Well played, Gents.

On 30^th March Huddersfield Town played Hull City at home. The fixture was originally scheduled to be played at 12.30, but Sky TV decided that they wanted to broadcast the match live, and have it kick off at 5.20 instead. Huddersfield wrote to West Yorkshire Police to request permission to make the change. It's a standing rule of thumb in football policing that the later a match kicks off the more 'risk' it poses, because supporters will have more time to get drunk beforehand. Seemingly on this basis, West Yorkshire Police would only permit a later kick off time under certain very strict conditions.

The most significant of these conditions was that all Hull fans buying a ticket for the match would at the same time be obliged to purchase official coach travel from Hull. All travel to the match for Hull fans would have to start and finish in Hull. A fan living in West Yorkshire, or London, or wherever, would be obliged to make his way to Hull first in order to go to Huddersfield. The reaction of fans was furious, with one fifteen year old Hull fan living in Manchester attempting to force a judicial review. As a compromise police eventually agreed that fans that didn't wish to travel from Hull could make their own way to a rendezvous at a motorway service station near the Huddersfield stadium and use police-escorted buses. Many Hull fans stayed away, while others protested outside the ground before the match.

RedsAway, a website about away matches for Manchester United fans, used the Freedom of Information Act to request copies of all police correspondence relating to the match. The emails reveal a police decision making process that was haphazard and rested on little evidential basis. West Yorkshire Police seemingly gave no consideration to the rights of thousands of fans to enjoy going to a football match in a manner of their own choosing, instead making their policing decisions solely on the basis of perceived (exaggerated) risk, and on the extra cost to the public purse of letting Hull fans travel the way they pleased.

In the face of criticism when the restrictions were originally announced, police tried to deflect the anger, saying that policing plans were the result of negotiation and agreement between all parties. But the emails reveal that the police went into meetings prepared to concede very little ground. As the clubs were under pressure from the Football League to ensure the game went ahead and was televised, they were in a weak negotiating position – something of which the police were aware. “The club were clearly under a lot of pressure from the FA [sic] to get the game on and I have made it clear there will be no further negotiation from ourselves,” Chief Superintendent Tim Kingsman wrote on 5^th February. In reply he received a laddish pat on the back from the Assistant Chief Constable: “Gents. Well played, keep me in the loop re: developments.”

Police were unprepared for the scale and volume of fans' anger. They have become so used to pushing people around that it never occurred to them that fans would object to having their movements determined and supervised for around seven hours in order that they could watch a game of football lasting ninety minutes – in a fixture which hadn't seen any trouble for over a decade. When Hull City objected, Kingsman said he was happy to attend a meeting to explain his rationale, but only in the context where it was understood that there was “no further room for compromise.”

Ahead of follow up meetings with the clubs, Superintendent Ged McManus asked a junior officer to trawl through police databases to find some intelligence with which to retrospectively justify the purported high risk of the fixture. Research was also done through 'open source' channels, i.e. the internet. A police officer, paid by taxpayers whose money the WYP were so anxious to protect, was paid to read internet forums, Twitter and Facebook, and to trawl through Youtube videos trying to find evidence of Hull fans behaving badly.

Pressure grew, particularly after a BBC interview following which the police's PR division whinged in an email that McManus had been “ambushed,” by being forced to answer tough questions. One fan emailed to ask, pertinently, “on what legal basis you can prevent me travelling lawfully in my legal vehicle to a place of my choosing?” Police were gradually realising what a stupid decision they had made. At least, some of them were: Deputy Chief Constable Jawaid Akhtar praised a Yorkshire Post editorial because it laid the blame on fans for bringing the restrictions on themselves.

A police solicitor had a clearer idea of the reality, a reality which might be further exposed once the Police and Crime Commissioner's investigation into the decision has run its course. “We have an area of weakness,” he or she wrote, “which is the Leeds v Derby game where we have agreed to kick off at 5.30pm on Bank Holiday Monday with no restrictions... Leeds have a far worse record for disorder than either Hull or Huddersfield and there is evidence of recent disorder between Leeds and Derby... There is a risk that a Court would find that we have acted irrationally.”