Fan Intrusion and Player Safety
During the current World Cup being staged in South Africa, a fan managed to sneak into the England team's locker room and berate some of the players on their performance before calmly walking out again. This led to a massive upsurge in security and the team and management were not at all happy that something like this could have happened. This incident highlighted the issue of player safety and security at international tournaments, but just how big a problem is it these days?
The story went on to say that an English fan wandered into the England team's dressing room and once he got there he started to give the members of the team a lecture on how badly they performed recently. The fan was charged with unauthorised entry into a football team's locker room and fined $100. The problem for the England team management was that a few moments before the fan burst in unannounced the two princes of England Harry and William had just left the room. Since the security of the royal family is for some reason greater than the security of everyone else, there was an outrage from all corners.
Needless to say the incident was harmless and the fan did not cause any harm to anyone and neither did he intent to. He simply wanted to tell the team how poorly they were playing. The fan was seen as a hero on the internet chat rooms and many praised his actions. They all wished they could have said the same to the England team. People felt that the team had let themselves and their fans down with their poor performance and they were glad someone got to relate their message to them.
It turns out that a journalist helped the fan gain access to the locker room in order to get an exclusive story on security lapses in South Africa. In their investigation police in South Africa found that a journalist working for the Sunday Mirror aided fan Pavlos Joseph to gain access to the England team's locker room and then harboured to interview him in order to gain an exclusive story on how lapses in the security had caused this breach. The journalist, Simon Wright, was trying to profit from selling a big story to the tabloids back in England. This shows just how much money there is in the news and what extreme lengths people will orchestrate to produce a false story. People, it seems, are so hungry for scandalous news stories that journalists are resorting to fabricating fake news items for their consumption.
The security of footballers is a pretty big issue during this World Cup because South Africa is not the safest place in the world but they have really tried to increase security. It seems the Serbian football team did not think that the South African police were up to the job and sent a special six man security team to accompany the players of their national side. The South African governing body has upped its security for the current World Cup to unprecedented levels. They have employed thousands of extra police officials to safeguard the event and installed high-tech security equipment for the duration of the tournament.With all the added security and installations in place, the tournament has not seen any incidents of security lapses and breaches. Even though the above mentioned breach looked like it compromised the entire security of the World Cup it was orchestrated and fake. This incident showed everyone that the security is very tight and well maintained.
Just how precious are the footballers, yes they make a lot of money and they are very famous but should they be protected as a national treasure? It seems that they are so famous that people have a desire to be close to them and some even want to cause them harm. So in that respect they probably do need to be protected. At the end of the day it is up to the fans to make up their own minds whether they feel footballers should be protected more than normal people or not.
The security has been very good during the current World Cup and hopefully will remain so. Apart from the dodgy reporter and his friend everything has gone off without a hitch. The better the security at an even of this magnitude the more enjoyable it will be for the fans, players and staff involved.
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