AS ENGLAND'S triumph over Tunisia is overshadowed by yet more violence by so-called fans, a question is repeated on millions of lips.

How did these mindless morons get to France in the first place?

It is one that Home Secretary Jack Straw must answer.

For while, quite rightly, he condemns the "treacherous behaviour of this criminal element," neither denunciation nor apology to the French is sufficient.

No matter what the difficulties may be in identifying the criminal element lurking in the large contingent of fans travelling abroad, the fact is that many should have been barred from going to begin with.

It is not as if there is a lack of police intelligence on Britain's hard-core soccer hooligans. The serial trouble-makers have, in effect, already been tagged.

More than 500 hooligans are barred from British soccer grounds and made to report to the police when games are being played. Yet just 69 have been banned from following England abroad.

There is an apparent failure here in the stop-the-yobs system.

Why were these morons allowed to travel? How is it that at least 30 known hooligan leaders have been identified - way too late - by British police in Marseille?

It may well be that many of the shaven-headed British louts hurling chairs and bottles were not known to the police in advance and so,could not have been stopped from going. But what of those who were?

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.