Standing Room Only

There has been quite a bit in the news recently about the reintroduction of standing areas at football matches. Top flight matches in the UK were mandated to be all-seater affairs following the Taylor Report into the Hillsborough Stadium disaster. There were a number of recommendations which were mainly common sense measures to improve the safety at football matches and few of these were particularly controversial amongst fans other than the removal of terracing. However, it was something I did agree with as I knew from first-hand experience that the welfare of the ordinary fan on terraces was often precarious.

I’m trying to remember the last time I was in a terrace for a top-flight game. I seem to recall it was at Roker Park in the early 1990’s but I’m not certain as to the exact match. I have been on terraces since but, at the amateur levels of Scottish football, one is more likely to suffer from loneliness than being crushed against the barriers. There is a great deal of over-romanticised nostalgia about terraces. They could be exhilarating when your team was winning and the whole crowd was singing in unison but there appears to be a collective amnesia about the down side: the poor view, rib crushing crowd surges, someone peeing down your leg at half time and the stench of urine from the kids at the bottom of the stand who were downstream of several thousand emptied bladders. I suffered broken spectacles on more than one occasion during over-exuberant goal celebrations and, notably, bruised ribs when the minimal crowd control didn’t go to plan.

Even though I am opposed to the old style melee of terracing I am in favour of what is currently described as “safe standing”. I wouldn’t be tempted by it but I believe it is necessary for entirely practical reasons. Once football stadia went all-seater it didn’t prevent standing at football grounds. It is just that the standing now takes place in what were the traditional terraced sections of the stadia which is both a great annoyance for those that do want to sit as their view is blocked and it is also dangerous as someone falling over where many people are standing could cause a domino effect as there is nothing to catch their fall other than the fans immediately in front of them. And, of course, once one person stands at a match it rather encourages everyone behind them to stand as well so that they don’t miss any action for what is a rather expensive 90 minutes entertainment.

“Safe standing” areas are common in Germany and have recently been introduced at Celtic Park in Glasgow. What they are not is a traditional terrace with its sparsely placed barriers and minimal crowd control. With “safe standing” areas, every standing spectator has their own barrier to lean against and tickets are given to a particular place. In effect, it is no different from people standing in all-seater stands except that they are not blocking the view of those that do want to sit and they have the added safety feature of a dedicated rail in front of them to prevent a human domino effect. The Taylor Report was a quantum leap for the safety of sports stadia. The pragmatist in me says that far from challenging the wisdom of Taylor’s report, safe standing would actually enhance it.