Quick question: if you are a football club and one of your main rivals comes over for a game, not long after they bought three of your best players, would you think it was a good idea to hand out thousands of bogrolls? No, I don’t think so either, but FC Groningen thought this was a marvelous idea to allow it, as “a fun way to say goodbye to those players going to Ajax”. Even the fire brigade allegedly gave permission for this stunt. So of course the obvious happened. Some nutters thought it would enhance the party mood if they set fire to those bogrolls, more and more people started throwing lit rolls and before you know it, there was a fire and panic. Worse, the firehoses available in the stadium turned out not to have pressure on them, the fire retardant chairs didn’t turn out to be so fire retarding and finally some or all emergency exits were locked.
That winning combination of club incompetence and hooligan violence has led to incredible disasters in the past. Remember Heizel stadium? Fortunately here, despite the fire and the panic, the worst that happened was a complicated ankle fracture for one unlucky fan. No thanks to FC Groningen though. Stupidity all around.