Unfortunately, it’s a bit too long for us to reproduce in full here, much as we’d love to, so we’ll try to pass on the salient points. Thanks though to Police Chief Marijan Tomurad for his kind words of welcome…
The local authorities are keen to demonstrate at this high profile match how well-equipped they are to maintain order and police a game well. At the same time, they’ve stressed to us that they want to welcome us warmly, and that they’ll be tolerant, not simply focusing on what people can and can’t do. Some of the things they don’t want us to do are pretty obvious, and we’d never dream of doing them anyway – stuff like carrying weapons or fireworks, or displaying banners or singing songs that incite hatred or violence. We’re not allowed either to throw things onto the pitch or start fights.
As always though there are a couple of things that need clarifying, the kind of thing that varies from country to country. For example, drinking in public places is not allowed; anyone the police find doing this will first be warned and have their alcohol confiscated, and if they persist they will be arrested. The police have also said that they will not allow anyone who is drunk or under the influence of drugs to enter the stadium; they will not necessarily be charged with an offence, but will be detained until two hours after the end of the game. It’s a long way to come to miss the game because of that last pint!
At the stadia there’ll be the usual searches and cordons. Please check on the Free Lions news page for latest news on which section you’re expecting to be put in.
Not got a ticket?
With thousands of englandfans members having expressed interest in this game – and maybe even booking travel and accommodation in the hope of getting one – there’s every chance that there’ll be a few of us here without tickets. As always, that’s not a problem in itself– there’s usually a good party going on anyway, regardless of whether you get into the ground to watch the match or not.
A few words to the wise though for anyone considering trying to get hold of a black market ticket. Firstly, the selling of tickets on the black market is a criminal offence in Croatia; the buying of them isn’t. The prediction of the locals that we spoke to, including the police, was that the black market would be small, and relatively highly priced.
Tickets have been in big demand among Croatian fans, and they don’t anticipate that many will be tempted to cash in on them. More importantly, the police were very keen to stress to us that they believe there to be a significant safety issue for any England fan buying tickets in any other section of the ground other than the official England sector.
Home fans only
They expect the atmosphere to be highly charged, and particularly the home end, the North Stand, would be an inhospitable place to find yourself during the game. There’s always an element of “we’ve heard this all before”, of course, but we'd rather you were safe than sorry, as our mothers used to say.
Their stated policy is to prevent any breakdown of segregation on safety grounds; in other words, they may not nick you for trying to go into the Croatian sector, but they may well prevent you from entering if they spot you.
There is better news though in the fact that watching games on big screens at bars is a well-established tradition here; see the section titled Out and about for suggestions of where to watch the game if you don’t get a ticket, bars with tellies being preferable on safety grounds to any big screens that may be set up.
