Safe Standing
Decent article here looking at the debate that is Safe Standing, you can also put your name forward at the official Football Supporters Federation.
http://www.fsf.org.uk/petitions/safestanding.php
Quote:
The tough challenge facing the fans campaigning passionately for standing to be allowed at top-flight football is that in principle the time for their argument has come, while in practice the authorities argue it has long gone. Approaching 22 years since the horrors of the Hillsborough disaster, the families of those who died remain vehemently opposed to standing.
Given that history, no government sees any political capital in a change, a point made forcefully by the sports minister, Hugh Robertson, on Monday, at the first ever round-table meeting on the issue between the Football Supporters' Federation and the football authorities, government and police.
The Football Association, Premier League and Football League's position is that all-seat stadiums have been vital furniture in the game's rehabilitation after Hillsborough, and, crucially, that grounds have been rebuilt since without the steepness and configuration required for terracing. They argued that even if some clubs might consider re-introducing standing, recognising it can be safe, that it allows lower ticket prices and produces a better atmosphere, it would be difficult and expensive.
Yet as the Football Supporters' Federation (FSF) launches an online petition, calling for signatures from the thousands of fans who still yearn to stand a generation since they were required to sit, it is clear the opposition has become markedly more measured. Robertson stressed he is very unlikely to allow any change, but agreed at least to look at any strong evidence to show modern terracing can be safe, is able to be policed, and that there is a widespread demand from supporters.
Don Foster, the Liberal Democrat sports spokesman who organised the meeting and has tabled a private member's bill calling for safe standing to be permitted, was positive afterwards. "The door is ajar now," he said. "We will establish the solid evidence required. Real fans have been losing out for years, paying high ticket prices for seats. Now they need to make their voices heard."
Nobody at the meeting seriously argued that standing is unsafe, or that its reintroduction would push football back to the bad old days. The FSF has battled to get that point heard for two exhausting decades – that Hillsborough was not caused by the terracing itself. According to Lord Justice Taylor's report, the fault was South Yorkshire police's negligence managing the crowd, Sheffield Wednesday's shameful mismanagement of their ground and the safety of the terraces, and Sheffield City Council allowing matches to be played there despite not having updated Wednesday's safety certificate for a decade.
The supporters groups – and the FA – opposed the all-seat recommendation in Taylor's final report, which the judge argued would be safer, more comfortable, and "have distinct advantages in achieving crowd control". The FSF has argued with that ever since, that the response to a disaster caused by a negligent approach to fans' safety became an opportunity for "crowd control": to police potential hooliganism more keenly and gentrify the grounds.
The FA, shoulder-to-shoulder with the fans' groups then, argued that compelling clubs to have all-seat stadiums would break up the emotional, traditional culture of support, reduce capacities, and lead to higher ticket prices.
Taylor decided none of these need happen, and famously referred to seat prices at Ibrox then – £6, compared to the £4 cost of standing. "Not a prohibitive price or differential," he observed. That badly misread the top clubs' feverish impatience to raise prices; staring at the game's wreckage then, he did not conceive of today's £40 and £50 tickets which have priced a generation of young adults out of going to Premier League matches.
The FSF has never wavered from its view on Taylor. Malcolm Clarke, its chairman, argues: "Fans lost a cherished culture when standing at matches was outlawed in the top two divisions. We argue clubs should be given the choice. Many fans show every game that they still want to stand – by standing in seating areas which is itself a safety risk. Following yesterday's very good meeting, we will be gathering further evidence to respond to the concerns of those who are not yet convinced."
The FA now sides with the leagues, arguing that seating should remain compulsory. The Premier League's representative, Bill Bush, barely raised the question of safety on Monday, arguing instead that seating had encouraged more families, women and ethnic minorities to matches, and there is no demand from clubs to introduce standing. Ruth Shaw, chief executive of the Football Licensing Authority, which oversees the post-Taylor safety regime, argues: "It is generally accepted that seating is safer, more comfortable and enables better crowd management."
Yet the FLA does not press too hard the argument that seating is safer. Injury rates at football are thankfully low now, whether in all-seat stadiums – in which 0.009% of fans sustained an injury last season – or League One and Two stadiums – where 0.004% of fans were injured. After being challenged by the FSF, the FLA no longer even claims this lower rate in a generally very safe activity is because terracing remains at some grounds; the figures themselves do not prove that.
Acknowledging that: "Overall most injuries [are] minor", the FLA figures show that last season 419 injuries were sustained from trips, slips and falls, 108 were people hit with the ball, and 31 people fell off their seats or another object. Taylor would have given profound thanks for the figure of only four people sustaining a crush, from a total attendance in the season of 34,564,307 – 0.00001%.
Andy Holt, the assistant chief constable of South Yorkshire police who represented the Association of Chief Police Officers on Monday, firmly classes standing as a crowd control rather than safety issue. "I agree you can have safe standing," he says. "However, I would want to be assured that any form of standing would not make it more difficult to steward crowds, to identify somebody causing trouble, and that crowd density would mean we could intervene if we needed to."
That the police, football authorities and FLA no longer raise the spectre of a Hillsborough-type disaster whenever the subject of standing is raised is partly due to persistent FSF campaigning. It has gathered evidence from Germany, where some Bundesliga grounds have terracing with closely spaced barriers allowing just one or two rows of people in between, making crushes all but impossible.
In March 1993, considering its response to hooliganism, the German Football Federation decided against introducing all-seat stadiums, opting instead to make terracing safer.
"Abolishing standing areas would make it considerably more difficult for socially disadvantaged football supporters to attend their team's matches," the federation said then. "Football, being a people's sport, should not banish the socially disadvantaged from its stadia, and it should not place its social function in doubt."
German grounds teem with young adults, who pay as little as €14 (£12.15), to stand at, for example, the 80,552-capacity Westfalenstadion, home of the Bundesliga leaders Borussia Dortmund.
Here, so many years after Hillsborough, a genuine debate is finally becoming possible about the potential benefits and the genuine risk of allowing people to stand. But with all this time passed, and the spectre of disaster always hovering over the subject, any change would be an uphill struggle.
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It's a great idea, and something that should be brought back. But wont happen anytime soon due to the sheer amount of debt that's in the English game at the moment.
Could you see the big clubs, paying out x £ millions to rip out seats and incorporate safe standing with the potential of lower ticket prices and no rise in attendances?
If it ever happens, the first sign of trouble, it'll be ripped out.
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23-03-2011, 10:38 AM
Re: Safe Standing
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