Birmingham City forward Troy Deeney has made a heartfelt plea to the FA to look into player safety after a rise in incidents involving supporters clashing with players and managers.
Nottingham Forest were involved in one incident on Tuesday (May 17) when season ticket holder Robert Biggs, 30, was caught on television cameras assaulting Sheffield United captain Billy Sharp during a pitch invasion after Forest's penalty shoot-out win over the Blades in the play-offs at the City Ground. Biggs has been jailed for 24 weeks.
Further incidents took place after Port Vale's play-off semi-final win over Swindon Town, as well as after Everton's win over Crystal Palace at Goodison Park - a result which secured the Toffees' Premier League survival.
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In a column for The Sun, Deeney said: "In this country, we are always reactive rather than proactive. So, do something about it... before someone is killed. These invasions have become a growing trend over the last couple of weeks and what we have seen is an undying need from a small percentage of idiots to go that one step further."
The issue of player safety has risen to the top after footage emerged of Palace boss Patrick Vieira in an altercation with a pitch invader at Everton, as well as other incidents at other games.
"We are in a weird space right now where the victim is seen as the problem, more than the person who is actually the problem," wrote Deeney.
"The stewarding also has to be looked at. You don’t want the stewards to put themselves in danger but it feels like right now that if you want to walk on to a pitch, you can. What will it take for that to change? A player to react and a supporter gets seriously hurt? That player would end up getting punished, and maybe a prison sentence, and then people will wake up and start talking about looking after players.
"On the flip side, it could also lead to a player being killed, quite easily. What happens if a player got stabbed? Then what? Is it still the player’s fault? And when that happens, please don’t tell them they should have known better."
He adds: "The reason they do it is because they are not scared of the consequences, so there have to be real repercussions.
"If you run on to a pitch and the fine is, for instance, £5,000, how many of the thousands of people from that Everton game who invaded the pitch are really going to get that fine? Let’s start enforcing that properly to act as a proper deterrent. But, because there have been no or little consequences, what will they do next time? Stay on a bit longer?
"It is really simple. Give someone a punishment they are worried about and they won’t do it.
"I don’t think the FA or Prem will go down the points deduction route, nor do I think they should go back to thinking about putting barriers or screens up around the stands. We have seen in the past that has the potential to have catastrophic results. We don’t want to be pushed back down that road.
"Yet it is crazy to think Brentford are having to organise the biggest police presence for a home game in their history against Leeds this weekend. It feels like we are going back to the late 80s early 90s where hooliganism and thuggery is now the normal. I thought we had moved past that? Clearly not."
