Crush at English League Cup Semi-Final

Paz-CCFC

http://www.mirror.co.uk/sport/football/news/stoke-supporters-complain-being-crushed-7282047

There were reports of a crush at the away end of Anfield in the English League Cup Semi-Final between Liverpool and Stoke. The 5,000 away fans were given just two turnstiles to go through, causing a huge backlog of tightly-packed fans. Thankfully, there seems to have been no physical injuries, but it's crazy how something like this can happen in this day and age. Especially involving Liverpool of all clubs.

Some of the organisation of English matches seems to be very outdated. I was at Nottingham Forest v Watford on Saturday and I was very surprised about how backward the planning looked. They were still ripping off ticket stubs to count them manually, rather than using an electronic scanning system. The former obviously takes a lot of tedious work to get a figure on the numbers in the ground - the latter is instant. The system will stop you from printing more tickets when you've printed your stadium's capacity, it will give you an exact number in the ground as people are coming in, so you can prepare if the attendace is bigger than expected, unique barcodes completely prevent duplicates/forgeries and you know exactly when the ground is full the second it happens. One of the recommendations in the Taylor Report was to be able to "count them in". He specifically mentioned doing so electronically. That was nearly 30 years ago - you'd expect the systems to be in place at every big club by now. League of Ireland clubs with attendances of 1,500 have these electronic systems; how can a club with 25,000 get away without having them?

Coming out of the ground afterwards, there were throngs of fans, but not a steward or policeman in sight. A huge, tightly packed group - like a massive open terrace without any crush barriers. How can they say that's safe, but a terrace isn't? Right outside the end we were in, there's a narrow path (relative to the volume of fans coming out) with a steep slope leading straight into a river. No rails or anything to keep people off the slope. It'd be very easy to get a nudge and fall in. The crowd then exited onto a main road that they didn't close off. In big matches in Ireland (say, the FAI Cup Final, which has a similar crowd to what was there on Saturday), they close the roads around the immediate perimeter, to give fans more room to clear more quickly. The crowd coming out of the City Ground actually took up a lane of road. We didn't even realise it until we saw one of the painted-on signs. Again, it'd be all to easy to get a nudge and fall in front of a car/bus.

For people who regularly (or even time-to-time) travel to the bigger English clubs (say, the top two divisions), is this the norm? I thought after Hillsborough, it'd have been completely overhauled, but it seems a lot of outdated practices are still in place.

CSF

Villa Park is genuinely fine. Lots of turnstiles to go in, electronic counting system.

Paz-CCFC

CSF wrote: »

Villa Park is genuinely fine. Lots of turnstiles to go in, electronic counting system.

That's really how it should be for all clubs in the English Football League and probably a couple of divisions below that, as well. It can't be prohibitively expensive if smaller clubs over here can afford it.

In the news report, it says that two turnstiles were open to cater for 5,000 Stoke fans. That's one turnstile for every 2,500. To put that into perspective, in the lead-up to the Hillsborough Disaster, there were seven turnstiles for the 10,000 in the Leppings Lane terrace. That's one for every 1,400. When the entry conditions for a match in 2016 are worse than what was there for one of the worst stadium disasters in history, we really need to sit up and take notice.

nice_guy80

Anfield are notorious for treating the away fans badly

Berserker

Paz-CCFC wrote: »

For people who regularly (or even time-to-time) travel to the bigger English clubs (say, the top two divisions), is this the norm? I thought after Hillsborough, it'd have been completely overhauled, but it seems a lot of outdated practices are still in place.

It's not. I have been to the majority of PL grounds and a good few Championship grounds over the last few years and most are very well run, with automated turnstiles, good facilities and adequate security. Anfield is a messy ground to get away from for visiting supporters. Most of the crowd funnels down onto the Anfield road, where the away supporters are housed, after the game, which creates a bottleneck. Goodison is far easier to get to and from for some reason.

nice_guy80 wrote: »

Anfield are notorious for treating the away fans badly

The area or the football ground?