly spotted swimming back across the Atlantic. Said she “preferred the original terms and conditions”.’

And, of course, when Manchester United staged a news conference after Cantona’s kung-fu show, he himself uttered just one gnomic sentence before leaving, the better to torment his detractors: “When seagulls follow the trawler, it is because they think sardines will be thrown into the sea.”

Eric Cantona

He didn’t know it at the time, but that’s the very essence of a viral post, as is the Statue of Liberty jibe. In an asymmetric world conflict, there are many ways to fight and this is one. Bullies always hate someone having a chuckle at their expense. But it can’t be just the French who do it. Everyone has to play their part. We can, and should, do it too.

Our Department of Foreign Affairs has the wit and the skills. But does it have the backing? Or, like Brer Fox, do we just lay low and say nuffin’?