I’m Still Standing - Safe Standing At Vicarage Road ?

A standing option is a fantastic idea imo. When you've got join ts as effed up as mine the constant up and down in the seat is an effin nightmare. Options for fans can only be a good thing and I believe it brings with it a better atmosphere when standing.

 

This completely unironically

 

Is that still a thing?

 

True. But big part of the attraction of safe standing for the authorities is it's far safer than people standing in all-seater areas, as it massively reduces the chances of people bundling over those in front.

 

Yes please

 

Right in front of me.

 

It's weird to me that Hillsborough is used as justification for all-seaters. While there were many failures that contributed to the disaster, the ultimate problem was there were too many people in too small of a space. If there had been seats at Hillsborough but everything else had remained the same then I'd be willing to bet the outcome would have been just as bad, if not worse. Those seats take up space; with the same number of people plus seats, logically you'd expect an even nastier situation.

You don't need seats to enforce caps on how many people can be in one area at a time.

 

I agree with your last sentence, but the Hillsborough disaster would only have been worse with seating if that seating was unrestricted. Even in those days the semi-final would have been all-ticket and each seat ticket would have a row and seat number, so the correct number of people would have gone into each area.

 

That's nothing to do with the fact seats are there. That's to do with appropriate control of people entering the area.

You could do the same thing but with the seats removed, and it would be just as safe. In contrast, add seating to the pens at Hillsborough and I'd bet the outcomes would be even worse.

This has always been about appropriately controlling the people entering the area. It's nothing to do with whether or not you are seated or standing.

 

I understand the point you’re making but I’m just saying that allocated seating does control the access to different parts of a stadium. The vast majority of people who have a ticket for a seat in Block A will not try and sit in Block B. At Hillsborough the tickets would have been for the Leppings Lane terrace, not for individual pens, so it was the equivalent of unreserved seating like we used to have in the Vicarage Road end in the 90s.

 

After reading that, I'm not sure you do.

Two stadiums.

One uses allocated seating.The other uses allocated standing.

What's the difference, aside from the fact the second set of people can't sit down?

Safety is not about the ability to sit. It never was.

 

Surely the issue with Hillsborough was the fact that people were caged in with nowhere to go? Seats or standing if you cannot escape onto the pitch then you’re in for a bad day if something starts to go wrong. I think we are passed the stage of having to cage in football fans as a society so there “should” be no issue with terraces being reinstated

 

I absolutely agree.

 

Agree. The idea of all seating was to make it more family friendly and easier to control. Giving a fan a seat under his /her name is easier to police and the psychological difference between a hooligan sat down to being stood up must be a thing ?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

The problem at Hillsbrough was that the police allowed large numbers of ticketless fans into a relatively small and already sold out terrace that had a fence stopping fans getting onto the pitch. I've stood in a sold out Leppings Lane terrace for an FA Cup semi final at Hillsbrough and the idea of letting large numbers of extra fans into that area is horrifying. I guess a perceived advantage of rail seating is that stewards can quickly see if the terrace is beyond capacity. We massively over sold the Vicarage Road end for our FA Cup quarter final against Liverpool in the 80s, it was safer than Leppings Lane cos the Vic Rd end was a bigger terrace and if there was a crush it'd be easier for fans to get onto the pitch. Still it was a reckless decision by the club at that time.

 

I doubt that the match you refer to was “over sold” because I'm sure it was all-ticket at a capacity 28,000 split by the different areas of the ground (the Liverpool fans were in the Rookery). However, that doesn’t mean a significant number of extra people found their way in!

 

Everyone who stood at the Vic Road End that night could see it was several thousand fans over the safety limit. It was pre Hillsbrough so the reaction was more 'wow look how many people there are here' rather than 'OMG we're all gonna die'. There weren't less than 30k in the vic and possibly quite a few more. I bumped into a couple of school mates there who werent Watford fans and I'm pretty sure they got in on the night paying at the turnstiles. The Vic Road End was literally bursting at the seams. I was in the Vic Rd End for the Brighton cup game which was also said to have 28k and the difference was huge. The Brighton game felt full, the Liverpool game felt absolutely rammed.

 

You may be right and of course I’m not certain but I don’t think it would have been possible to pay at the turnstile, but people might well have got in in other ways. I do agree though about the pre-Hillsborough feelings about packed crowds. We didn’t have any real sense of danger. Amongst other occasions, I remember being swept along once at Highbury in the Clock End and the Holte End at the semi-final against Plymouth was so packed you could take your feet off the floor and not fall over.

 

The Hillsborough disaster was caused by the caging of football fans pure and simple!!!

Had those barbaric fences not been in place it is very likely that very few if any fans would have been seriously hurt let alone killed.

 

A lot of factors contributed to it. The fences alone can’t be blamed. Even without fences a disaster on some scale was inevitable in that era

 

Trial deemed successful by the government and so will be legal for any club in the PL or Championship to introduce safe standing areas this season:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/62029516

Anyone heard any whispers about Watford doing anything?

 

Only if Mogi Bayat has a relative in construction.

 

When trials were first mooted a few years ago, I’m sure Watford were quoted as being in favour but they don’t seem to have been particularly involved since.

 

It's about time too.

 

Would love for us to go for safe standing in the Rookery - would improve the atmosphere, allow people to more easily congregate with their mates, presumably would also be an easy way of boosting capacity a bit as well. Honestly can't think of a single downside.

https://thefsa.org.uk/news/safe-standing-facts/

 

Listening to Danny Kelly talk about this on talksport and him reminiscing about being shoved 20 feet forwards sometimes at games he went to reminded me of 30 years or so ago under the scoreboard in the Vic road end when we scored.

You either ended up 25 feet nearer the pitch carried on a wave of a thousand people behind you or got caught in front of a barrier and thrust into it.

Always seemed to be a great laugh at the time.

My 40+yo self now favours a more relaxed seating area with the occasional jumping up during exciting times. Might be time for the upper GT...

 

I’m not sure this is true. My understanding is that everyone would be allocated a standing space in exactly the same way they are allocated a seat now.

 

You'll be very welcome. Nobody stands up, so you can see all of the play. That's the only disadvantage.

 

That rules out what I liked best in my standing days - the ability to move if you found yourself in earshot of a loudmouthed ****head.

 

Presumably the first place the club will install safe standing infrastructure will be the away end. Then they have to negotiate around the Rookery. Remember the mess the moves last time for the singing section. You probably would put safe standing in all of the Rookery, but as I don’t have a season ticket in that stand that suits me, but maybe not every long standing (see what I did there), season ticket holder in the Rookery.

 

I prefer standing.

It’s less effort to walk out that way when we get served more of the pathetic bilge we had to sit through last season.

 

Yes you’re correct - good article by this Newcastle fan on how it works.

https://true-faith.co.uk/enough-room-will-safe-standing-increase-capacity-at-sjp/

However he does also state that in the long term, stands could be re-configured to accommodate more fans than seats without needing to increase the footprint of the stand, following the German model. Would though also require a change in the law to allow it.

 

They have it at Spurs and it works very well. For those that don't wish to or can't stand for 90 minutes, why not make the first 15 rows of the Vicarage Road end and the Rookery seated and make the rest standing?

 

Less of the tutting from all the people sitting who have to get up so I can get my half time beer too!