Well, that wasn’t very sporting.

Manchester United’s team was trying to get to the Boleyn Ground for West Ham United’s last match at Upton Park, in east London, after 112 seasons there.

The throng outside the stadium was so dense, before the game, that the ManU team bus could hardly move as it got close to the stadium — which some West Ham fans took as an invitation to pelt it with bottles and trash, as can be seen on this video.

The first bit of the video shows the rain of junk being thrown at the bus. Much of it looks like drinking glasses, and let’s just guess and say the liquid seen flying out of the glasses/bottles has an alcohol component to it.

The second part of the video shows the silly behavior of Manchester United winger Jesse Lingard, who can’t seem to decide if his team is in danger, as items hit the bus, or whether it’s just a big goof.

He is heard shouting “oh, shit!” more than once, but then falls into the aisle (where many United players already were looking for shelter) and shouts, “Mommy!”

The Premier League match match began 45 minutes late, to allow the visitors to travel the final few hundred yards to the stadium.

Two notable events.

–West Ham’s dopey co-chairman David Sullivan seemed to blame the visitors for the late start by saying they should have aimed to reach the stadium early — to beat the crowds. He predicted that the ManU bus wouldn’t have a scratch on it. Which most certainly was not the case, causing him to backtrack, apologizing to the visitors and saying the club would seek to identify those who pelted the bus and “ban them” for life from West Ham matches.

–Perhaps the scariest bit of the video tape are the fleeting moments when we can see a sea of humanity on the right side of the screen. That crowd looks like it is about a dozen people away from a potentially deadly crush. And this in a country where too many people at a soccer pitch has been shown to be dangerous, going back to the 1989 Hillsborough disaster involving Liverpool fans in which 96 people died.

You would think authorities throughout England would insist on better crowd control at big matches. And, I should note, most of the handful of times I have felt the first intimations of “this could be really dangerous”, as I can feel the pressure of people crowding around me, were at soccer matches.

The situation at West Ham will resolve itself, apparently, when the club moves into the Olympic Stadium next season. That venue is not plopped in the middle of a residential area, as was the Boleyn Ground — and many other English soccer stadiums.

The Guardian’s Barney Ronay noted how close to dangerous the crowd was, before the match, before suggesting that bad crowd control had contributed to justifying the notion that it is a positive thing for West Ham to quit its ancient home in favor of the more bland Olympic Stadium a few miles west.

The Hammers, as West Ham sometimes is known, also will gain room for another 25,000 fans: The Olympic Stadium will seat 60,000 for soccer; the Boleyn Ground could handle (barely) 35,000.

All in all, supporting the club at a modern stadium with, we assume, better organization for getting people in and out without being crushed would seem to be something to support.

And, by the way, the match went almost perfectly for West Ham, as it took a 3-2 victory and remained in the running for a place in a European tournament next season — and also severely damaged Manchester United’s attempt to sneak into the Champions League places.