Safe standing

[lunnyboy]

How many of you guys would be in favour of a safe standing area for the county ground ? . I personally would love it !! . I can remember way back in the mid 80 s when i was a young teen , (showing my age here !!!!) , going into the town end , against my parents wishes ! , and loving the atmoshere , jumping around and flowing back n forth ! , dont get any of that anymore since going all seater. I think they should return the town end to a safely controlled safe standing terrace , think it would do wonders for the atmoshere . I thought all clubs had to be all seater by the late 90 s or something like that , swindon even had to rapidly seat the stratton bank as it was nearly the deadline but still there are handfulls of clubs still with terracing !!!!! , baffles me ! , carlisle , brentford , rovers , cheltenham , lincoln , chesterfield , scunthorpe , and peterboro , to name a few , all have been allowed to keep terracing at their grounds .Not 100% but i think bradford city are looking into having a safe standing area at their ground if they are allowed . Think its a great idea . Still dont know why we had to rapidly convert our terraces to seats when grounds up and down the country still have em . Favouritism is wot i say !!!!

[Simon Pieman]

Doesn't everyone stand in the town end anyway?

[Bedford Red]

We had to convert as teams in the top two leagues (as we were then) had to go all seater within 3 years i believe, whereas the lower league clubs didn't.

I would love to see some "safe standing" return, but personally don't believe it will ever happen.

[leefer]

We had to change it to seating as we were a prem club at the time....i think the Town End would be great standing...no one got hurt there when 26000 and 31000 thousand packed into the ground...only danger with terracing is if its fenced in obviously,but it aint going to happen and if we hadnt got promoted to the prem we would probably still have some terracing at the County Ground.

[tans]

now now leefer we only have 15000 fans or so in there at any one time...

Mr Fitton said so yesterday!

[RobertT]

The top 2 divisions require all seater (the original deadline was 3 years for clubs at the date it came in, but I think it's less now if you get promoted).  I think you can build new terracing but the club won't get any grant money towards development so the cost is quite big with no financial gain to be had off the back of it.  The FLA are the sticking point, refusing to consider a review of the policy that all seater is the only form possible for football.  They license the stadiums for use and accept that for all other types of entertainment at a ground, people can even stand in a seated area for the full duration.  They believe that it is not safe to do so for football, hence all the hassle from stewards in the past.  It does seem to be far less enforced recently, so not sure if someone has relaxed the guidelines.

[BANGKOK RED]

Why not just rip the seats out of the town end and stick them in a shed somewhere. Then if/when we get promoted we can put them back again.

Or is it not that simple?

[4D]

Do Posh have to put seats in now they are in the Championship?

[THE FLASH]

Bring it back......the Town end has never been the same.

Lets go fucking mental!!!  La La La La!

[jonny72]

I'm probably one of the few people that is against the return to standing sections. I don't think it adds anything to the atmosphere and its a pain having to stand for so long at a game, especially when you're watching shit football week in week out (ie Swindon Town).

[Nemo]

I'm probably one of the few people that is against the return to standing sections. I don't think it adds anything to the atmosphere and its a pain having to stand for so long at a game, especially when you're watching shit football week in week out (ie Swindon Town).

But even the most ardent fans of safe standing would only turn the TE into terracing, you could still sit in the Don Rogers or Arkells stands, it just gives fans the choice.

[Spencer_White]

I dont think anyone is talking about making entire grounds safe standing. Its about the entirely reasonable request that some fans want to watch matches in a different way to others. Ie cater for your customers.

Our crowds were better with terracing. I still think most Swindon fans are more at home on a terrace (but roughly a 50-50 home split). Its much easier to endure shit football on a terrace because the crowd find other ways to amuse themselves. In seats fans just sit silent in morose thinking ever more about how crap the team is.

I didnt think anyone in the UK actually doubted that terracing produces better atmosphere in games. But you do. Staggered.

[michael]

I didn't go to P'boro, but I did go to Aldershot in the cup and what I found was that when we weren't playing well it was nice to wander down to the front and have a bit of a blow out.

And we ended up winning so make of that what you will.

[Arriba]

i used to think a return to terracing shouldn't happen,but have changed my mind.as long as it's not the old style terracing, and is done like it is in germany, then i'm for it.

[Rich Pullen]

I don't see anything wrong with a terraced area being allocated to modern stadia. If we ever redeveloped the County Ground it would interesting to see if they would consider such a thing.