Petition: Allow fans back in stadiums

Ultimately, we are governed in this situation by the lowest common denominator when considering maintaining social distancing and being respectful of others health and well-being - in this case the (not so) Great British Public.... in other words, abject madness to open football stadiums.

 

You’ve clearly not tried the Red Leicester Saints sausage roll from the stadium. Replaced the ones they used to do about a season or two ago. Absolutely lovely!

 

And a bargain at only twelve quid

 

The burger is actually really good too. It is proper beef and not cardboard like the ones you get outside. I buy chips on the way in from one of the vans (not on the St Mary's site as they are overpriced and crap) for I think £1.80 and the burger inside. Quite a nice meal

 

To be fair, I think it's under £4 and they're a decent portion.

Just found them online actually and the company is based, local-ish, in Worthing. Better than giving a big corporate the money They're worth a try!

https://www.pigletspantry.co.uk/product/5-sausage-roll-with-red-leicester-x-6/

 

Maybe it isn't the seating space but over-large fans!

 

Are you talking from personal experience?

 

It would be quite something if they provided olives to go with the glass of beer inside St Mary's.

 

You cant continue locking down local areas and ban households mixing indoors etc and then start discussing the possibility of allowing fans back in stadiums 2 weeks later, **** me.

What happens if its and evening game , you'll have the pubs chucking out and everyone at the game travelling home at the same time.

 

That’s probably one of the things they’ll discuss

 

I can't see it, though with this government anything is possible. But as sotonsaint said over the next few weeks we are going to get tougher restrictions and allowing crowds into football would contradict that. It isn't the safety in the stadium that is an issue as that can be controlled it is a few thousand people travelling from all over (even home fans travel miles) to the game.

 

I cannot see any fans being allowed back in grounds until the spring at the earliest. Attendance at professional level will be meaningless once the football matches start to get cancelled. I am far from convinced that this current season will be concluded and it we get to the end of November I will be surprised.

It is useful to look at how attendance is managed at non-league football at the moment before considering opening larger stadia up to spectators. I have found that the clubs try hard and some are effectively marshalling fans. However, the social distance issue is a bit of a nonsense since you cannot always move if someone sits within 2 metres of you. A lot of spectators are not paying proper heed to safety even if the clubs are going out of their way to manage things. If you get between 100-300 attending the lowest tier matches, a hundred-fold increase becomes impossible to control.

The govt has said this week that the restrictions will not lessen until March depending upon the availability of a vaccine and there has been talk of measures being in place as far as the future as July 2021. Normality will not resume until 2022. Looking at this from a practical point of view, I would imagine that the football in 21/22 will soon become totally disrupted and that I would envisage cricket coming up with a solution for fans attending meaningful sports events before cricket. I think fan participation at live matches will not be practical until the 21/22 season gets underway.

 

Now is possibly good timing for the government to debate fans back in stadiums, because the rise in cases means it will be easy to reject and the debate will probably be over quite quickly.

My annoyance is there is no consistency. If they’re allowing some indoor crowds in certain places then they should allow some fans back in open air stadiums. If they don’t allow fans then they shouldn’t allow the indoor stuff that we’ve seen recently.

I think the best compromise would be to let fans back for L1 and L2 as they need the revenue badly. And for most clubs in those leagues, a reduced capacity might not have much impact on the numbers of people they usually get.

 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/54666403

Allowed to watch football in a cinema or a hospitality suite.

 

Perhaps I’ve missed something, but this makes absolutely no ****ing sense at all. They’re letting supporters into lounges inside grounds to watch the game on screens? Okaaay, I’m sure that’s far less risky than letting them into the stands: For some reason I really don’t get. But there must be one, right?

 

As long as you can't see the pitch!

There's absolutely no reason why they can't allow some supporters to attend games in the 3 national league divisions at the least.

 

I’ve been to Brentford’s old ground and been 10 yards from the nearest supporter without even trying. Mind you, they were struggling to stay in League One at the time. Still.