Policing of Barnsley matches

I don't understand this about the away end evacuation times as it makes no sense at all. Nobody can tell me that the reason we can't sell the seats right next to the pitch is because of evacuation times it is purely because our stewards are ***** and we can't stop pitch invasions.

Same for why we can't sell the gangway seats. It's because we can't control crowds.

 

The club's stadium manager/safety officer told me that the reason is basically because we can't control crowds and the safety advisory board insist on not selling certain seats because of this. He never mentioned evacuation times or anything and we had quite a long chat. Very friendly and helpful bloke

 

This is what I don't understand about our ground compared to others. Just thinking off the top of my head, getting out of some of the grounds from the seating area with modest away followings can take ages. I don't know if they have issues with seats and if full. Many old grounds bottle neck at the point of exit too.

so thinking Millwall… 25 year old ground, very narrow gangways internally and no access down from the front, only internally. QPR... dreadful and even more cramped. Gillingham.... please can someone tell me how that stand is allowed to be there as it seems to be held up by builders rubble, tinfoil and plastic mesh.

I'm sure there are reasons for why we cant sell tickets, but I'm sure given some common sense, we might be able to actually sell our ground out at some point in the future. If not... is there ever any point trying to make the ground any bigger? Do other clubs ignore safety, are we over the top with it?

Just very difficult to understand how a football ground gets smaller by the year.

 

We are notoriously poor at stewarding games. Look how easily fans just waltz past stewards, how easily they smuggle flares in and how long it took to stop fighting at the Leeds game a couple of years back. Couple that with having a safety advisory board for the town who **** themselves at the thought of being responsible for another Hillsborough and you get the unique situation where we are treated a lot harsher than other clubs.

 

Which provokes the obvious question... why are the stewards still recruited from the same source? (They still have Doyle daubed over them from memory, but not something I tend to look at much when I'm up there).

 

I can only assume it's either a very long contract or they're significantly cheaper.

 

This must surely be on the owners radar. If we do go up and their whole ethos is about increasing revenue to increase expenditure, writing off 20% plus of your attendance figure doesn't sit too easily with that.