Hearts and Hibs fans told of new powers SFA can wield as Ian Maxwell aims to avoid ever deploying them

Hearts, Hibs and Scottish football fans been warned they could face severe punishment next season after the Scottish FA announced a crackdown on fan behaviour.

The governing body held their annual meeting on Thursday and one of the key matters on the agenda was a vote on increasing the FA’s powers in their response to the use of pyrotechnics at games. Clubs could now be punished with fines and ticket allocation restrictions or even face expulsion from one of the national cup competitions should their supporters use flares to disrupt games.

UEFA have utilised similar punishments in recent seasons and even went as far as closing sections of stadiums of offending clubs or forcing games to be played behind closed doors. Closer to home, Celtic, Rangers and Motherwell were all charged by the SPFL after flares were used at the League Cup semi-final and saw their allocation for the final reduced by around 500 tickets.

SFA new fan powers

However, Maxwell has admitted the Scottish FA are hopeful they will not have to impose any such sanctions on clubs and hopes the new punishments will act as a deterrent.

He told BBC Scotland: "You would absolutely never want to get to that stage and we need to look at the steps that we can take to avoid that. It's been documented in Uefa sanctions that the threat of ticket reductions has an impact - and the SPFL have used that after the League Cup semi-finals - so maybe that's something that we need to consider. The changes we have made to our rules will mean we can now work more with the SPFL to help eradicate that.”

Why SFA have opted against UEFA approach

Maxwell stressed focusing on the individual’s behaviour by considering sanctions such as reduced ticket allocations or expulsion from cup competitions can ‘create that consequence for the behaviour’ as the Scottish FA opt for a targeted response rather than utilising UEFA’s approach of placing fines on clubs in recent seasons.

"Uefa have had strict liability for a long time, which has involved fining clubs, but there's no consequence to the individual on that. It's the club that gets fined, so the supporter doesn't link that back to his or her behaviour. So it's about creating that jeopardy and creating that consequence for the behaviour that we're trying to remove. We've got hundreds of thousands of people that come and watch our games on a weekend and we need to make sure that environment is energetic and is noisy. We don't want to quell that, but fundamentally it has to be safe."

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