I was going to say that, but reading it back it sounded a bit... childish. That said, it was the children's flag sticks they were snapping.
I was still a kid - just about. And was gutted that they snapped mine because it was a souvenir from the FA Cup Final. I can remember asking them not to but they seemed to take great pleasure in it. And they were ********s inside the ground too, but it was pretty much par for the course in those days. A lot of coppers you couldn't even speak to politely. They just wanted to push people about.