Judder Man wrote:
From where I was sitting in the South Stand, the West Stand never looked like full capacity at any time during the match. The siuggestion of people migrating over into the West Stand is probably an inaccurate one, this would have to be fans moving in there hundreds.
Obviously the problem was herding of the fans in the west stand due to the NW corner wetting condition and Stewards not strong enough to control the fan distribution.
One idea maybe is to barcode the non season ticket holders for the west stand so that they have access only through the North turnstile and therefore we have a chance of filling up the West Stand evenly. Obviously the cladding will alleviate the problem, in the meantime the West Stand fans and stewards should show some common sense and spread out to reduce the risk of a reduced capacity being a permanent one.
Pretty much agree with this. There were undoubtedly some people who moved over, however this will not have unduly affected the terrace capacity, as it was operating at a reduced capacity for the friendly anyway. The fact some people were suspected of switching stands will be however frowned upon by the authorities and gives them a stick with which to beat Saints with, so to speak.
The big determinant IMO will have been the inability of the stewards on the night to ensure that spectators were evenly distributed throughout the west Terrace.
The South West corner was a proper full terrace, but the North West was pretty empty.
Therefore i would imagine the safety authorities would look at the potential on a full capacity game, for the South West corner to get dangerously overcrowded. As a result they have taken the decision to cut capacity, until such time as is shown that the stewards are not allowing fans to overly crowd a section, and at the same time spectators have decided to spread out more evenly across the stand.
Those terraces by the way should be able to hold legally nearly 5000 people if maxed out, however the club went with initial stated capacities of approximately 80% of said values eg 3800 per terrace. I would imagine for the Widnes friendly this capacity was set even lower, probably only 3000. The fact this caused perceived issues will be in part why they are not allowing the full 3800 in for the Salford game.
As an onlooker from the North stand on the night of the Widnes match, i looked to see if people were crowding onto the concourses, as happened at the HJ during their first games, and nothing like that happened. Everyone was stood behind barriers. Hence afterwards i was surprised to read about people being moved away from the terrace.
The popular side at Knowsley road was often more crowded than we saw at the Widnes game.
