Oh dear

Quoted from Mighty_Mariner

I was on the 10:39 train from Grimsby station with my nephew and a couple of his friends (all adults). We were housed in the very end carriage just before 1st class, I say housed, crammed would be a better description. We were stood back to back for the entire journey, as was the same in most carriages. I’m not defending any behaviour at all but the first point must be than East Midlands Trains would have been well aware from Police sources how many Town fans were likely to travel and they simply didn’t offer adequate enough carriages… it was bordering on bloody dangerous the amount of people on each carriage, a disaster waiting to happen that thankfully did not.

I can only speak for our carriage but the atmosphere was very positive. Loud? Yes, Chanting? Absolutely, Aggressive? Not at all. I cannot the say the same for the other carriages mind. We even had three ladies in their 40’s/50’s I’d guess heading to Nottingham on a day trip who joined in the fun and singing and had a great time. At no point did they appear worried, threatened or cautious, as was the Town fans behaviour!

One of the BIG problems, other than the over-crowding was the toileting facilities. There was ONE toilet that could be used separating three carriages as the next one along was out of order. You can appreciate just how problematic the station of hundreds of people, many drinking needing to share or wait for just one facility. There were reports of lads urinating in the aisle or on a seat which I absolutely don’t condone and think is a disgrace, but we were not helped at all by the facilities provided!

If anybody listened to the football forum tonight would have heard the Scunny fan actually defending Town fans when asked by Matt Dean about the Times article and he said, basically that football reflects society and the scenes on the train last week would ha e been no different if it were a music gig or outside any nightclub on a weekend were crowds of people are corralled together!

I also didn’t see any actual trouble on the way or inside the ground, yes the scenes in the concourse were a bit lively but nothing that you would see at most away crowds in my opinion. It certainly didn’t seem to stop or worry the many people who had taken their children to the game, females of all ages etc!

What I saw was lads young and old, drinking a little too much probably and consuming god knows what else and getting a little rowdy but I definitely didn’t come away thinking any less of our fans!

We’re an easy story and target though aren’t we! They make a huge deal of the amount of drugs found and seized… you cannot tell me you wouldn’t have found a similar amount of drugs at away crowds of comparable size at any ground in the country every weekend, this is not exclusive to Grimsby Town fans!

Quoted from MuddyWaters

I don’t see anyone saying it’s Town fans exclusively but saying “it’s not just us” doesn’t make drug taking, underage drinking and pissing everywhere acceptable, does it?

Quoted from Limerick Mariner

I fail to understand why Operation Wolfgang was conducted at the Nottingham end? Make all trains alcohol-free and confiscate alcohol, drugs and pyros at Clee and Gy stations.

Quoted from ska face

The Woking threads made specific reference to drug taking.

Again, this is part of the problem. It’s a lazy reference, not backed by anything, making a spurious claim that one set of people are fine and others not based on how far they’ve travelled?

I wasn’t on the train, but it’s pretty easy to see how some seats might’ve had píss on them - not acceptable, but I don’t think it’s a case of people being so drunk that they’ve píssed their pants, or people have just decided to start urinating all over each other. We’re not rugby fans. Overfill a train to a point where people can’t move down the carriage to reach the 1 or 2 toilets which were blocked after half an hour, and people are going to have to píss in bottles or cans.

Squeeze that many people onto a train going to Plymouth and you get the same result.