England fans thrown out of pub by Dallas police after £30,000 drinking session
Desk report: Police ordered England fans to move on from a Dallas pub following a £30,000 drinking session.
Hundreds of supporters defied officers’ pleas by remaining on the balcony outside the Londoner Pub, with some dropping plants over the edge.
Others spent about an hour kicking a football up and down the road and around the balcony, with the ball occasionally landing on the bonnets of nearby vehicles.
It came before England’s opening World Cup game against Croatia on Wednesday at the Dallas Cowboys’ AT&T Stadium, which is expected to be attended by thousands of fans from the UK.Many of those supporters stayed out until late on Tuesday night at the bar, with some in fancy dress and draped in St George’s flags.
Despite the pub advertising a later closing time, fans were ordered to move on by bar staff and two police officers just before 10pm local time. The pub was eventually cleared by police, but many remained on the venue’s balcony for another couple of hours as dozens of Dallas police department vehicles lined the road outside. Officers stood on the road for about 20 minutes before all police vehicles moved out of sight. Police later returned to remove fans from the balcony. Police confirmed the early closure because the venue reached maximum capacity, with only two security guards on duty. Before closing its doors, the Londoner managed to sell more than 5,000 beers and made more than £30,000 from the evening. At the end of the night, many England fans stayed to help bar staff clean up the mess.
The event started with supporters in a sea of St George’s flags, wearing fancy dress and singing popular chants as they braved the Dallas heat.
John Gallivan, 39, the organiser from Bristol, said the scale of Texas had made it far harder for fans to find each other than at previous tournaments in Europe.
He said: “America’s massive, it’s so big, so vast. When we go to Europe, it’s really easy – you know where you’re going to be. You don’t have to ask, you don’t have to look, you just know where we’re going to be.
“In America, that’s impossible – so the whole idea of today was to just find somewhere, get them to put a deal on the beer and then advertise it.”
There was no police presence earlier at the event as supporters filled the pub, and chants of “It’s Coming Home” and “Don’t take me home” broke out as more fans arrived.
