It just occurred to me. When I got off the train at Selhurst on Saturday, and walked to The Two Brewers, there were huge numbers of those new types of police. (The ones that wear black baseball caps and look a bit tasty)

Not your normal plod, who often looks like he's been [poured into his trousers and someone forgot to say "Stop".

If these athletic looking plods were some kind of special forces, I'm guessing they would have cost a fortune to pay for.

I wonder if there's some sort of incentive for them to arrest someone and catch some overtime.

Football must be a great cash cow for the police.

I wonder if the Croydon Police have a massive rivals with their Sussex counterparts and taunt them with wads of cash they're making from over time and made up stories about confiscated knuckledusters.

Does anyone know how policing works at football games?

True.

I was glad nothing happened.

Did seem to be a lot of police but I suppose they have to do that

The main reason nothing big happened is that most of the pubs were closed before the match and loads of our fellas we're in the ground drinking when their lads got to the ground. If the Brighton group that drunk at the Toby carvery in Purley Oaks were confronted along the route from Selhurst station to the ground then it would've been difficult to get control of and could've gone over the top.

COYP

Some Brighton fans were singing about hating Palace and how we'd all run away on Boxing Day etc. They got on a Selhurst bound train at Clapham Junction. (What were they doing there?)

Then got off at Selhurst. Then, as we all trooped off down the tunnel together towards the station exit, started the song about wanting to kill Palace fans. Which was odd, because we were all mingled together, and they had the perfect opportunity to kill me right there. I'm 57 now, and got high blood pressure, Edema, an annoying cut on the back of my leg that won't heal up because of the blood pressure tablets, a swollen scrotum from a ball in the testicles incident 18 months ago that won't heal either. And I'm suffering from the legacy of a bike accident (which was entirely my fault).

So they could have killed me quite easily, but chose to keep singing. Which was actually far worse, because it was so embarrassing.

You really don't want to suffer The Death By A Thousand Cringes.

A reference to Boxing Day 1979 presumably - says it all really when they have to drag up something that happened nearly 40 years ago to give them a sense of superiority, and when, probably, 99% of those singing it weren't even born.

Went for my usual ‘crowd disperser’ in the Albion after the game. Left to get the train from Norwood Junction at approx 5:45 and the road was blocked off due to crowd trouble.

There were some rough looking lads, presumably Palace fans, looking like there were after some trouble. Didn’t see anything myself but the road was closed for about 25 mins. The pub security, at the old Weatherspoons, told me it was all kicking off.

Good there were no arrests, looking like it was handled far better then the reverse fixture