A little more than a week after the 20th anniversary of Hillsborough offered a sombre reminder to football, it was chilling to see mounted police and lines of officers on a South Yorkshire pitch, writes Martin Swain.

At what point over-exuberant celebration crosses into deliberate mischief-making is hard to pinpoint. But Wolves fans who twice invaded the pitch did themselves and their club no service at all at what should be a time of huge satisfaction to all at Molineux.

The view among Wolves hierarchy is that while the pitch invasion on the final whistle was misguided and regrettable, it was at least a little understandable – unlike the first invasion which followed Kyel Reid’s equalising goal.

Fortunately, the bulk of the Wolves fans were not intent on provoking trouble and eventually congregated beneath the directors box to offer a salute to visiting ex-owner Sir Jack Hayward.

But in the centre of the pitch, I saw one Wolves fan who briefly broke through the police cordon to head towards the aggrieved Barnsley supporters hurled back by the police with the force of a Martin Johnson tackle. It was a flashpoint moment which could have turned ugly; fortunately there was not enough spite in the air to make a worrying moment turn any nastier.

Equally, the club will be grateful that Barnsley’s full back and Player of the Year Bobby Hassell did not want to make anything more of being slapped in the face by one pitch invader.

These final games of the season are undoubtedly high on emotion for supporters and Wolves fans were by no means the day’s only transgressors. At Southampton, missiles were hurled as more scuffling broke out; at Birmingham, Preston’s Paul McKenna was confronted by another as his team delayed Blues’ promotion plans.

It is, of course, the flip side to the kind of devotion which meant 6,000 Wolves fans packed out one end at Oakwell and gave an undoubtedly momentous day for Mick McCarthy and his players the splash of colour and noise their efforts deserved.

But having waited for years to see your favourite band, you don’t invade the stage when they come out for their encore.

Ultimately, Saturday’s invasions were not a spontaneous act of joy but opportunist and as a result Wolves will spend the next couple of days fretting over possible FA sanctions while they fine tune their plans for a more fitting salute a terrific season.

Having answered brilliantly all the demands and expectations of their supporters this season, they deserve far better.