Celtic fans warned of possible trouble
Monday, 20 October 2003 14:52Celtic fans have been warned not to travel to Brussels without a match ticket ahead of their Champions League match with Anderlecht. It is understood as many as 7,000 Celtic fans, many from Ireland, will be in the Belgian capital even though the Parkhead club have only been allocated 2,000 tickets.
Anderlecht fans have a history of causing problems and with so many Celtic supporters milling around the city and the ground a question mark has been placed over their safety. Celtic's head of operations Ronnie Hawthorn admitted the potential for trouble is a cause for concern and urged Parkhead fans to keep their cool.
He said: "Our advice to Celtic fans who are travelling without tickets is please do not go unless you have a match ticket and we ask them to take that good advice. We also ask the Celtic support to do what they are good at doing and travel safely and with care and use their experience and stay away from any trouble and avoid provocation.
"The view of the local police is that there is a section of the home support who are intent on causing trouble. However, having said that, the local police are experienced in dealing with them and we're trusting their professionalism to make sure that happens on this occasion."
He continued: "We have to rely on the local police and their professionalism but what we can do and what we have done is to say to our support not to be provoked and to use their experience to stay away from problem situations. And if they occur then do your best to extricate yourself from that position as quickly as possible.
"We've done what we always do and prepare for every away game. We've been over to meet with the local police and the British Embassy and of course Anderlecht themselves so we've talked to a lot of people. In addition to that we've spoken to Strathclyde Police and there will be two officers travelling with us."
Hawthorn concluded: "It's almost impossible to say how many fans are travelling because we simply do not know but we have been given 2,000 tickets by Anderlecht and that is about 1,000 more than their normal allocation, so we are grateful to them for that. But it's always difficult to estimate how many other people will go because many will be based in Europe and not travelling from Glasgow."
Filed by Shane Murray
