'Why does healthy football rivalry become hatred?'

My short and inglorious stint as manager of various Hassocks Junior Football teams, together with another press-ganged dad Jon Fanner, demonstrated that my tactical nous could do with some development.

However, I do have a passable understanding of the beautiful game, not least its laws given I spent years as the “man in black’s” sole pitch-side fan.

However one thing I don’t understand is how healthy and vibrant rivalry can become hatred in its rawest form. Rivalry is essential for spectators and competitors alike.

It would be sheer tedium if fans had no allegiances and didn’t exude passion for their own team over their opponents, especially when the teams are evenly matched and vying for the same honours.

Rivalry makes the heart race and the misfortunes of one’s rivals are as much a cause for celebration as one’s own team winning multiple games on the bounce.

Hate is something different. The word is inflammatory. It describes abhorrent, vitriolic and violent distaste verging on the criminal if acted out. For rational people to hate something or someone, there must be an acute trigger which has offended something that person holds dear or assaulted their values in the most visceral way.

How then do the supporters of one football club “hate” those of another when they know absolutely nothing about them other than their shared love of the game and the team they cheer?

Take the Albion v Crystal Palace. We know the apparent origin of this acrimony followed a dubious refereeing decision (isn’t it always the ref’s fault?) in a 1976 FA Cup First Round second replay.

The then Albion boss Alan Mullery’s pre-existing rivalry with Palace manager Terry Venables (they were former Tottenham team mates) boiled over when the said decision denied Albion yet another draw. This descended into the throwing of coffee and a handful of change, petty acts which set in train a vehemence that grew to ludicrous levels.

Back in 2011, 35 years after coffee-gate, it had been nearly six years since the two clubs had met.

Promotions and relegations had kept them apart and cup competition draws had been kind too.

However, all good things came to an end and that September battle was set to recommence.

I was in overall command of the game’s policing and our preparations for the match started three months earlier when the fixtures were published.

We knew that six years would not be long enough for those who bought into this nonsense to let go of their grudges.

On match day, there were early signs our predictions were right. This was not going to be an ordinary mid-week evening fixture. Most 7.45pm kick-offs force spectators to rush home, throw some dinner down their throats and dash to the stadium in the nick of time.

This was eerily different. From lunchtime, groups of fans had started to assemble in pubs across the county to drink and plot.

The day deteriorated with groups of Brighton and Palace supporters vowing to kill each other in and around the railway station and the ground.

Arrests were made of people who by day led quiet, even dull, lives yet who channelled their inner neanderthal just because they saw people in their opponent’s shirts.

Over the years since that fixture the behaviour has not improved. While it’s not sectarian as at Scotland’s Old Firm Derbies between Rangers and Celtic, it breeds a normalisation of hate.

Aggression is extreme, chanting abhorrent and, when fans come together, fighting is brutal.

When you hear young children, who have no concept of the petty spat that started it all even and less understanding of hate’s pernicious connotations, chanting “We hate Palace” or jumping to their feet when an adult who should know better urges all to, “Stand up if you hate Palace”, it sets up a grim future.

Football is a game which relies on opponents as well as officials.

Holding rivalries is part of the game but hate is dark and has no place in sport.

Former Brighton and Hove police chief Graham Bartlett’s second Jo Howe crime novel, Force of Hate, was published in paperback last week