Winning the battle against hooligans

Last week he was at The Valley, home of Charlton Athletic, for the first ever Football Crown Prosecutors Conference to discuss plans for the future while boosting awareness of the Crown Prosecution Service's heavy involvement in football.

Ed, who is also the prosecutor connected to West Ham, said thanks to help from the authorities times had drastically changed over the years.

Ed, a lifelong Watford supporter, said: "I remember going to St James' Park, Newcastle, many years ago and I had to climb over a spiked fence to save my life.

"Things have greatly improved, although if my wife goes she still wants to sit in the family enclosure.

"The Taylor Report following the Hillsborough Disaster did so much to raise the quality of football stadia. It was a great help. It showed that if you treat people better and give them good facilities, they behave better."

Since last year, each club in the country has its own designated prosecutor to advise and help clubs and police bring the perpetrators of crowd trouble to justice.

That has made the system smoother but the work of the CPS in football goes back a lot further and has made big inroads into keeping troublemakers away from grounds.

Ed said: "The enforcement has got to a higher level. Those who stop the enjoyment for others, we work to take them out of the game.

"Our record over the last few years has been very good. A good example is the Crystal Palace and Charlton violence on the train last year.

"It was awful, awful behaviour by a big group of people who were not arrested at the time but we had a very successful set of convictions through lots of witnesses."

Another big job for prosecutors was the violence surrounding the Millwall and Birmingham play-off match of 2002.

Ed said: "There was always going to be a high risk of trouble and when Birmingham scored in the last minute there was a lot of angry people and no-one can excuse that behaviour. There were attacks on police and property.

"We prosecuted 105 football fans for that and got 104 convictions."

These figures back up claims the authorities are winning the battle against troublemakers.

Currently between 2,500 and 3,000 people in the UK have banning orders from football matches and at the last World Cup court orders prevented nearly all known trouble makers from travelling to Germany.

Only four who were known to the police were unnaccounted for and two of those were dead.

But it was decided more could be done and a joint initiative between the CPS and the Association of Chief Police Officers saw prosecutors assigned to each club in the country.

One of the reasons was to increase the speed of charges and it was also hoped it will give the solicitor more knowledge of individual clubs.

Ed said: "Different clubs have different profiles and that goes for all over the world. We heard the other day that socio-economics form the difference between particularly nasty groups of fans from three clubs in Istanbul. It's all information we can bring back here."

As for the lead prosecutor's views on Charlton, Millwall and West Ham - the three clubs closest to Canary Wharf, he said: "None of these three clubs is wealthy clubs in wealthy areas.

"Charlton have worked incredibly hard over the years to be a club that reflects their fans and I can't praise them enough. That's the main reason we held the conference here.

"Millwall, who had an undesirable reputation, have given a lot of attention to that and seem to be successful. And at West Ham, they've had a lot to be happy about, so my friends at the club tell me, so that's good for me."