Safe standing

[Summerof69]

The Football Supporter's Federation (FSF) have a campaign to bring back Safe Standing, similar to what they have in Germany, and they have produced a report also.

http://www.fsf.org.uk/campaigns/safestanding.php

Personally I'm quite happy sitting down, but if people want to stand...that is fine by me. I cannot see why football fans are being prejudiced as they have to sit down in top flight matches, but if you want to watch rugby, you can stand up, like they do at Gloucester.

[jonny72]

How exactly would seats have prevented any of these:

Heysel : Holliganism, complacent policing and stewarding and a shitty old ground not fit to host a BSP league fixture combine and a wall collapses crushing hundreds and killing about 40

Hillsborough:  Exit gates are opened to allow a press of crowd big enough to fill an entire end to flood into a ground all at once and as a result of poor stadium design, they all  flow through a tunnel and into only the central third of the terrace, which is fenced in with 8 ft high fences with only two or three small gates which are locked.

I wouldn't disagree with the other disasters having nothing to do with terracing / seating, but then I don't think anyone has ever said they did (plus I'm pretty certain the Bradford stand was seating). But you're living on another planet if you don't think terracing played a major role in the Heysel and Hillsborough disasters, there might of still been trouble but I doubt there would have been any deaths.

[Spencer_White]

I do get extremely pissed with people that insist on standing in seated sections though. My dad can't stand for an entire match so when we get stuck in a stand with a bunch of self centred, brain dead morons who insist on standing it is fucking annoying and means he either can't watch all the game or has to endure the pain.

Then you are quite clearly the ones who have most to loose from them not introducing standing areas.

[ahounsell]

the standing issue is deffo a debateable subject.i doubt you'd get many liverpool fans keen on it.

If you look at the Kop during any match at Anfield you will see several thousand Liverpool fans who are keen on standing. Just like every other ground, people are continuing to stand up even though they are not supposed to.

The Hillsborough families are opposed to a return of standing, it was their spokesman Trevor Hicks and his speech at the recent service at Anfield which was referred to elsewhere in this thread. This is perfectly understandable given their appalling loss, but it doesnt make them right.

We actually do have safe standing in this country already. At least, we are allowed to stand at places like Peterborough, Yeovil, and Hereford. If its not safe, why would it still be allowed, and if it is safe on that scale at Yeovil, why wouldnt a similar amount of standing be safe anywhere else?

Having said that, I saw Simon Inglis (stadium expert) interviewed recently and he made a good point about the need in 1989 for a complete shift away from standing to force English Football to clean up its act. A move to improve standing areas, as had been done many times before, would not have given English Football the boot up the arse it needed at that time.

It does worry me though that there still seems to be a reluctance from the authorities to accept the facts of fan behaviour and deal with them. In 1989 they knew people would arrive late, and some would chance their arm without tickets but took the view that those people shouldnt do that, rather than accepting it as inevitable and dealing with it.

Now we have people standing in seated areas, which must be less safe than standing in areas which have been designed for that purpose. Rather than just tut-tut and say people should sit down, it would be better to accept that some people prefer to stand up and make provision for tham to do so safely. Then the people who prefer to sit, but have to stand up because the fans in front of them are stood up can have their preference too. Afterall, nobody stood up in seated areas when there were standing areas available.

[Spencer_White]

Especially when all the top clubs stand at every away game.

So its right in their faces all the time.

[Simon Pieman]

The Taylor report doesn't suggest that standing is unsafe per se, just that seating is the easiest way to counter the problems found within the final report. But when you look at what the report sets out to address, I'm not convinced that seating counters these issues. Hooligansim can still be an issue in seated areas for example (Rovers at home anyone?!).

I'd like to see a choice but the return to old style terracing just isn't going to happen. Safe standing is really only an issue for newer/larger stadia because in smaller stands like the town end you can pretty much stand anyway. In effect, the town end setup (with seats) almost mirrors the designated places idea of safe standing, except it can be a bit of a  pain to stand with the seats there. But this is why we should be concerned, the spread of fans has caused a loss of atmosphere at the County Ground (I happen to think this isn't the sole or main reason but I am sure it is a factor) and a larger bowl-like stadium will only amplify (sic) the problem.

Would safe standing in this example improve atmosphere? I think so but this is only a personal opinion. The people who want to make noise would more likely select the choice to go in those areas and thus bunch them up and make creating atmosphere an easier task. As mentioned previously, away games are generally noisier because everyone is closer together.

Would 'safe standing' be to the detriment of safety? Would it increase the following?:

* Crowd congestion - No, there will be a number of designated places to stand which will not exceed the number of tickets.
* Hooliganism - If fans were segregated in the same way they are now, then no. Fans often rush over to the opposition fans for a bit of banter in seated areas anyway.
* Aggressive crowd movement - No, if you look at the German examples there isn't much opportunity to sway around and push etc.

Can't see why it isn't allowed.

[Simon Pieman]

Oh and read up about the Ellis Park disaster if you think seating solves all the problems.

[jonny72]

Oh and read up about the Ellis Park disaster if you think seating solves all the problems.

It doesn't solve all the problems. But if Ellis Park had terracing and the number of fans involved in the disaster had surged in to it, how many would have died? It would have been a lot more than 43.

[Simon Pieman]

It doesn't solve all the problems. But if Ellis Park had terracing and the number of fans involved in the disaster had surged in to it, how many would have died? It would have been a lot more than 43.

How did you come to the conclusion that safe standing terracing would have led more people to die?

[jonny72]

How did you come to the conclusion that safe standing terracing would have led more people to die?

I didn't, I was comparing seating to terracing. I'd agree that safe standing would have resulted in less deaths, most likely a lot less deaths than actually happened - the extra barrier along the seats make it a lot safer than standard seating. Calling it "safe standing terracing" is a bit misleading, its just seats with extra barriers to make standing safer.

[Simon Pieman]

Maybe or maybe not. The disaster was caused by too many fans and unallocated tickets (amongst other things). Hard to say whether old style terracing would have been worse.

This thread is about safe standing though, I think we all realise the return to old style terracing would never happen.

[Lumps]

But you're living on another planet if you don't think terracing played a major role in the Heysel and Hillsborough disasters, there might of still been trouble but I doubt there would have been any deaths.

Yeah I've lived on the planet that's seen a group of hooligans attack opposition fans across a seated area of a stadium and the fucking chaos and panic that causes. Stick seats into Heysel and change nothing else, don't fix the crumbing infrastructure to stop concrete walls toppling over when pushed against, don't adequately police, steward and segregate and that disaster might have been even worse.

As for Hillsborough I have no idea what planet YOU live on. The one thing that seats do provide in terms of crowd safety is a de facto means of controlling the capacity of an area of the ground. Your seat numbers in the central area of the Leppings Lane end then you go into the cen tral area, it's in the left hand side area, then you go there. HOWEVER, if 5 minutes before kickoff the coppers panic and throw open the fucking gates and allow anyone to flood into the ground whether they've got a ticket for that area or not, and you build the groupnd in such a way that in a crowd inertia carrys virtually everyone in to the central area of the end, leaving the wings half empty, then having fucking seats in there is a complete fucking irrelevance. What exactly do you do when you come through a tunnel out into the stand and find all the seats seem to be full? Turn around? Oh shit there appear to be four thousand people pushing me forward into the stand anyway! At best you just move the crush back into the tunnel, at worst you have the same crush in the stand with the added bonus of seats for peopple to fall over and get trampled. (Si's right the Ellis Park disaster shows exactly what would happen in a seated area if you change nothing else but add seats.)

Ahounsells right when he quotes Simon Inglis. The reason stadia are safer now is much less because of the introductioin of seating, and much more to do with the investment in the basic strucure of the stadia that the Taylor report has required.

Stick a cage around the Leppings Lane end now and cram 1000 more people than belong in it through the entrance and seats or no fucking seats a shit load of people will die.

[Colin Todd]

Good post lumps.

Its been quite a while since I've seen someone talk the level of shit that Johny72 has managed in this thread.