The Chief ExecutiveChampionship club Burnley are one team that have come out in support of safe standing trails and chief executive Lee Hoos explains the reasons behind the clubs decision.
"Well I think the principle of safe standing is one that needs to be explored, it doesn’t mean that it will be applied everywhere, for instance here. It would actually be quite difficult to implement because of the way the grounds configured. "The rakes too steep on the upper stands and on the lower stands you’ve got corporate boxes. You can’t really stand in front of the corporate boxes because it blocks the views behind. So that’s the difficulties in balancing it out here but in terms of the principle I think it should be looked at." Click here for the full interview. |
The Safe Standing RoadshowA long-time advocate of safe standing in football and board member of Bristol City Supporters Trust, Jon Darch believes that football fans should have the right to choose whether to sit or stand at football.
"Don’t let anybody tell you that all-seater stadia are down to safety, they’re not. They’re down to the Thatcher government using a sledgehammer to deal with the problem of hooliganism which by 1989 was already on the wane. "Rather than simply weed out troublemakers and arrest them and throw them in jail - as I would totally back - they looked at the nationwide ID scheme. At football stadiums you were going to have to carry an ID card and they looked at all-seater stadia, and it was a sledgehammer to keep what Margaret Thatcher referred to as the ‘enemy within’, the same phrase she used for the miners and what Bernard Ingham on the day after Hillsborough referred to as a tanked up mob. "The mentality among the Thatcher government at the time was that football fans, on block, were a tanked up mob and that those of us who wanted to stand needed to be kept out of stadia because we couldn’t be trusted to behave ourselves." Click here for the full interview. |
The Ground Safety OfficerMark Farnworth is the ground safety officer at League One club, Preston North End. It is his job to ensure fans can watch football at Deepdale in safety.
"You can turn any stand into a safe standing area but legislation at the moment prohibits that. For an all-seater stadium people should sit down and that came about after the Hillsborough tragedy. "In this country it is the first two leagues, the Premier League and Championship that have to be all-seater stadiums and in the remaining two leagues there is a an option for safe standing areas such as at Morecambe, who have a new ground the Globe Arena. "That has safe standing areas but at the moment Preston North End can’t put safe standing areas in until legislation changes." Click here for the full interview. |
The Football Supporters' FederationPeter Daykin is the FSF’s Safe Standing Campaign coordinator and elected member of the FSF’s National Council and spoke about the unusual situation where Championship clubs have gone against the Football League's stance on the topic.
"It’s a bizarre situation because usually when you approach somebody like the Football League or Premier League with a suggestion or a change or whatever their usual stock reply if they don’t want to do something is, ‘We’re just here to represent the owners of the clubs that’s why we exist and the owners of the clubs don’t want to do that so therefore we won’t do it’ and that’s usually the way they get out of stuff. "What’s happened in this case is there was a meeting of the Football League on Valentine’s Day, or should I say the Championship teams on Valentine’s Day, where all of the chairman and chief executives got together and there was a vote about clubs doing this." Click here for the full interview. |