plus the game has been played for more years without them than with them. you are not telling me everyone acted like choir boys in the distant past especially when you read about crowd trouble and even ground closure 100 years back. once it seemed a handful of uniformed coppers being enough and not dressed in hi vis or paramilarary uniform who usually had an easy afternoon of it.

I remember the Pools fans changing ends at halftime walking round the track, not a steward in site.

that was the thing at some grounds but not all. they walked in opposite directions to the others but for some reason that will never happen again. its not as if the game as got rougher and tougher since those days where yesterdays opponents would have needed a big police escort out of the town if they were around nowadays with a lot of fans attitudes.

There was more coppers at the match then, I suspect stewards are a cheaper option. Useless, but economically viable.

cannot go back 100 years but there never seemed that many more inside the ground then apart when everything started going tits up in the 70,s. now we,ll have as many police inside plus the army of stewards as we had at one time therefore the costs at games must be terrific now. first thing now is you walk through the gates and the first thing you see is a steward after seeing them outside as well. always get the impression at some grounds they,d rather evict you than help you both inside and outside. the vast majority would be happy to still stand side by side with a fan from the opposition apart from derby games and the odd other fixture with some history.

Correct. Policing charges went through the roof about 15-20 years ago. It put an end to quite a few events, like the Fish Quay Festival in North Shields. Pools and other small clubs got absolutely hammered with policing charges whenever a big away attendance was expected. Event security firms are the cheaper alternative.

Strolling down memory lane is all well and good, but as the relevant licencing authority, Hartlepool Council wouldn't allow games to go ahead without appropriate security and safety provision in place.

Cleveland County Council didn’t help either.
I remember when on a TV programme a spokesman for Cleveland tried to justify their help in getting the Riverside Stadium built, and suggested Pools should consider a ground share …stpid ….Sir John Hall was on the programme and said don’t be ridiculous, football’s tribal, there’s no chance…..the bloke shut up.

They did go through the roof - agreed.
From memory, I'm sure Cleveland Police were listed as creditors on the '93 winding up petition
.
Along with tax purposes, think that was the main reason behind the 'GIbson Guess' - the ridiculous attendance fiddling that went on during Garry (with 2 Rs) Gibson's Stewardship.

I remember several instances when we played the likes of Stoke, Brum and West Brom at home in the 3rd Tier (circa '93 when we had a decent team) Clubs with massive away support - filling the whole of the old Town End terrace- yet the crowd was announced as 3850 when in reality it was nearer 6k.

At one of those games, remember walking out at the end of the match as the crowd figure was read out and even the copper behind me laughed
and made a comment, berating the figure announced against actual reality!

lowering the published attendance figures was popular at one time. Rochdale actually did it the other way round in the fear of being voted out of the league because of workington type attendances they got.

That Birmingham City match had a fair bit of chew - there was even fighting in the seats of the Mill House.

Can't remember the names of either, but I've read two books about football hooliganism that made reference to that game. The first was a biography of one of their fans who was the top bloke when it came to violence, and he was asked who were the worst fans he'd encountered at an away match. His reply was "Hartlepool. I don't know what they feed them fuckers up there but we got a right kicking".

The second book was about a Birmingham copper who got moved into a squad of undercover officers whose job it was to infiltrate the "firms" of the day. After spending many months gaining their trust, he recalled his first away day in the book. "It was at Hartlepool, and I got punched in the face as I got off the train."

Crazy times, but that's the way it was back then.

A Hull fan told me years ago that Pools fans were the only ones they were frightened of.