Terracing

[nach0king]

As (almost) everyone reading this will know, terracing is dying out. It's no longer used in the top leagues in neither Scotland nor England, and, while Germany still uses it, this is a trend across quite a lot of western Europe.

I'm wondering, however, about more distant nations, particularly those that until fairly recently didn't have a massive culture of spectator football. Is terracing prevalent across the world?

I'm a grounds geek but my knowledge of grounds outside western Europe is quite low, and mostly is based on sites like www.worldstadiums.com which, while very good, are not exactly exhaustive.

[Caesar]

Terracing is nonexistent in North America and Australia. All our big stadiums here have to be fully seated, for all sports. A few of the cricket grounds (and quite a number of the rugby league grounds) have 'hills' that don't have formal seating, but this tends to be more picnic-style areas... being from the UK, you'd know what I mean. You definitely don't get the close-packed standing atmosphere of a terrace.

Not sure about general rules for the rest of Asia, but the stadiums I've been to there have all been all-seaters.

[nach0king]

Interesting, thank you.

Any more input? Any Africans, or visitors to Africa, reading?

[RichardL]

As (almost) everyone reading this will know, terracing is dying out. It's no longer used in the top leagues in neither Scotland nor England, and, while Germany still uses it, this is a trend across quite a lot of western Europe..
there are quite a few places, Italy & Greece to name but two, who may have converted to seats, but use those seated areas as terraces. I went to than San siro for example, and the number of Inter fans on the middle tier behind the goal didn't bear much relation to the number of seats available.

[Burkies Ginger Mop]

Interesting, thank you.

Any more input? Any Africans, or visitors to Africa, reading?

Nach. Some info about terracing crowds and when it started to change a bit! Info from the football museum.

"Between the wars, however, the game flourished again. In 1937 an astonishing 149,415 spectators watched Scotland play England at Hampden - a record for an international in Europe. A week later 147,365 people turned up to see Celtic beat Aberdeen in the Scottish Cup final."

"Stadiums up and down the land were packed every Saturday, often to very dangerous levels; very little care went into spectator comfort or safety.

In a period of post-War reconstuction it may have seemed wasteful to use sparse resources to shore up decrepit football grounds.

In many cases stands were held together by rusting girders and the terracings were crumbling in disrepair, but this did nothing to deter the huge crowds hungry for football.

"Rangers played to an aggregate of over one million people in a season on several occassions in the late Forties and early Fifties, while in 1952, 136,000 supporters crammed into Hampden to watch the Motherwell - Dundee Scottish Cup Final."

"The year before Rangers’ European triumph had seen the terrible disaster at Ibrox, in which 66 people died in a stairway crush at the end of an Old Firm clash.

In the aftermath of the disaster Scottish local authorities enforced severe restrictions on the numbers of spectators admitted to the larger grounds, the capacity of Hampden was cut from the 134,000 that had watched Celtic v Leeds the year before to 85,000."

I've been in the terracing at Love Street and Hampden. Must have been some experience to have been in the 100,000 plus crowds though!