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ready to accept the Taylor Report’s demands for all-seater stadia to be rolled out across Britain. Yet debates over this issue were much more vexed than that. Perhaps this is unsurprising. After all, none of the jeopardy of attending football matches described above came directly from standing per se. In the majority of cases, it was the failure of the officials overseeing crowd control to do just that, which led to terrible crushes and, ultimately, fatalities.
BY MITCH MARSHALL
were simply not convinced that new stadia would automatically make football safer.
The move to all-seater stadia, and the journey back to a hybrid of safe standing and seating, then, is not as simple a narrative as the TV executives might
like us to believe as they broadcast raucous Premier League atmospheres into homes nationwide. Rather, supporters’ opinions have never been unanimous either way, and have always been mixed with a healthy degree of scepticism about how any such changes will be implemented by clubs and authorities with a staggering history of ineptitude. Now, for example, groups like Sheffield United’s Stand United have conducted polls showing that 91% of fans polled want to see safe standing trialled at Brammall Lane, but that many also feel that this should be limited to one end only in the first instance.
Once again, fans are showing that they hold nuanced, thoughtful opinions on the future of their game. This should be celebrated. But it must also be respected. If safe standing is to make a wider return, the key stakeholders, those who actually go to the games and treasure football’s continued health, must be the ones to decide how it happens.
The construction of stadia and their surroundings certainly played a factor, whether it be the
cages which constricted the Liverpool fans
in Hillsborough’s Leppings Lane End, or the inadequate steps leading away from Ibrox
which caused the disaster there in 1971. But fundamentally, the issue was one of having too many people in too small a space, rather than the fact that they were standing up. In fact, the Taylor Report went some way to acknowledging this by recommending that the density of fans allowed on terraces should be reduced: “the maximum density permitted under paragraphs 221 and 222 of the Green Guide [to Safety at Sports Grounds] (when the terrace or viewing slope is in good condition) should be 47 not 54”.
What such suggestions failed to grasp, however, was what also made fans sceptical about moving to all-seater stadia; they could see that it was
not x or y piece of legislation which would make grounds more or less safe, but the way in which the game was governed. Hillsborough, despite acting as the catalyst for change to improve safety at stadia, illustrates this point clearly. Whatever the Green Guide might have said about the recommended capacity of the pens
of the Leppings Lane End, once police opened the floodgates to allow fans in all at once, any such logic became redundant. Similarly, it was ingrained attitudes about football spectators which contributed to the fans being left crushed behind barriers which could have been opened but weren’t, as it was presumed that these supporters might simply be opportunistic pitch-invaders. Hillsborough was reputed to be one of the most modern grounds in England, hence its hosting major Cup semi-finals. It was not the ground which caused accidents necessarily, but the way in which they were managed.
In this light, it becomes easier to see why a Football Supporters’ Association West Yorkshire branch poll reported in Bradford fanzine The
City Gent in 1990 showed that only 5% of those asked wanted all-seater stadia. Interestingly, a mere 24% said that they thought all-seater stadia would make football matches safer. After almost a century of fans being treated like ‘turnstile fodder’, as Stockport County fan Richard Turner referred to it in his 1990 book In Your Blood, supporters
PHOTO CREDIT
The photos from Orlando City are courtesy of Steve Powell. The Old Trafford pics are from Ian Stirling.
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