Standing Up To Be Counted

Standing Up To Be Counted

Jamie Barnard on how MPs vote on safe-standing presents football with an opportunity to move forward...

 

“Standing should never, ever come back. I do not think there is anything safe about standing”. They were the words of one woman, Margaret Aspinall, mother of Hillsborough victim James Aspinall. Few words, uttered by one woman, yet representative of the ignorant many. For those opposed to the return of standing at English football matches voices such as Margaret Aspinall carry the torch with no light.

This week the Football Supporter’s Federation hope to gain support from MPs for a small-scale trial of safe-standing at Premier League clubs. That’s the backing of MPs for a trial period of people being able to freely watch a football match stood on their feet rather than anchored in a plastic seat.

Safe-standing is the elephant in football’s room.

No-one is willing to talk about safe-standing but football supporters are beginning to stir. The elephant is becoming restless. In the dawning of the commercialisation of football with its soaring ticket prices, goal music and penchant for experience over atmosphere, out of the despair comes promise in the form of thirteen clubs backing this pilot scheme.

By no means a monumental number of The Football League’s ninety-two clubs, but nonetheless a start, safe-standing is at least now on the agenda twenty three years on from the horrors of Hillsborough.

Headway, albeit slow.

That English football move to all-seater stadia was a recommendation made in The Taylor Report which followed that tragedy in Sheffield in April 1989. In the twenty-three years that has passed since that report was published the face of English football has changed and, brandished unsafe, the terracing once found in football stadiums across the country has now become a rarity. In Peterborough’s London Road home, there remains just one ground in the top two tiers of English football with terracing.

For those wishing its return, the campaign for the re-introduction of standing at football matches in England has favoured progress over protest. Persuasive, considered, respectful. The argument for safe-standing is built on evidence not assumption, logic not speculation. Real, tangible working examples of how stadiums may be safely transformed are in existence, there to be tested and now here to be discussed.

Over in Germany ‘The Old Enemy’ are now safe-standing’s closest of allies. Every week at Bundesliga fixtures thousands of fans safely stand whilst watching matches. No incidents, no tragedies and a supremely favourable match day experience.

Contrast this to England, where Brighton & Hove Albion FC this month demonstrated quite spectacularly a deficiency in their understanding of their fan base in being the first club to come out against safe-standing: “The club does not support any move for safe standing in football... (on standing areas) a large percentage of the general football watching population are excluded because they would be unable to actually see the pitch. In turn, standing areas create the potential for poor behaviour to go undetected and unresolved.”

A choice.

The choice to choose whether or not to stand when watching football is all that an ever increasing number of football fans desire. A choice given or a choice taken, that will now be determined in Parliament. At every club, including Brighton & Hove Albion FC, fans are already standing in seated areas, speaking with their feet. But MPs now hold the power to give those people the opportunity to stand at matches unperturbed, and in facilities specifically designed for them to do so with railings and assigned positions with fold down seats.

There is nothing inherently dangerous about safe-standing, and this is the point that both Brighton & Hove Albion FC and people such as Margaret Aspinall neglect to see. If MPs back the trial of safe-standing they will not be accountable for a new Hillsborough, they will not burden clubs with the costs of installing compulsory standing areas, they will simply present the opportunity for clubs and fans to develop, through choice, a greater consumer experience together. And modern football after all is increasingly geared towards exactly that; the coveted and ultimate ‘consumer experience’.

In the twenty-three years that have passed since Hillsborough issues have become clouded. Outlawed because of safety concerns, from objectors now come unsubstantiated and speculative cries of costs, impeded views and unacceptable behaviour, all of which only serve to move further away from the point of why football fans are currently forbidden to stand during matches. In search of the truth, through reports, inquests and campaigns for justice we have passed. And now we have the truth: standing at football can be safe.

"There are 96 reasons why it should not be allowed," said Margaret Aspinall on safe-standing. In those who currently, and who would like to continue to, stand at football matches, there are thousands more reasons why it should.