Club Statement After Pitch Invasion Leads To Arrests
By Tyne-Talk
July 16 2011
Newcastle United's first pre-season game of the season decended into chaos last night as fans invaded the pitch at the Darlington Arena. The invasion started after youngster Sammy Ameobi scored the side's 2nd goal of the game, 3 minutes after coming on as a substitute to the crowd chanting "If Sammy score, we're on the pitch". But ended with many of the 9721 strong crowd thinking the game had been called off when Darlington players headed towards the tunnel, before Alan Pardew and John Carver took to the pitch to plead for calm. Police arrested 3 men and removed a 4th from the Arena.
A spokesperson for Durham Police said;
"There has been a crowd of more than 9,700, which is significantly more than expected based on ticket sales.
Everything was peaceful until Newcastle scored their second goal and a pitch incursion occurred which was high spirited but not violent.
A further pitch incursion of around 20 to 30 people followed - a Newcastle supporter being escorted from the ground and three Newcastle supporters were arrested for pitch incursion."
Whilst Newcastle have also released a statement on nufc.co.uk;
"On behalf of everyone at Newcastle United FC, we wholly condemn the behaviour of a number of our supporters who invaded the pitch.
The club will be seeking to obtain footage of the disorder from Darlington FC and the police and will be taking the strongest possible action against those individuals responsible for the shameful behaviour."
Alan Pardew said after the game;
"It is very regrettable. I am standing on the side and it looked jovial at first. It was a celebration that turned nasty. It was only a few but that is all it takes. A few can spoil it. We all get tarnished with the few.
We will have to wait to see if there are repercussions. In my time here I have not seen anything like that from our fans. I went over to calm them down. I knew if they came on again we would be in trouble. It was calm after that."
Whilst a day wouldn't be complete without a Joey Barton Tweet which read;
"Daily Mail r WRONG again, fans confronted none of the players. Especially not me, they were just asking me to stay!!"
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Really @#$%& me off big style.
