Why can you booze in the stands at rugby and cricket but not football? It’s time to rip up our daft ‘two tier beer’ laws

HURRAH, the Prem is back. When Arsenal and Coventry City run out at the Emirates, we’ll finally get to see something that has been sorely missing in this country for months. That’s right . . . GREEN grass. If you take a beer pitchside here in the UK and you’ll have some hi-vis heavy on your case threatening to take away your season ticket Credit: Getty Burnham is thinking of ripping up the ban and letting fans moderate their own alcohol intake Credit: Getty Yet while the pitches will have been given a good drink, the same can’t be said of the fans who for the 41st year in a row will sit in their seats without a refreshing pint to toast their team. And it will feel particularly irritating this season, for just weeks ago we were reminded once again how a beer enjoyed in the stands is far from the riot juice our nanny state thinks it is. Indeed, at every World Cup match supporters were glugging ale from kick-off to the final whistle. Americans don’t ban booze on the terraces — sorry, “bleachers” — they actively encourage it. I once watched a Red Sox baseball game at Boston’s fabled Fenway Park and if you wanted a beer you just waved at some spotty youth from your seat, passed a few bucks down the row and he’d send an ice-cold Budweiser back. Cheers! But take a beer pitchside here in the UK and you’ll have some hi-vis heavy on your case threatening to take away your season ticket. Drinking in the stands at British stadiums has been banned since Thatcher brought in the Sporting Events (Control of Alcohol etc) Act in 1985 “to make football grounds safe places for decent people”. She wanted to stamp out hooliganism. But it was a daft idea because, while it initially resulted in fewer arrests, all it ultimately did was encourage binge-drinking, before the game and at half-time. If you wanted a pissed-up scrap with the oppo, you could still do it.Many did. But four decades on, football has changed. It’s not just a rowdy tribal tussle (and nothing wrong with that), it’s also a family day out, a corporate hospitality outing, a “soccer” tourist trip.Class-based rule Stone Island gear is still the clobber of choice for hardcore fans, but actual hooligans are rare (many knocked it on the head in the Nineties when ecstasy tablets flooded the terraces and hugs — manly ones of course — replaced punches). In the years I’ve been taking my son to Old Trafford — often the “atmospheric” Stretford End — I’ve seen fewer thugs than in the parks of my local borough. But still I have to skull my beer if I happen to still be nursing it as the whistle blows. Fortunately our new PM Andy Burnham does seem to get this. He loves footie, does Our Andy. You might have heard him mention it a few thousand times. He drops in his love of Everton when he realises everyone’s bored of his Johnny Marr anecdotes. Well, he’s now thinking of ripping up the ban and letting fans moderate their own alcohol intake, like the grown-ups we all are. It started with a social media clip, naturally, in which the By ’Eck I’m King of the North, Me filmed himself at the Toffees’ Hill Dickinson stadium watching rugby league. Turning to his pals clutching pints, he enquired: “How come these lads can do that in my seat here when we can’t do that at an Everton home game?“There’s something wrong there, we need to take a look at that.” Now he’s got his “people” on it, who recently teased: “We are considering the case being made by some clubs and supporter groups for reviewing the current restrictions.” Well, I’ll drink to that. Because the simple fact is that this has only ever been a punitive class-based ban. One that treats working-class people like violent knuckleheads who cannot be trusted to moderate their drinking. Why else are chaps at the rugger allowed to “split the G” all through the game? Why can punters at the cricket not just marinate themselves in rosé over after over, but also bring in their own booze to aid this non-stop lubrication? It has become one rule for the supposedly “decent people” and one rule for all the rest. It is, to coin a phrase, Two Tier Beer. And it is a relic of the past. One Andy Burnham should now consign to the bottle bank of history. REFORM CLASH ’N’ BURN ANOTHER exciting week for the boys of Reform UK as they continue to squabble like teenagers on a four-hour car journey. This week a chap called Tim Montgomerie was suspended from the party after he had the temerity to give an interview to The Spectator suggesting all was not well between Nigel Farage and his combustible attack dog, Zia Yusuf. The amiable Tim had a few other – perfectly reasonable – gripes, too, but it was evidently too much for a party where apparently all must genuflect to its leader at all times. Pretty sure there is a word for an organisation like that. Cult. FARAGE can at least console himself that, despite all the infighting, his thin-skinned mob are doing somewhat better than that other party of warring chiefs, Your Party. Jeremy Corbyn and his sparring partner Zarah Sultana’s “National Movement for Change” is currently languishing at the bottom of YouGov’s latest voting intentions poll, on a whopping ZERO per cent. Marines ‘no beard’ rule? You goatee be joking AS a proud member of the beard-wearing fraternity (furternity?) it is my solemn duty to stand up for all fellas with facial furniture. So my whiskers were duly twitching this week when it was revealed that Royal Marine commandos sporting, er, jawline camouflage were forced to shave it all off before a recent parade for the King. No doubt the order came from one of those chinless wonder types who aced Sandhurst but couldn’t grow a single whisker in a month of Sundays (what is it about toffs and bum fluff?). I’ve no doubt this command will have irked our hirsute heroes, not least because the only reason they are now allowed to wear beards is thanks to a new rule introduced last year and approved by . . . the King. TONGUE PHOOEY TROUBLESOME words like quinoa, acai, gnocchi and Worcestershire have been declared some of the hardest for Brits to correctly pronounce. And woe betide those who get them wrong as the same survey found 85 per cent of people who mucked them up were instantly corrected by some pedantic bugger. I have a fairly relaxed policy about mispronunciation. Indeed, sometimes it is required – a canapé should only ever be called a can-ape. But what I find unforgivable is those pretentious sorts who insist on pronouncing foreign words as if they are a native speaker. The kind of folk who turn ordering tapas into some sort of Duolingo test, spraying the table with spittle from their th-th-ths. Absolute twarts. R.I.P TO TRAGIC JASON Arday seems to have been many things – some true, some apparently not – but most of all he was a husband, a father and a human being Credit: Graeme Robertson.. ENSCONCED in rural France for a fortnight, I was blissfully unaware of most news but could not help tuning in to the riveting but ultimately tragic Jason Arday affair. Arday seems to have been many things – some true, some apparently not – but most of all he was a husband, a father and a human being. So I find it incredibly sad that his life has now ended and my heart goes out to his family and all those who loved him. Now I see the “mainstream media” is being singled out by some as having played a role in this devastating event – with claims it “harassed” Arday, partly because he was black. Well, reading the many articles about him, it seemed to me that if anyone was fixated on his skin colour it was his promoters at Cambridge University, now rightly facing tricky questions over their treatment of their star turn. All the Press appeared to do – from the Guardian to the Telegraph and everyone in between – was investigate his questionable claims, of which there were many. Is this not what we want a responsible media to do? To seek the truth, about whoever is involved and whatever colour they may be. CAN’T say that I was particularly exercised about the Government’s “risk of fire” alert that went out interrupting everyone’s important TikTok scrolling. Britain is full of oiks using disposable BBQs irresponsibly and chucking fag ends out the car window, so why not remind them not to be dicks while Britain desiccates? But there has been one unedifying aspect of the whole non-story. Turns out we’re a nation of snitching busybodies. Since last Friday’s alert, firefighters have been urging people not to call 999 just because they’ve seen a neighbour using their BBQ. So, mind how you grill, folks – and watch out for that grass. MEANWHILE, some safety advice elsewhere does seem a little OTT. When selecting a few books for my recent holiday, I plumped for George Orwell’s The Road To Wigan Pier. While the book includes many instances of potential peril – not least the terrifying conditions faced by miners in the 1930s – it was a warning on the website (Amazon) where I bought it that concerned me most. Under the heading Product Safety it declared inexplicably: “Warning: Do not use near overhead power lines.”