FIGURES released by the Home Office this week confirmed that Bolton Wanderers have the third highest number of football banning orders in the land.
Only Birmingham City (57) and Millwall (51) have more court-issued bans currently in force than the Whites (46) amid concerns of rising anti-social behaviour among fans at the University of Bolton Stadium and during the club’s away games in League One.
Not to be confused with club-issued bans, which have also increased in frequency in the last 12 months, court mandated banning orders can last between three and 10 years depending on the severity of the offence and are designed to prevent the individual attending any regulated matches in the United Kingdom.
Whilst Wanderers say they are taking a “zero tolerance” approach at the UniBol and have introduced a membership scheme in part to help appease monitoring and policing issues that arose at the start of last season, the rise in banning orders has actually been noticeable since the start of the 2019/20 campaign, which was eventually cut short by the pandemic.
Indeed, a glance at the detailed numbers made available by the Government this week show that only four court-mandated banning orders were issued to Bolton Wanderers fans in the reporting period between August 2021 and July 2022.
Nationally, only 39 per cent (516) of the 1,308 banning orders currently in place over all four divisions were issued during the same period.
Millwall (33), Leicester City (28) and Everton (26) led the way on newly issued orders, although it is worth nothing that more than one banning order can be given to a single fan. To further complicate matters the backlog of court cases over the pandemic period meant that trials were regularly held much later than normal, making tracking trends and patterns less of an exact science.
At Bolton, the club have made examples of their in-house bans as they look to improve the match experience but gauging whether there has been an upsurge in court mandated orders may only be visible in next season’s figures.
Whilst the total number of banning orders at Wanderers decreased steadily between 2008 – with Bolton still a Premier League club - and 2018, this year’s figure is the third-highest recorded since 2002. The number of new orders has remained relatively consistent over the last 20 years but experienced a spike in 2019 which remained constant in 2020, corresponding with the club’s drop out of the Championship into League One.
Whether that trend continues once the pandemic lag is no longer a factor remains to be seen. Bolton have certainly set out their stall, launching the ‘One Wanderers’ campaign in February in an effort to make the UniBol a safer environment for all supporters.
A total of 14 supporters aged between 15 and 57 were given club-mandated bans after trouble last season at home games against Sunderland, Cambridge United and Morecambe, with a club statement claiming that 30 such bans had been issued in-house.
The club also created a special number so that supporters can report anti-social behaviour at the game via text or WhatsApp (07542 850902).
Fans’ groups welcome such moves, yet they are also keen to emphasise how much work has been done to make football stadia safer to visit for all.
Kevin Miles, the chief executive of the Football Supporters’ Association said: “Football arrest figures have been falling for decades and were at an all-time low in 2019, so an increase was possible at some point, and this post-Covid dataset shows a rise back towards 2013/14 levels.
“While we’d always like to see falling arrest rates, it’s important to put these figures into context – one arrest for every 20,000 supporters. Across the Premier League and EFL this equates to less than one arrest per match and compares favourably to many other large public events.
“A very small minority of people cause issues and this matters to our members, match-going supporters, more than anyone. But it’s also worth saying that football is a safe environment with hundreds of thousands of law-abiding fans and their families attending week-in, week-out.
“The FSA will continue to work with the Premier League, EFL, FA and other authorities on projects which seeks to reduce disorder via proportionate and effective measures.”
Of the newly issued orders across all clubs, 72.1 per cent went to supporters aged between 18 and 34 years. Across the whole Football League, just one single banning order was placed on a supporter aged over 65.
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