IN the bad old days, when football fans were caged into their respective ends and fighting was all the rage, you could expect that a highly-volatile Anglo-Welsh clash between us and Cardiff City would receive severe restrictions on crowd numbers.

Now, although there is still a lot of banter and rivalry between the both of us as the two City clubs are going for automatic promotion to the Premier League, fighting and crowd pitch invasions are a thing of the past.

Yet you can but despair at the short-sightedness of those in authority.

Cardiff City Stadium has a capacity of over 33,000 yet the Robins were allocated just 1,481 tickets for the crunch Championship clash between the two teams on Sunday February 25.

The fact that the match is on a Sunday and has a 12noon kick-off is restrictive enough, but following a meeting in Cardiff, requested by South Wales Police, Bristol City were given this paltry allocation.

The club are continuing to challenge the ruling with the English Football League but already these tickets have sold out to season card holders, so there is no chance of anyone else who wants to go across the Severn Bridge being able to see the match from the stands at the moment.

Indeed, the Robins have urged fans without tickets not to visit the stadium on the day.

The two sides met at Ashton Gate back in November and, although the match was controversial and incident-packed, there was hardly a problem between opposing fans.

Cardiff talks a lot in their marketing blurb about how good they are at holding major sporting events, like the Anthony Joshua boxing that is coming up, Six Nations rugby that is taking place this month and many big football matches.

The Welsh capital was the host venue for FA Cup finals while Wembley was being re-constructed and, last year, held the Champions Cup Final between Real Madrid and Juventus, two giants of world football.

The City Stadium is also the home of the Welsh national football side, so what is the problem with letting Bristol City fans have a decent allocation for this game? The police in Wales are obviously well used to handling big events.

Let’s hope that the EFL come through on our side because it is just wrong on all levels that our fans will be so under-represented at a match which has huge consequences.