Football and pints are brilliant – Burnham’s plan to lift booze bans at games isn’t

Say what you like about Andy Burnham, he at least sounds like a football fan.

The Prime Minister’s blokeish chumminess is a massive part of his appeal, in stark contrast to his predecessor Keir Starmer, a lifelong football fan who still managed to sound like a malfunctioning robot whenever he spoke about the beautiful game.

But for Burnham, who has unashamedly built his premiership more on vibes than concrete policies, his most recent attempt to slot home an open goal for a popularity boost among supporters may have seen him blaze it over the bar instead.

The Prime Minister told reporters in New York that he still believed a ban on fans being allowed to drink alcohol in the stands or on terraces during men’s football matches should be overturned.

Labelling the move ‘discrimination’, Burnham said he didn’t think it was fair on football supporters to be ‘singled out’ and confirmed his opposition to the Thatcher-era policy, which was brought in to combat hooliganism and is in place for games in the top five tiers of the the game in England.

Now, as someone who regularly attends football matches in League One, as someone who is no stranger to a pint to say the least, and as someone from an even more restrictive regime in Scotland, you might think I’d be fully backing Burnham, raising my plastic glass of warm concourse lager in salute of the Prime Minister’s stance.

After all, when you watch Leyton Orient every other week, you’d surely appreciate numbing the pain with as much alcohol as possible?

But I’m completely opposed – in fact I can’t think of anything worse.

Not strictly because I’ve got a lot of truck with the notion (which will inevitably be pushed by the police and councils) that allowing fans a pint mid-match will somehow lead to an explosion of 80s-style running brawls between rival firms.

Especially because I reckon that when the novelty of being able to drink through the misery of a goalless draw against Wycombe Wanderers starts to wear off, there won’t actually be too many fans regularly indulging.

But even 10% of those in the stands choosing to knock them back during the match could make for a distinctly less pleasant experience for the rest of us.

There is, however small, the potential for unrest fuelled by more booze to cause problems, if only to encourage more of those people who are seemingly more focussed on the opposition fans than the football at hand to try and start trouble.

But chiefly, it would just be downright annoying.

Every fan has regularly found themselves rolling their eyes when having the misfortune to be sat in the same row as someone who seems to constantly need to walk past you, blocking the view, whether that’s for a pie, a pee, or sometimes just a leg stretch.

Add pints into that heady mix, and the resultant impact on even the strongest bladder, and it makes for a game where you find yourself looking more at the builder’s bum of a man in an ill-fighting replica shirt shuffling past you than the players you’ve paid to see.

As successive World Cups have taught us, there’s also the growing epidemic of pint-throwing to contend with.

I’m not sure there’s a huge amount of overlap between those who go to games regularly and those who go to some Boxpark-esque hellhole when England are inevitably bottling a knockout game, but frankly it’s a chance we can’t afford to take.

Celebrating a goal is best when it’s spontaneous, and being drowned in warm beer is likely to take some of the joy out of that shared experience, not least in the Premier League, where you risk wringing the lager out of your clothes only to look up and find out that wonder strike has been chalked off by VAR.

Given he has somewhat bigger, and presumably beer-battered, fish to fry, Burnham’s team has subsequently made clear that this was merely the Everton fan expressing an opinion, rather than something he was going to suddenly steer the apparatus of government to make happen.

But no matter the likelihood, the PM has still put it on the agenda, and not with the best choice of phrasing.

I couldn’t help but wince slightly at his use of the word ‘discriminatory’ to describe the policy.

While I take the point he’s talking about football fans being subject to restrictions other sports avoid, it rings a little hollow when discrimination can still be an issue at football stadiums, which still have a bit of a way to go in being truly welcoming for female, LGBT+ or ethnic minority groups.

Those fans would also be forgiven for wondering if this policy could hinder, rather than help, progress on that score.

I think its important to note that, unlike in my homeland, we aren’t asking fans to entirely abstain from alcohol.

I support a team in Scotland who these days make Orient look like Barcelona, and we aren’t allowed any alcohol in the stadium, other than in hospitality.

It’s still a novelty to me to be allowed even a half-time pint, and that avoids the occasional problem I’ve had on boozy Scottish away days when a bad result was compounded by an enforced 90-minute bout of sobriety that left you nursing a hangover by full-time.

So perhaps fans who clamour for the lifting of the booze ban should count themselves lucky – especially if they are enjoying the game from the comfort of the director’s lounge, as Andy Burnham, like Keir Starmer before him, finds himself these days.

For fans like me, who have the willpower to stay teetotal even for 45 minutes of turgid football, we’ll continue enjoying our pre-match or half-time pint, and make sure we’re not throwing it over anyone.

Do you have a story you’d like to share? Get in touch by emailing Ross.Mccafferty@metro.co.uk.

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