Topic: Safe Standing ( split from: Liverpool confirm decision to redevelop Anfield)

[Adamski LFC]

Greater accessibility for more people based on significantly reduced ticket prices has made a great success of Safe Standing in Germany. The atmosphere also benefits. The monetary benefit to the club is marginal (double the number of people at half the price...)

Persistent standing in seating areas is not safe. Worse, it is downright dangerous.

All seater stadia may well have been a step forward in terms of policing but it was not introduced to be safer. It was introduce to give the police greater control of Hooliganism.

Persistent standing in seating areas is a step backwards, which no ones seems able or willing to tackle. People want to stand. Taylor said it wouldn't happen. He got it wrong.

I would also suggest that more people having access to the matches will lead to better income in the shop, museum, food places etc.  A better feeling of oneness due to standing fostering singing more regularly.

Seating would work but only with roller coaster type bars that prevent people standing up, presenting all sorts of problems.

Does anyone know anything about the stewarding of safe standing?  I am sure i have read somewhere that multiple positions are used to monitor and sort out trouble quickly too.

[Maggie May]

Mags. I love you.

I can understand the stance of HFSG, all day long, but whats always worried me is that the club will only ever take their point of view as the spokespeople of our fanbase.

They don't represent all fans.

It irks me slightly that no one else ever gets a say on the matter, as as soon as the subject is approached, any rational debate is stamped on straight away, and dare I say it emotionally blackmailed into silence.

That's the HFSG's stance, and fair enough. If thats what they believe, their position is understandable.

My view on standing differs somewhat from theirs though, yet as a Hillsborough veteran myself, why is my, or other people of a similar mindset views, dismissed?

And I love you back my lovely red darling. 

I wrote to the club for at least two years, and eventually fucked up two AGMs. The latter of which my dear friends John and Teresa Glover and Shiela Colman accompanied me as my proxies.  I fought tooth and nail to get recognition by the club for the HJC, their family members and for the very many survivors.  All to no avail.  Davie Boy did a runner immediately after and a ruling was made for the next AGM that no further discussion on this matter would be allowed.

So.  My Red Darling.  My answer is I have no idea.  Many years ago I trashed and demolished all the stupid arguments the club put up - which were badly argued, childish and without merit.  There is no reason for it.  Its all here on RAWK somewhere.

I have done everything within my power to give the survivors a voice and a representation.  Alas I failed and I no longer have even that say as I am no longer a shareholder.

The persona of the HFSG as saintly people who are beyond question or reproach and their word cannot be questioned is not true.  To my absolute and personal knowledge their treatment of the members of the HJC generally and John and Joey Glover (my very dear friends and may God rest their lovely souls) and Teresa was vile, vicious and disgusting.  To behave like that to the bereaved just because they don't share your way of going about the matter and want to strike out on their own is awful.  As is excluding survivors.

Oh I dunno mate.  After all these years I can make neither head nor tail of it.  Nor no fucking sense of it at all.

[Peter McGurk]

And I love you back my lovely red darling. 

I wrote to the club for at least two years, and eventually fucked up two AGMs. The latter of which my dear friends John and Teresa Glover and Shiela Colman accompanied me as my proxies.  I fought tooth and nail to get recognition by the club for the HJC, their family members and for the very many survivors.  All to no avail.  Davie Boy did a runner immediately after and a ruling was made for the next AGM that no further discussion on this matter would be allowed.

So.  My Red Darling.  My answer is I have no idea.  Many years ago I trashed and demolished all the stupid arguments the club put up - which were badly argued, childish and without merit.  There is no reason for it.  Its all here on RAWK somewhere.

I have done everything within my power to give the survivors a voice and a representation.  Alas I failed and I no longer have even that say as I am no longer a shareholder.

The persona of the HFSG as saintly people who are beyond question or reproach and their word cannot be questioned is not true.  To my absolute and personal knowledge their treatment of the members of the HJC generally and John and Joey Glover (my very dear friends and may God rest their lovely souls) and Teresa was vile, vicious and disgusting.  To behave like that to the bereaved just because they don't share your way of going about the matter and want to strike out on their own is awful.  As is excluding survivors.

Oh I dunno mate.  After all these years I can make neither head nor tail of it.  Nor no fucking sense of it at all.

I never met a survivor who said we should have got rid of standing.

[NorthamptonKopite]

Have to say I agree with a lot of the posters on here. I would love to see a safe standing Kop, aslong as it is of course the safety of the fans that remains at the forefront of it. As people have said already, it was not the fault of standing that caused the events on that day, but the incompetence in the way it was managed.

The safe standing in Germany really is hugely beneficial for the fans, the clubs, the revenue and of course the atmosphere that we all want to see thrive in Football, not dwindle. And it's all done with the safety of the supporter first.

It will always be a contentious issue in football, and especially at Liverpool Football Club, but I think it's going to be something that comes to English football again whether we choose to be a part of it or not.

[Peter McGurk]

Occasional standing at 'moments of excitement' was expected in Taylor's recommendations. Turning a blind eye to persistent standing is dangerous and 'breaks the rules'.

Since no-one seems able or willing to tackle persistent standing, rail seats ought to be introduced to 'enforce safety'. It's effectively 'safe seating' (or at the very least safer seating).

[andy07]

That's the biggest mystery for me in terms of HFSG's stance. Had the fans not been penned in like animals there'd have been no issues with terracing, not to mention everything else. The idea that standing somehow caused Hillsborough is.....bizarre.

Ultimately it is about acceptable risk, there is risk in everything we do, you could be knocked down by a speeding motorist when you cross the road,  you could be hit by lightning.     Nothing contains zero risk.   However what the HFSG is doing is adopting a blanket ban mentality akin to many in the 80's who assumed that all football supporters were hooligans.   The circumstances of fateful day in 1989 are known to us all and do not repeating, suffice it to say a series of high risk factors combined.      Standing per se is not high risk.  Most of us spend several hours each day standing without problems.  It is the manner in which people are allowed to stand that contributes to an increased risk, factors such as stadium design,  stewarding, policing etc.   Rather than being non-supportive of standing LFC should take the lead in ensuring that the inevitable return of safe standing is done in the most risk free way.   We should be instrumental in its design rather than taking a back seat. 

[Peter McGurk]

Ultimately it is about acceptable risk, there is risk in everything we do, you could be knocked down by a speeding motorist when you cross the road,  you could be hit by lightning.     Nothing contains zero risk.   However what the HFSG are doing is adopting a blanket ban mentality akin to many in the 80's who assumed that all football supporters are hooligans.   The circumstances of fateful day in 1989 are known to us all and do not repeating, suffice it to say a series of high risk factors combined.      Standing per se is not high risk.  Most of us spend several hours each day standing without problems.  It is the manner in which people are allowed to stand that contributes to an increased risk, factors such as stadium design,  stewarding, policing etc.   Rather than being non-supportive of standing LFC should take the lead in ensuring that the inevitable return of safe standing is done in the most risk free way.   We should be instrumental in its design rather than taking a back seat.

As you say, life doesn't come with absolute guarantees.

However, there are already design regulations in this country that reduces the risk of standing to what is considered to be an acceptable level - barriers, distances, view angles, escapes...

Safe Standing goes way beyond those standards. It even goes beyond the standard for seating. Yet we are not allowed to stand within those standards on anything other than the lower divisions because of measures put into place - not to make it all any safer but to control Hooliganism.

Exactly the reason why we had fences and pens at Hillsborough. Not to safeguard or protect but to control.

[New York Red]

By what percentage is the capacity of a stand increased with safe standing?

[Nessy76]

By what percentage is the capacity of a stand increased with safe standing?

Approximately double.

[New York Red]

Wow. That's pretty impressive. I can totally understand the emotion of not doing that, but I have to think it could be done in a safe way. Maybe safer than people standing in todays seated stands.

[ghost1359]

It will always be a contentious issue in football, and especially at Liverpool Football Club

I don't see why, the only people against this are the HFSG and frankly they can't put together a sensible reason as for why either. Every time I hear someone (generally Margaret Aspinall) talk about this all I hear are buzz words and phrases like "disrespecting the memories" "disgraceful that this has been brought up" all they do is continually point to a report that was published nearly 25 years ago. Things have moved on, technology has vastly improved, the game has changed, the types of people who attend games has vastly changed. The idea that we can't safely allow people to stand in a football stadium is frankly ridiculous. 

[Adamski LFC]

Wow. That's pretty impressive. I can totally understand the emotion of not doing that, but I have to think it could be done in a safe way. Maybe safer than people standing in todays seated stands.

Agreed, stewarding, CCTV, per ticket and seat allocation identifying which people are which, let alone the the rails and seat per rail all add to safety compared to stewarding and seats that are stood in at present.  I understand that the width of the area in front of the rail seats could be/is wide enough for emergency services to access more readily than currently, so not only would risk be reduced for every day use, emergency procedures can be followed more quickly.  A double bonus to safety.

On the HFSG, there was an experiment done earlier this century about people who hold dogmatic views on such things as creationism, republicanism and democracy.  Their brains were hard wired to make them not able to cogently understand after hearing or reading anything that refuted their belief.  Hence the seeming lack of understanding from their part stems from their own brains working for them!  The only way out of this is if events occur often enough to raise a question in the person's mind that allows them to reassess the evidence in a more impartial way.

Hence , it seems reasonable to presume that HFSG have justified their position so much they have become dogmatic in their belief.  This is why i asserted above we could be the last club in the UK to convert.

[Peter McGurk]

Agreed, stewarding, CCTV, per ticket and seat allocation identifying which people are which, let alone the the rails and seat per rail all add to safety compared to stewarding and seats that are stood in at present.  I understand that the width of the area in front of the rail seats could be/is wide enough for emergency services to access more readily than currently, so not only would risk be reduced for every day use, emergency procedures can be followed more quickly.  A double bonus to safety.

On the HFSG, there was an experiment done earlier this century about people who hold dogmatic views on such things as creationism, republicanism and democracy.  Their brains were hard wired to make them not able to cogently understand after hearing or reading anything that refuted their belief.  Hence the seeming lack of understanding from their part stems from their own brains working for them!  The only way out of this is if events occur often enough to raise a question in the person's mind that allows them to reassess the evidence in a more impartial way.

Hence , it seems reasonable to presume that HFSG have justified their position so much they have become dogmatic in their belief.  This is why i asserted above we could be the last club in the UK to convert.

But that's not a reason to be last.

The reason we have seating is hooliganism. Seating is not a safety issue.

[andy07]

Hypothetically I wonder how many people the Kop is structurally capable of supporting?  If all standing we would be looking at 18-25K but is the stand capable of supporting that many?   

[williamson84]

I'm all for safe standing, was in the Kop for the Arsenal game, back row and pretty much all the way down to about half way everyone was standing so, would they rather people stand without the rail seats which provide safer standing or do as we are at the moment and not police/steward it to ensure everyone's seating. 

I love to stand at football, i hate sitting it's just not something i would choose to do if going to watch a football match.  And with the bounce when we scored our first 2/3 goals against Arsenal, it would've been a hell of a lot safer with rail seats than standing as it is right now.  If it can be done safely, get it in.

[Maggie May]

I love to stand at football, i hate sitting it's just not something i would choose to do if going to watch a football match.  And with the bounce when we scored our first 2/3 goals against Arsenal, it would've been a hell of a lot safer with rail seats than standing as it is right now.  If it can be done safely, get it in.

Apologies for chopping your post.  But matches like this go far beyond the "rising in moments of excitement" (or whatever it was said by Taylor).  And I think you have got to the heart of the matter.  There are games when you go beyond delirium and by Christ I'm deeply grateful to say I've had more than my share of those.  But even when you are going mental you should be kept safe.  And the present seating arrangements do not.  Nor even come close.

[Liamski-la]

I'd imagine a massive majority of Lfc supporters that attend matches would be in favour of safe standing, especially if other clubs were given the go ahead to trial their own systems. It's not a voice they could ignore if we shouted loud enough.

[Big Red Richie]

I'd imagine a massive majority of Lfc supporters that attend matches would be in favour of safe standing, especially if other clubs were given the go ahead to trial their own systems. It's not a voice they could ignore if we shouted loud enough.

And there in lies the problem.

As previously mentioned. It seems the club only have ears for one portion of the fanbase.

[Liamski-la]

And there in lies the problem.

As previously mentioned. It seems the club only have ears for one portion of the fanbase.

Over something that is mutually beneficial, I think they will listen. I think hfsg et al, will come round with a proper period of consultation. I mean, they are seriously not in possession of any facts at all are they. They have to listen to sense eventually.

[Big Red Richie]

Over something that is mutually beneficial, I think they will listen. I think hfsg et al, will come round with a proper period of consultation. I mean, they are seriously not in possession of any facts at all are they. They have to listen to sense eventually.

I agree entirely, but as someone previously mentioned. It now seems some run on dogma, not common sense facts about what is beneficial to all supporters.

They are perfectly entitled to their opinion and stance of course. It's just a shame that they arn't more open to consultation and discussion for what is better safety for the wider match going fan base.



If I'm honest, I've no problem with the HFSG or anyone else effected by the disaster have such views, I'm more dissappointed with the club for allowing themselves to be backed into a corner, and in effect cutting off the opinions of a large proportion or their fan base's voice, in effect, the minority ruling the majority.

[Maggie May]

Over something that is mutually beneficial, I think they will listen. I think hfsg et al, will come round with a proper period of consultation. I mean, they are seriously not in possession of any facts at all are they. They have to listen to sense eventually.

Oh may God love you and bless your cotton socks.  The HFSG have no intention of listening or moving a fraction of an inch on this.  Ever. 

[andy07]

Time for an introduce safe standing petition and some big banners at the front of The Kop in support of this.   

[Tonyh]

Apologies for chopping your post.  But matches like this go far beyond the "rising in moments of excitement" (or whatever it was said by Taylor).  And I think you have got to the heart of the matter.  There are games when you go beyond delirium and by Christ I'm deeply grateful to say I've had more than my share of those.  But even when you are going mental you should be kept safe.  And the present seating arrangements do not.  Nor even come close.

Especially when you are over 6 foot tall. There are some seats at Anfield that are almost impossible to get in and out of safely before or during a lively game. Your knees are up in the air, they are uncomfortable and you have real balance issues due to the lack of floor space. As we all get taller and larger in the future, this will become an even bigger issue. For me I would much prefer just to be stood up for those reasons alone.

[BER]

Oh may God love you and bless your cotton socks.  The HFSG have no intention of listening or moving a fraction of an inch on this.  Ever.

Could you envisage the club ever moving forward with safe standing despite the views of the HFSG?

[ghost1359]

Could you envisage the club ever moving forward with safe standing despite the views of the HFSG?

If it's brought in across the board (which it won't be sadly) then they'll have to. They couldn't justify charging twice the price for a ticket of every other club in the country for something there's no desire for. Prices would undoubtedly go down if safe standing was brought in because of the sheer increase in numbers it would mean. 

[Maggie May]

Especially when you are over 6 foot tall. There are some seats at Anfield that are almost impossible to get in and out of safely before or during a lively game. Your knees are up in the air, they are uncomfortable and you have real balance issues due to the lack of floor space. As we all get taller and larger in the future, this will become an even bigger issue. For me I would much prefer just to be stood up for those reasons alone.

And broad with it as well.  There have been times when I felt like a sardine.  I swear to God.  Back in the day in the old Kop I was swept from one side of it to another and never felt afraid for a second.  Because I could move. Now.  I feel like I am tethered.  I can't move forwards sideways or back in an extremely tight and confined space.  I am being contained.  And I don't like it.  And I feel unsafe.  And I never thought I'd ever say that. 

[ghost1359]

And broad with it as well.  There have been times when I felt like a sardine.  I swear to God.  Back in the day in the old Kop I was swept from one side of it to another and never felt afraid for a second.  Because I could move. Now.  I feel like I am tethered.  I can't move forwards sideways or back in an extremely tight and confined space.  I am being contained.  And I don't like it.  And I feel unsafe.  And I never thought I'd ever say that.

I wouldn't say I feel unsafe sitting down but I certainly feel uncomfortable. The Kop is especially is not designed with people 6 foot and over in mind. I'm 6 foot and leave with bruises on my shins, god knows what it must be like for people that are 6'3+

[CraigDS]

And broad with it as well.  There have been times when I felt like a sardine.  I swear to God.  Back in the day in the old Kop I was swept from one side of it to another and never felt afraid for a second.  Because I could move. Now.  I feel like I am tethered.  I can't move forwards sideways or back in an extremely tight and confined space.  I am being contained.  And I don't like it.  And I feel unsafe.  And I never thought I'd ever say that.

Safe standing isn't exactly going to help that as it is a set space for a set person, barrier front and back. It's pretty much the same as seating but you stand.

[Alanslad]

Especially when you are over 6 foot tall. There are some seats at Anfield that are almost impossible to get in and out of safely before or during a lively game. Your knees are up in the air, they are uncomfortable and you have real balance issues due to the lack of floor space. As we all get taller and larger in the future, this will become an even bigger issue. For me I would much prefer just to be stood up for those reasons alone.

I totally agree with this post. I am 6ft and my sons are both well over 6ft and we all stand up on the Kop as its more comfortable than sitting down. We all prefer to stand anyway. I think Bristol City have installed a safe standing area in a closed part of the ground for the authorities to inspect. Hopefully it is the start of a wider introduction.

[Maggie May]

Safe standing isn't exactly going to help that as it is a set space for a set person, barrier front and back. It's pretty much the same as seating but you stand.

Yes I know.  But I would welcome something to lean on.  At the moment I can't move my feet and I'm flailing into  thin air before I fall on the poor bugger in front of me. 

[CraigDS]

Yes I know.  But I would welcome something to lean on.  At the moment I can't move my feet and I'm flailing into  thin air before I fall on the poor bugger in front of me.

Totally agree with you there, it would be safer that is for sure.

[Liamski-la]

Yes I know.  But I would welcome something to lean on.  At the moment I can't move my feet and I'm flailing into  thin air before I fall on the poor bugger in front of me.

Something to lean against to read the program at half time would be quality!

I'm six foot so sitting down is out and you just feel awkward stood there getting in other folks way. 

[ghost1359]

Safe standing isn't exactly going to help that as it is a set space for a set person, barrier front and back. It's pretty much the same as seating but you stand.

Safe standing in my experience is much more spacious. Enough room for two people to stand one in front of the other.

[Peter McGurk]

Safe standing in my experience is much more spacious. Enough room for two people to stand one in front of the other.

The design is two people and one barrier for every seat.

[666]

I don't understand Margaret when she says that Standing caused it. Seating plan was made as the governments way to blame us and not the bent cops etc..... So why is she agreeing with them?

[CraigDS]

I don't understand Margaret when she says that Standing caused it. Seating plan was made as the governments way to blame us and not the bent cops etc..... So why is she agreeing with them?

Maggie on here?

[Liamski-la]

Maggie on here?

Margaret Aspinall I'd assume.

[CraigDS]

Margaret Aspinall I'd assume.

Ah obviously, total brain freeze there!!

[Liamski-la]

I do think its a ill thought out and dreadful stance to take. She clearly doesn't have the first idea of what is involved before she dismissed the idea.

Suppose it must be difficult to get the image of Leppings Lane out of your head.

[Maggie May]

I don't understand Margaret when she says that Standing caused it. Seating plan was made as the governments way to blame us and not the bent cops etc..... So why is she agreeing with them?

I've never been able to understand that.  It flies in the face of overwhelming evidence meticu lously researched and gathered at great time and trouble over the years, and I believe it weakens our case.  I just shudder every time she comes out with it.