Fans Comment
Steve Guy

Sit Down and Shut Up!
22 February 2006

Time is a great healer, but it can also be a false friend. I think a number of people are becoming a bit too dewy-eyed about the joys of watching football from the terraces. Alas, I am old enough to actually remember what standing on a terrace was really like.

I remember being herded like cattle into pens, quite often ending up tens of yards away from my original starting point, having no control of movement due to the pressure of the crowd around me (especially when there was a goal). I remember often missing large chunks of the game as I tried to keep my feet. I’m 6’5” so I could always see over the heads of others, but pity the poor buggers behind me, or who were naturally small in stature (I often wondered why they went the game at all as they never saw anything but the back of someone’s head).

Oh, yes, then they'd open the exit gates 10 minutes from the end of the game and a stream of people would rush in on a freebie and add to the crush.

Then there was the easy access to and from the terraces. I think not. Getting to use the facilities at any time was virtually impossible unless you were near the entrances. More delightful memories ensue, as I remember standing in rivers of piss, delivered by those with 10 pints inside them and no bladder control.

I get mad as hell when I read the kind of revisionist rubbish the people who wrote that link dole out. They can’t have been there. I get mad when I see morons at any ground consistently flouting the rules about standing; and seeing both police and the stewards turn a blind eye. No one I know, who used to stand on terraces at anything like a full ground, has ever said they would want to go back to the above way of watching footie. In the UK today, minority opinions in so many walks of life seem to hold sway over the majority. Sometimes this is a good thing. In this case it is not.

There is no such thing as safe standing areas at a football ground. They make seeing the game difficult. They make it difficult to police the lunatic fringe and to get to people who may need assistance.

I was at Villa Park when the news came through from Hillsborough. I had two brothers watching the game in Sheffield (yes, we are one of those scouse families split down the middle) and (in the days before mobile phones) the rest of my family and I had to spend agonising hours waiting to find out what happened to them (no doubt many reading this will have had a similar awful experience that day). Thankfully they were safe although, even today, neither will speak about the events they witnessed.

The logic used by the misguided souls who wrote the linked item is flawed; the use of terraces had everything to do with the situation on that day, regardless of one or two barriers being missing or in disrepair, it is fatuous to imply that a few more barriers would have somehow made a significant difference to the outcome. Any accident is the result of a set of events coming together and no one event can be pinpointed, or excluded from culpability in the overall scenario — although some will have been of greater significance than others. Anyone who went to football in those days should be able to remember plenty of occasions where they were just a little bit nervous of the crush and that loss of control which accompanied it. Tragedy was only ever a tripped foot away.

More than anything though, I hope I am not alone in finding it downright disrespectful and insensitive; that the lobbyists choose to dismantle what happened at Hillsborough in order to make a case for their selfish desire to turn the clock back.

The game had been crying out for decades for the fans to be put first (over the interests of Club owners) and there are still plenty of areas where this still needs to happen. Unfortunately, it took a tragedy of epic proportions to get the changes pushed through for all-seater stadia. The game of football is so much the better for leaving terraces behind and these Luddites should not be given the oxygen of publicity; which could give their misguided cause a momentum it does not deserve.
Steve Guy


Responses:
Form Amanda Mathews:
22 February 2006

Steve,

Thank you for taking the time to respond to our recent article, Hiding in the Shadow of Hillsborough. You obviously feel as passionately as I do but have a totally opposing opinion to me; while I doubt very much if either one of us will yield to the others view, I wanted to reply to you. I fully appreciate that it is an extremely emotive subject and hope you don’t think I’m trying to score a cheap point when I tell you I’ve spent some 18 months campaigning for SUSD and am very confident in saying that my in experience of visiting countless websites and debating the subject of safe standing, around ¾ will agree with our cause and around ¼ won’t. It is difficult to put a number on those who support the concept that supporters should have a choice as to whether or not they may stand safely, but again, I’m confident in saying most do, in my experience.

I’m not sure if you’ve visited our website to find out exactly what we are campaigning for, but we most certainly do not want a return to the terraces of old. We are actually campaigning for the regulations to be relaxed so supporters may stand in front of their seats in pre-designated areas of the ground, such as the Bobby Moore Lower Stand at the Boleyn Ground or the Kop at Anfield. We work on the premise that supporters have done just that since all seater stadia become mandatory and that there have been no major injuries or outbreaks of violence and that supporters have not, as Lord Taylor suggested they would, got used to sitting down while watching and supporting their team.

In the long term, we would of course like to see modern, safe standing areas introduced along the lines of the German models where the standing areas for domestic games convert to seats for internationals; some World Cup games will be played in such stadiums. As we made clear in our original article, we applaud many of the improvements to grounds, made post Hillsborough that enhance both the safety and comfort of the supporter, that were clearly well over due and I emphasis again that we want to move forward, not backwards.

Due to the gulf in our views, I don’t feel it appropriate that I dwell too much on your arguments as to the cause of the tragedy itself but will agree with you that accidents are as a result of a set of events coming together. Had safety been a priority over the years at Hillsborough and had the crowd management been even marginally better on the day, then perhaps so many lives would not have been lost.

While I make no apology for having written the piece, I am sorry if you found it disrespectful and insensitive; that was not our intention, indeed we sent two emails to the Hillsborough Justice campaign prior to publishing to both advise them that we would be releasing this article and making it clear we would welcome their feedback and even advice before posting it on websites. We did not receive a response. As for dismantling what happened, I’m not entirely clear what you mean by that, but the whole point of the article was to bring to people’s attention that Hillsborough, in our opinion did not happen because of terracing per se as many people think.

The authorities rightly maintain that “we cannot have another Hillsborough” but in our opinion, as the article tried to make clear, their use of Hillsborough as almost a carte blanche reason not to even consider bringing back standing is merely a smoke screen as opposed to a reason considering how much technology has moved on and how the face of football has changed beyond recognition since the Hillsborough – and that at each and every ground supporters still continue to stand, surely demonstrating that however hard they try, the authorities cannot stamp out persistent standing and as long as people stand, and those who'd prefer to sit have to stand because of those in front, we won’t go away, however unpalatable some may find our campaign!

Since the article appeared, we’ve experienced the largest surge in our membership since our inception so we’ve perhaps struck a nerve and it is clear that many fans up and down the country, support the idea of safe standing, of course an equal number may not – the internet only accounts for a minority of supporters, but while many, many people have written to support us, we’ve received only 2 emails in 18 months telling us that they disagree with our cause.

Amanda Matthews
Stand Up Sit Down

From Peter Fearon
22 February 2006

I’m afraid the revisionist rubbish is all coming from Steve Guy.

What he says about the downside of terrace life may be true of those notorious steep terraces that were once common at English grounds and which were packed out for a handful of sell-out games a season. I’ve been to plenty of matches which were intolerable because such terraces were over packed – Anfield, Villa Park, Maine Road, Turf Moor and many many others, so I’m certainly not dewy-eyed about the past as Steve Guy would claim. I accept that some terraces were dangerous some of the time. But fences were far more so.

Steve Guy should know that there were also many terraces that were perfectly safe and comfortable while also being more atmospheric than the stands where the pipe and slipper brigade hung out. One example is the old Paddock on Bullens Road in front of the Lower Stand. I was a season ticket holder there in the dim and distant past. In contrast to the vast old terrace on Goodison Road, the Paddock had numerous crash barriers and was rarely allowed to get so full that it was uncomfortable. You could even change ends at half time with minimal effort. The most uncomfortable moment of the afternoon was drinking the vile tea and wondering why you wasted your money on it knowing it would inevitably taste like hot gnat’s piss with sterilized milk.

While I realize that the days of mountainous terraces and swaying hordes of singing fans standing elbow on the shoulder as far as the eye can see are well and truly gone forever, I see no reason why a limited number of fans who wish to stand on shallower terraces like the old Paddock couldn’t be accommodated.

If Everton reopened the Paddock or a section of it to standing customers I suggest that a number of things would happen. First, it would be the first section of the ground to sell out for every match. Second, people who can’t afford to go to matches regularly would go more often and third, despite a lower price to stand, the capacity and gate receipts at Goodison would go up.

Modern football fans might benefit from the availability of a “retro” experience. Why not? If Steve Guy wants to watch from the stands, I wish him a happy, comfortable and unobstructed view for life. What’s it to him if there are some fans who would rather watch from a safe and comfortable terrace? His anger is inappropriately directed. To blame the entire concept of standing terraces for Hillsborough or Heysel is like blaming air travel for plane crashes. Architecture doesn’t kill people. Human error, human arrogance, hubris and negligence, that’s what kills people.

Even when I watch games on TV I have a tendency to stand up and lean on the back of the armchair. That’s just the way I enjoyed my football for many years. (I no longer throw toilet rolls at the screen, however)
Peter Fearon

From Chris Jones
22 February 2006

Can I offer the following as a counterweight to Steve Guy's comments on the 'advantages' of sitting over standing ...

Steve's recollections of the 'bad old day's' of standing (quote "rivers of piss" etc.) are the antithesis of 'rose coloured specs'.  Forget what the bad old days were like (I too am old enough to remember them, and still cherish memories, they were rarely THAT bad!), let's look at what we have today in our brave new world.  I hate to top Steve, but I am 6'6" and have to bemoan the fact that few seats in stadia offer me any comfort.  Moreover, if he wants to talk 'inherently unsafe', try working your way along a row of the Top Balcony, looking for your seat, edging past other fee paying fans who can permit you only inches in which to move along — while facing a drop to one side that would give you a nosebleed if you thought long and hard about it!

No, modern stadia are little better than what we had in the bad old days.

I stood in the Gwladys Street throughout the glory days of the mid 1980s and always had enough room to look at my programme and smoke a tab without burning any of my neighbours!

Interestingly, the only problem I had in the 1980s was at Brentford (where, perhaps, I'd still be allowed to stand!?). Me and a pal — I was living & working in Ealing at the time — went to see them play Liverpool in a league cup tie.  I was that cramped for space on the terraces (one of the main stands was shut, for safety reasons!) that I managed to burn a hole through the seat of my jeans and barbeque my right arse cheek while trying to smoke a fag.  I may not have the scar on my arse to prove it, but the memory is burned into my brain!

ps: Sorry if any of the foregoing sounds trite, this is a 'bloody serious' issue.  I have dear friends who lost people at Hillsborough!
Chris Jones

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