So I was in liverpool Monday night.....

Not much bad behavior in EPL, except for the London subway maybe.

Thank god we don't have people in yellow trying to get us to sit here in Holland. Don't think it would help anyway.

 

Glad you enjoyed the Liverpool game. If you ever get the chance, go to see the Toon play at home - it's usually a noisy occasion.

Match stewards can be a little bit officious - they are obsessed with keeping people sitting (except an uncontrollable moments like goals being scored). Some of this is for sensible reasons (e.g. if you are sitting in front of a wheelchair area and by standing would block someone's view) but partly its down to fear of "another Hillsborough".

If everyone stands up, there is nothing that the stewards can do. This happened at Newcastle a season or two ago when everyone in a 50,000 crowd stood up throughout the game to protest against the club moving season ticket holders in order to install more corporate entertaining facilities.

 

So what did you expect? Constant fighting between marauding gangs of hooligans perhaps? Just curious...

Notts Co are a rather poor team, even by second division standards. Having been to one MLS game (at Chicago), and also one at Rochester (actually a better match) I'd say the MLS is nearer premiership than Division 2, but it is also fair way from both.

 

"but partly its down to fear of "another Hillsborough"

Pretty funny since experts say Hillsborough had nothing to do with standing places.

In Holland it's quite common that (the fanatical) part of the home crowd and the majority of the visitors remain standing throughout the match.

 

Erm ... no. What "experts" say, is that the reintroduction of terraces would not automatically increase the risk of another Hillsborough happening. No one in their right mind would say it had "nothing" to do with standing.

 

How hard was it to get tickets for Liverpool?

 

It had to do with too many people being crammed through too small an entryway, into too small a containing area. Crappy stadium design and official malfeasance caused the disaster, not standing.

 

Tickets to Liverpool matches can generally be bought two weeks in advance by phone or email. Ofcourse, one can stand in line at Anfield but its harder to do if you are not in town. One can get tickets through scalpers and services as well. It depends on the match but most all games end up sellingout at Anfield. It is a lovely place to watch a match.

 

I think there are 2 reasons why UEFA will not allow standing places anymore:

1. Football is not a folk sport anymore. It's the sport of the elite. We can't have our youth acting all rowdy and boyslike on the stands then can we?
2. They are afraid that cheap standing sections will attract more youth and as most hardcore fans and hooligans gather in these sections the hardcore groups will grow.

There is no direct safety issue anymore.

 

You can buy tickets at the stadium on matchdays in England???

 

In general the quality of stadia in England is very high where major clubs are concerned.

Sadly, part of the reason stems directly from Hillsborough - the official inquiry by Lord Justice Taylor - criticised the clubs hugely for their lack of investment and this led to a major change in attitude.

The other main reason is money for television rights, which has gone up astronomically, particularly since the founding of the Premiership.

Clubs have been able to make huge improvements in infrastructure.

This has all had a downside, however. The atmosphere at grounds is less intense than it used to be. Looking back to the sixties and seventies, you might have to queue outside a ground for an hour to get in, wait for an hour on an uncovered terrace, and watch the game from the same position. All the time, it could be raining heavily.

The supporters had such an emotional investment in the game that they carried the players along.

Nowadays, going to a game is more like going to the theatre. You turn up shortly before the kick-off, have a few drinks and go to your seat. Your attitude to the players is - "here I am, entertain me".

With the exception of a few games (typically derbies or others where there is historic rivalry) the crowd doesn't really crank up the noise until the home team is winning.

Having said that, going to a game in England is a better experience than it used to be. The standard of play has improved immensely - when I see old games on TV (say from the seventies) I am astonished at how violent the play was.

AFCA is right. Premiership football in England has become more of a sport of the middle classes. Part of that is to do with the expansion of the middle class but low-paid workers are priced out of attending now.

 

You can if they are not sold out. In practice many games are sold out weeks ahead.

I think Liverpool - Newcastle would have sold out had the game been played on a Saturday and not been live on TV.

From recollection, I think the attendance was about 1,000 short of capacity.

 

Ah, but you didn't have very good seats!

Official attendance was 43,241 in comparison with an official capacity of 45,362.

Newcastle fans reported all of their seats sold, but empty seats in the older of the two main stands.

Speculation that there must have been problems with the ferries from Ireland!

www.nufc.com/html/2002-09-02liverpool-a.html

 

The actual stadium design itself wasn't to blame (that stand is still there but with seats in now) but the later addition of the fences to contain potential hooliganism stopped overcrowded fans from dispersing to other parts of the terrace.

I'd still like to see exactly where in the taylor report there is anything saying standing in seating areas is unsafe. Unless people are standing on the seats and therefore liable to fall off, I can't see any way in which it is dangerous. Overcrowding is dangerous, standing in itself isn't.

 

But surely the most efficent and accurate way to avoid overcrowding is to have all seated sections as they ensure that only a set number of fans can be enter a certain section. I'm all for all-seater stadiums as they ensure that the horrific scences at Hillsborough can not be repeated. I don't think a small decrease in atmosphere is too high a price to pay for knowing that you will be safe.

Plus all seater stadiums reduce the chances of being pickpocketed and urinated on from behind/above.

As for Anfield , there is a cetain degree of magic about the place.

 

THere's been talk about it. A lot has to do with how security goes about trying to control a crowd, for example. The problem is that a ton of fans, something like 2,000, were allowed in through 1 gate in all of 5 minutes. THey had to go town a tunnel with a downhilll grade into an area that had a high fence to it. The momentum of the mob carried people into the fences. Those who tried to get over the fence to escape were turned back by police. Police only made it worse by thinking they needed to do more to control the crowd, thus sacrificing the crowds safety.

 

Jammy Bastid…!!! I used to be at almost every game there actually played there once in my schooldays.
So, you thought you were being brave, taking your life in your hand being among all those violent scousers.

Glad you enjoyed yourself there, they do appreciate their team don’t they? And yes, they do like to sing.

You made me quite homesick..!!!

 

The surest way (although not the most fool-proof, as events in Ghana two years ago showed) to avoid the problems that occured at Hillsborough is to regulate the number of people coming into a confined space. Seating means that you can say "that stand, 9,032 people. No more, no less, every time". The old terraces had theoretical capacities that were often exceeded by the sheer willingness of other people to "budge up mate". I can't count the number of times I have stood on the Kop and, from 15 minutes before kick-off to a good 15 minutes after, my feet didn't come into contact with the ground. Not even at half time.

I'm in favour of a reintroduction of terracing, as it happens, because it can be done safely and sensibly with proper thought, but to argue that the particular set of circumstances that led to the events of April 15th, 1989 is fatuous in the extreme.

 

The problem at Hillsborough was that the end held about 6000 and it was divided into three sections of 2000 each (approx). But there was no control over how many went into each individual section. Most people are going to try and go into the middle section so you end up with, rather than 2000 in each, something like 1500 in each side section and 3000 in the middle. Had the terrace ticket only given access to a particular section rather than any of the three then the crush would not have happened. The Kop was something of a special case as it was a huge terrace without any gangways at all, which was one of the things that lead to people peeing on the terracing (it would have taken ages to get to the loo). In all the time I stood on terracing I never once saw anybody taking a piss. I've also never seen or heard of anyone having their wallet stolen by pickpockets. Before Elm Park shut in 1998 it's south bank, with a capacity of 8000, was probably the largest remaining terrace in the country. Even when it was at capacity (it did happen honest) I never felt uncomfortable. A lot of this is because after the Bradford fire, when lower division clubs were brought under the safety of sports grounds act for the first time, they were forced to actually work out what a safe capacity of the terracing was (Reading went from 27,000 to 15,000) while bigger clubs maintained the same capacity figures they'd been quoting for the past 40 years or so. Basically the number of people allowed per square metre at the kop was a lot higher than at smaller grounds.

 

We had the same thing here. The Ajax ground went down from 30.000 to 19.000 (total). I believe this was in reaction to Hillsborough, but to be honest I don't know exactly.