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By CALUM CROWE Published: 04: 28 AEST, 20 May 2025 | Updated: 04: 34 AEST, 20 May 2025 2 View comments Almost four years ago, in the summer of 2021, a sea of broken glass, drugs, and boozed-up fans provided a chaotic backdrop to the final of the European Championships at Wembley. Bedlam had broken out around the stadium in the hours prior to kick-off in the showpiece match between England and Italy. With unprecedented levels of disorder, it would eventually rank as one of the most shameful episodes in the history of British football. One of the enduring images, no matter how much we might wish to erase it from memory, was that of a fan snorting lines of cocaine before sticking a firework up his backside. When the individual was later tracked down and interviewed by a tabloid newspaper, he claimed to have no regrets. He explained how he had drunk at least 20 cans of Strongbow and ‘banged a load of powder’ - three grams of cocaine - before sneaking into Wembley to watch the final. Aberdeen's Jack Mac Kenzie is hit with a chair from the crowd during Saturday's game Mac Kenzie is helped from the pitch after being struck by a chair at Tannadice The levels of disorder witnessed on that afternoon in July 2021 became a watershed moment for the football authorities in England. Led by Baroness Louise Casey, a review was carried out which found that fatalities had only been narrowly avoided - a ‘near-miss’ - in some cases. The Casey Review went on to make a series of recommendations to the football authorities with a view to mitigating the risk of any repeat episodes in future. In the context of Scottish football, we don’t have anything as big as Wembley. We don’t have crowds of over 100, 000 rioting outside a stadium and trying to force entry. But, just as the Euros Final was a line in the sand for the authorities in England, the same should apply in Scotland and the sight of Jack Mac Kenzie being wheeled off the pitch with his head bandaged. The Aberdeen defender suffered a serious facial injury at Tannadice on Saturday after being hit by a broken chair which was thrown by one of the club’s own supporters. It was the latest in a long line of shameful episodes to have tarnished Scottish football recent weeks and months, but by far and away the most serious. Just a couple of weeks ago, Partick Thistle announced that four young fans had suffered injuries as a result of a pyro display in a play-off match against Ayr United. Prior to that match, the streets around Somerset Park had witnessed ugly clashes between rival fans. In a Scottish Cup semi-final against Celtic last month, a St Johnstone supporter suffered an epileptic fit as a result of a similar pyro display at Hampden. A recent Old Firm match at Ibrox saw Celtic goalkeeper Viljami Sinisalo targeted with a glass bottle and other missiles. On Saturday afternoon, Celtic fans brazenly ignored requests to avoid congregating around the city centre to celebrate winning the league. The streets around the Trongate and Merchant City areas became a sea of selfish drunken morons whose behaviour forced the closure of many local businesses for the day. Looking through some of the footage on social media, countless clips were shared of sectarian and pro-IRA chanting. The football authorities in Scotland are experts when it comes to washing their hands of this stuff. They will bury their heads in the sand and claim it’s not their problem. But what happened to Jack Mac Kenzie at the weekend felt like a new low. A new depth had been plumbed amid rising levels of disorder throughout the Scottish game. There will come a time when the Scottish Government will throw the book at football in this country and, collectively, the game won’t have a leg to stand on. Getting ahead of the ball and showing a willingness to shape their own version of strict liability would be a wise place to start. Nobody actively wants strict liability, but nor should anyone be prepared to sit back and accept the current status quo. The current approach clearly does not work. It is not longer good enough for the SPFL, the clubs and the SFA to sit back and do nothing. Inaction is now a part of the problem. A prominent supporters’ group in Scottish football believes it could now be only a matter of time before someone suffers a fatality as a result of fan violence and disorder. ‘Nobody should ever go to a football match and not make it home, ’ said Alastair Blair, Director of Operations at the Scottish Football Supporters’ Association. ‘Nobody should fear for their life at a game of football. ‘But the way it’s going just now, it’s not difficult to envisage someone being fatally injured either from a pyro or a glass bottle being thrown. ‘We are heading towards a point where someone is going to be killed inside a stadium in Scotland. ‘Whilst we accept that fans’ views differ on various subjects, we strive to bring consensus and present a unified front, asking difficult questions of the football authorities, politicians and the media where we believe it is important to do so. ‘Underpinning everything we do is our firm belief that all fans have the right to attend any match in safety and free from intimidation and danger. ’ And that’s the nub of it right there. Most supporters who attend football matches are right-minded people who behave and enjoy themselves for 90 minutes. Safeguarding players who are ultimately doing their job, as well as those watching from the stands, is an issue which can’t be ignored any longer. Pyro displays have also become a major issue at games in Scotland over recent years This is real and it’s a problem which isn’t going away any time soon. Indeed, if anything, levels of fan disorder have only grown in recent years since the pandemic. A growing sub-culture of younger supporters are now choosing cocaine - rather than alcohol - as their substance of choice on matchdays. Mail Sport has been told of group chats on Whats App being used to organise drop-offs and deliveries of the drug outside stadiums. As football emerged from the pandemic in 2022, Geoff Pearson, a senior lecturer in criminal law at Manchester University warned of what was coming. ‘There’s a subculture who go to football, mainly lads and anything from teenagers through to 60-odd, who go for a transgressive experience, ’ said Pearson. ‘Watching the football is only one element of what is important to the day. ‘Getting absolutely blottoed in whatever way, having a sing-song, hanging around with your mates, expressing your identity and coming back with a bunch of stories that will get you through the working week is what it’s about. ’ Those words feel every bit as true now as they did three years ago, prevalent in much of the disorder we have seen in Scottish football this season.   Mail Sport can reveal that at least seven clubs in the Scottish Premiership this season have been made aware of concerns about drug misuse inside their stadiums and, more specifically, in toilet cubicles. There have even been some reports of fans claiming to have witnessed the drug being taken openly on the terraces rather than in toilets. Dr Martha Newson conducts research into social cohesion and groups who share strong identities. In 2021, she ran a study into cocaine use among football fans and found a higher concentration than in the general population (6. 2 per cent compared with, according to the Office for National Statistics, 2. 6 per cent of the general population). More strikingly, 30 per cent of those surveyed said they had seen the drug being taken at football matches. Academics have yet to fully establish the extent to which cocaine is linked to fan violence and disorder. But it would be extremely naïve to believe that the increased use of the drug has no effect. One source told Mail Sport: ‘I would estimate somewhere between 50 to 75 per cent of these Ultras groups are coked-up at most matches. ’ Long gone are the days when cocaine was the preserve or rich, middle-class types working in the city. It is now more affordable and accessible than ever. Among some football fans, cocaine has become their fuel on match-days. Where the effects of alcohol generally wear off over 90 minutes, fans can continue snorting lines of cocaine to sustain their high throughout a match. The effects are becoming more prevalent in stadiums throughout Scotland. It is lad culture on steroids. ‘In our meetings with the football authorities, pyro and cocaine have become increasingly common topics of discussion, ’ said SFSA chief Blair. ‘There’s no point pretending these things aren’t serious problems in our game, because they are. ‘We have done research on this and the majority of fans we’ve spoken to don’t like pyro and don’t want it. It’s illegal and dangerous. ‘I think the broadcast media don’t help the issue. They are always quick to show the pyro displays on TV. It’s almost like it becomes glamourised and promoted. ‘Over the past few years, we’ve had more and more people contacting us saying they don’t want to take their kids to a match because they don’t feel it’s safe. ‘I even heard a story recently about a girl’s game at grassroots level where one of the mums let off a pyro at the side of the pitch. ’

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