‘You’re not fit to referee’ A terrace refrain knocking about in one guise or another since the days of the football special. Officials make mistakes, everyone of us makes those, but to limit them on the football field, we have VAR. The introduction of technology as a back-up to erase in-the-moment human error, yet we get decisions like that made on Saturday at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium. Shortly after full-time PGMOL issued a statement: “A significant human error occurred,” it said. “A clear and obvious factual error... PGMOL will conduct a full review into the circumstances [...]

Time up for Zeljko Pavlica Uefa’s head of security must go Uefa have been accused of submitting “completely untrue” evidence to their own inquiry – the Independent Panel inquiry, detailing how and why a near disaster happened at the Champions League final in May 2022. On 7 June last year, just over a week after events in Paris, Spirit of Shankly began calling for an independent investigation into what happened to ensure such a fiasco could not happen again and to rubbish the Uefa-backed claims that supporters had been to blame. The French [...]

NFC Passes for Travelling Fans As part of the recently formed fan forums set-up by the club, representatives of Spirit of Shankly and the Supporters Board were advised that some Premier League clubs would be using NFC this season, in place of paper tickets, for away supporters. This week sales began for the away fixtures at Tottenham, on 30 September, and Brighton, on 8 October, with some tickets issued via NFC. As this is now underway, we wanted to let our membership know about the conversations in which we were involved and the concerns we [...]

Rugby World  Cup Mark Machado was in Marseille for the Rugby World Cup, where a sense of déja-vu was the overriding memory “As a Liverpool fan, I’m only too aware of what happened at the Champions League final in Paris in May 2022 and the work done following the horrendous scenes to ensure sports fans visiting France would not be subjected to such treatment again. Lessons had been learned, right?  “A group of eight of us were in Marseille on the weekend of 9-10 September for the Rugby World Cup. We left Le Black Stone [...]

Saturday 9 September Spirit of Shankly, along with Homebaked CLT,  are sponsoring a banner-making workshop this Saturday 9 September at The Church on Oakfield Road. Presented by Legendary LFC banner maker Peter Carney, the workshop runs from 10am to 4pm and is free. There’s no need to book, just drop into the basement at the Church from 10am. Peter’s famous Hillsborough banner and his most recent work of the boss – the portrait in the middle is by Gary Rogers. Also on Saturday, if you have time, head to Anfield [...]

Time to end the abuse Spirit of Shankly are pleased to share the news that English football authorities have collectively launched a new charter that includes fan behaviour and significantly tragedy chanting. SOS have worked in tandem with, among others, The FA, Premier League, police and CPS, to challenge and ultimately bring to an end the unacceptable tragedy abuse, including chants, gestures and offensive messages, that has been on the rise over recent seasons. Starting with the coming season, measures are to be introduced that will result in people, who are found to have committed [...]