I watched with disbelief the fiasco of the pitch invasion on April 26, at Oxford United’s Kassam Stadium.

For a moment I thought I had been transported back in time to a Boys’ League match on a village pitch – in which a long shot had sailed over the bar and everyone had mucked in to help find the ball in the bushes.

It was only when I realised that all those around me were shouting, waving and being clearly very upset that I realised something potentially serious was happening.

At the start of the incident there was only one steward dealing with the East Stand. As it developed, more stewards appeared.

No fault can be attributed to any of the players, match officials or coaching staff on either side.

The match throughout was spellbinding, good-tempered and with never a dull moment. The crowd was well entertained by a match during which anything could have happened.

Chances were imminent every few minutes, and it’s a credit to both sides that nobody, on either side, gave up hope of scoring the winning goal.

My first reaction on sitting down in the east side of the Upper South Stand, however, was ‘Where are the police?’ This was a match with potential volatility of the highest order, with thousands of young men capable of daftness.

It appeared that nobody had prepared for this though. It also seemed that nobody on duty was aware of the possibility.

Security stewards come to events like this to usher people to their seats, to make sure everyone enters via the turnstiles, and to help those who may find themselves in trouble.

They’re not there to grapple with unruly spectators, to floor people dashing across the pitch, or to catch agile monkeys scaling the fences.

Full marks to goalkeeper Billy Turley for his rugby tackle on one of the idiots who ran around the pitch. He may have earned his place in the national rugby squad.

No points, however, to United’s management for putting 10,000 spectators at risk from a potentially violent event where emotions were running high – even without the idiots.

Any subsequent inquiry will have to establish where the irresponsible individuals really were on that day: invading the pitch or in the management suites avoiding and ignoring their responsibilities to those 10,000 people who had come to enoy a spectacle and to pay to keep them in those suites.

United will have to manage their matches in a better fashion than this.

John Macallister Kidlington