In the latest of his regular Blog's, Hillary Street-Ender takes a look at the issue of standing at football matches, and reflects on Tuesday evening's defeat to Yeovil Town, where many supporters were left disappointed by the actions of some newly employed private stewards.
Some of us came of age as supporters in the days when we were given a choice between standing and sitting when attending a match. Back in my younger days I would always go for the terrace option and am proud to have been a Hillary Street Ender of long standing (sorry) – you’d never have guessed – and saw going in the seats as something for the Prawn Sandwich Brigade or the aged or infirm, which pretty much amounted to the same thing. Now I’m a lot longer in the tooth there are times when I’m glad of a seat but there are still occasions when I’d love to stand to watch the game and on being given the choice between standing or sitting at an away game then I’ll usually opt for the terracing. These days I see plenty of fans whom I know by sight from thirty years ago, several of whom choose to watch the Saddlers from the far corner of the Lower Gilbert and who used to watch the lads from the Street End or the Cowshed and who could regularly be seen on the terracing at away games the length and breadth of the country. These fans no are no longer given the choice between sitting and standing at Bescot, when they buy a ticket they rent a seat either for a single game or for the whole season even though many of them clearly prefer to watch their football from a perpendicular position, an option that was taken away when seats were installed.
The club seemingly scored a public relations own goal of considerable proportion on Tuesday night by bringing in a private security firm to try to force the people standing in the corner to sit for the duration of the game. All it seemingly succeeded in doing was to get people’s backs up and to make them more determined than ever to remain standing and also begged the question – one that I’m sure would have been asked loudly and repeatedly – of why that single block was being targeted? Most of our fans who stand at home games gather behind the goal, a position from which they must, surely, be blocking the view of other fans unlike the lads and lasses up the corner and who do so in the knowledge that they’re preventing fellow supporters from seeing the whole pitch. Unless the club decides to adopt a very heavy-handed approach then there’s surely no way of preventing this. Or perhaps there is.
Terracing is not allowed at Championship level or above and any club attaining that status is given a set period of time – two years? – to either get seats fitted or to put that particular section of their ground into mothballs, meaning that the people running WFC were given little alternative other than to do away with terracing when we made it to the Promised Land during the early noughties. However, we’re not at that level now and don’t seem all that likely to return there any time soon so why not remove the seats and put them in storage, restore terracing to the home end and bring back the atmosphere we used to experience during the early years at our current home?
The presence of the private security staff on Tuesday night has left a nasty after-taste and has recalled memories of extra stewards being drafted in from Albion for that game against Tranmere after the customers had dared to protest about the way in which the shop was being run. It has recalled memories of certain supporters being banned for speaking out in public regarding their concerns about the stewardship of the club and it has recalled memories of the forced removal of that ‘free speech’ banner, all of which added up at the time to a gargantuan p.r. clanger.
If the club wanted to alienate some of it’s supporters on Tuesday night then it succeeded. One is left to wonder if Jeremy Clarkson has been put in charge of public relations.
By: Hillary Street-Ender.
JOIN THE DEBATE: SHARE YOUR VIEWS BELOW