Suspended sentences for football violence

Nine Czech supporters of first division Banik Ostrava have been given suspended sentences of between eight and twelve months for their part in an attack on a group of Polish football fans last year. The group attacked supporters of Polish side Legia Warsaw who were travelling to Vienna for a first round UEFA Cup match against Austria Vienna on September 27, 2006. Some 50 Banik fans, aged between 20 and 33 years, waited for the Poles at the station at Ostrava, near the Polish border, bursting onto the train where a fight broke out. There is a long-standing rivalry between supporters of Banik, who have the reputation to being the most violent in the Czech Republic, and Polish fans who live just over the border.