Police ran a good operation for derby (From Daily Echo)

Yeh well done, plenty of overtime for the boys in blue, and a lot of expense for SFC.
A simple solution would be to ban pompey fans from this fixture and saints fans from fratton park, it would'nt affect attendances one bit, but it would save a whole lot of bother to the police, the towns and the clubs.

With all due respect, after the huge effort to keep the fans from getting at each other before the game I couldn't believe that the away fans were let out at the same time as home fans afterwards. It was obvious from the amount of hate shown by both sets of fans beforehand that they shouldn't be allowed to mix, so surely having them already locked in in a self contained away stand was going to be much more sensible than letting them out and having to deal with both sets of fans in the open? Especially with the home fans smarting and some looking to let off a bit of anger after a big reverse.

Indeed, by the time I had got out of the ground in the Northam corner and walked the long way around the stadium due to the Northam car park being blocked off "for safety" I had timed it perfectly to be walking through the middle of the aggro Saints fans as they were running through the Freeborn garage, with volleys of stones being lobbed back and forth. Down the next street a handful of poor foot police armed with only batons had to deal with literally hundreds of fans running at each other, luckily the horsebacks got their just in time to stop it getting really ugly.

My girlfriend was shocked at the level of animosity, unfortunately I found myself more shocked at the decision to let them out.
Yes, not many arrests so far, and yes, not too much trouble considering, but it could have been far, far worse after such a daft decision was made. You said in your blog that there was no need to keep them in, but if you had then you wouldn’t have given them any opportunity to be stood face to face like that. Saints mob were spurred on by the fact that the Pompey mob were stood there hanging around outside, it gave them something to have a go at.

It would only have taken a lock in of 15 minutes to let the home fans get away, including those like me who had to walk the long way around the ground. Then you would have easily been able to identify the Saints mob who were hanging around looking for trouble and acted accordingly. I can't help think that a lot of them would have been less aggro had the bulk of the crowd already gone home already once Pompey were released, as it was their apparent numbers were bolstered by people like me who were just passing through and getting caught in the crossfire. All that effort, planning and manpower, only to be undone by something so simple. Lo and behold that is what is dominating the news now rather than the quality game that we saw inside the stadium.

You mentioned in your blog that it is always a learning exercise, I just hope that you learnt something here.

Agree fully with Cheekytom's comments.
Would also question why the away buses were parked at the northern end of Britannia Road? The police organisation was lacking in so many areas - not holding back the away fans until the majority of home fans had dispersed, not making a channel for the away fans to get to their buses, parking the buses so far from the stadium etc.
Anyone who has been to away matches with Saints has been subject to final-whistle restrictions - 45 minutes at Millwall - nearly an hour at Fratton Park. So why invite trouble by letting them loose at the final whistle. Looks to me that the police were 'looking for headlines' themselves? I'd like to know what they have 'learned' from Saturday's
naive handling of an apparently simple containment exercise.

the so called fans that were violent i cannot believe they are true fans just people able to get tkts who were looking for fights.also i remember when my sons were youngs ago with many years ago millwall playing,away fans were escorted to the train station surrounded by police before our fans were allowed out.the fact the loud pompey fan was allowed in even though banned for life shows lack of interest from police. also banning so called fans for violent behaviour probably wont matter to the persons concerned as they probably never go anyway.

I personally think the police operation was poor. Why at the narrowest point near the railway bridge weren’t police vans there to stop the trouble from the start? It was clearly a bottle neck on the route to the stadium.

As for leaving, why stop traffic from leaving the area, surely common sense would have been to let the cars out of the area, then move the fans, who ever had the bright idea of blocking the roads and forcing the traffic around back to the stadium nears to have a rethink.

I just hope that you guys get as many of the troublemakers as possible, Saints or Pompey. There's no real justification for the way they behaved.

The reason Mr Portsmouth was allowed in was not a lack of interest from the police. I cant give the reasons here but it is related to administration and that time in our history.

Highly stupid decision by police to let fans out at the same time, but then they `know` what they are doing just like when they let Millwall in for free and put them in Chaple....

costa gaz, i kind of agree with you and I see your point, however i don't think preventing pompey fans and saints fans from each others stadiums is the right way forward as supporters still have a right to go watch their teams play and there no reason that they can't go watch their teams play but not go to cause trouble, those supporters should be banned from matches.