Sunday afternoon, Twickenham. I’m making my way to the stadium to watch the Heineken Cup Final between Wasps and Leicester Tigers. Or trying to. As we approach a roundabout within sight of the ground a policeman is directing spectators into a funnel caused by crash barriers on the edge of the pavement. A bottleneck of immobile pedestrians has formed. “The road is in use,” he’s shouting. “Keep off the road.” I can see that if I get directed into the funnel I’ll be there for ages. But I’m not the one who decides to lead the charge.
“Follow me,” says one guy, and starts striding purposefully down the road, the wrong side of the barriers. He’s followed by a couple of mates, then a handful of others, then me, then hundreds more. Suddenly the road becomes a pedestrian thoroughfare. The policeman, who can do nothing to stem the flood, looks dejected at his impotence. The odd car, driving against the flow, slows to five miles an hour, or so. Anarchy!
A very middle-class form of anarchy, it must be said. Rugby fans don’t tend to be violent - the players do all that on the pitch. Today Leicester and Wasps fans are happily disobeying the police together, side by side, in the calmest, most unthreatening of manners. They’ve even got collars on their coloured shirts.
Later on I’m having a cigarette in a ‘smoking zone’ in the walkway behind the stands, delineated by lines painted on the floor. I hear from the roar of the crowd that a try is imminent, and I skip out of the ‘box’ to look down a corridor through which I can see a big screen. Wasps score. A steward tells me to go back into the smoking area. “The smoke doesn’t stop behind the line,” I grumble. But I go, nonetheless. Later, at half time, scores of people are smoking all over the walkway, unperturbed by stewards. If enough people break a regulation, nobody bothers to enforce it. Final score? Harmless anarchy 2, Petty jobsworthiness 1. AL