Email from Oldham safety officer re ticketing on saturday

Below is an email received from oafc after I questioned the lack of reserved seating / gangway crowding on sat. Interesting read


Good morning, I am the Stadium Safety Officer at Oldham Athletic and have been passed your below email. I am sorry that you and your son's enjoyment at Saturday's game was spoiled by the scenes you experienced and hopefully what I am about to say will go some way to easing your concerns about the safety operation.

Before the recent move of Lee Johnson it was decided to allocate Barnsley supporters the small section at the left hand side of the stand that you were in on Saturday, as such 800 reserved seat tickets were sent to the Barnsley ticket office and went on immediate sale. Shortly after the move of the manager and Barnsley's upturn in form it was realised following discussions with Barnsley FC and the Police that the demand from Barnsley was now going to exceed the 1600 seats available, as such the decision was made to allocate the large section (capacity 3,017) with the small section to be reserved for home disabled fans only. Unfortunately a large proportion of the original 800 seats had already been sold which meant that the use of reserved seating was no longer possible, as such the plan was to close that section when it got to within 10% of capacity (2,700 spectators) and open up the small section. On Saturday the attendance of Barnsley supporters was 2,471 well below the capacity of the stand area which in effect meant that we still had over 500 empty seats in that section at kick off.

It was clear at an early stage that a significant number of the Barnsley supporters had been drinking heavily and were intent on being non compliant and anti social, we had a number refused entry at the turnstiles for being drunk including two arrests, as the game progressed we had nine ejections mainly for being threatening/abusive to the stewards. Their behaviour was such that I took the decision not to open the small section as to do so would have significantly watered down my steward deployments which were already under some pressure given the behaviour of a challenging minority of supporters.

It probably took approximately 20 minutes after the kick off but with the exception of the top right hand corner of the section we managed to clear all of the gangways and steps and ensure that supporters had seats, again this was met by resistance from several supporters who refused to move and had to be encouraged with the attendance of our Response Team or Police Officers.

The problematic group in the top right hand corner were challenged several times by stewards however their behaviour and demeanour was such that the decision was taken not to start mass ejections as that would only have enflamed the situation and potentially resulted in wide scale disorder which would have impacted on the law abiding supporters in that particular area.

At the moment we are still assessing the damage with at least 20 seats severely damaged in that particular area.

As I said earlier, I hope this explains why we did what we did on Saturday, a great deal of thought and planning went into the operation with additional stewards and Police drafted in, it is personally disappointing for me that not everything went to plan but given the challenge posed by some of the Barnsley supporters I felt that my staff stood up to it well.

We will obviously learn from the experience and I appreciate you highlighting your concerns.


Sent from my iPad

 

Doesn't explain why they had unreserved seating, which was the big mistake.

 

It does.

The unused section was the original allocation.

Demand was then so great they moved us into the bigger section. At that point I already had 3 tickets. You can't then change the tickets numbers on ones already sold.

 

That's a cracking reply from the bloke, to be honest. Fair play to him.

Sad to read about more bother from a minority of our fans.

 

I'm guessing he's just copy and pasted his official report and sent that as a reply.

 

Yes. Agree.

Very reasonable response.

Which I meant to acknowledge in my reply above... oops

 

Well I wouldn't have wanted his job!

 

Thats pretty much what happened on saturday, i was up in that corner of the stand , and i reckon had the fans acted in a better manner then the extra seats may well have been opened, but i don,t blame the oldham stewards one bit for not doing so, the way some fans spoke to the stewards, and their general way they behaved was out of order , thats a good email from someone just doing his job

 

Dear Barnsley FC fan,

We tried our best but some of your fans are cnuts.

Yours,

Oldham Athletic.

 

Seems a fair email.

 

Its a load of bolox imo, too many fans to fit into the amount of seats there were available when unreserved seating.
Barnsley were always going to take more than 800 fans to Oldham.

 

Sems like a fair and honest response to a fair question.

However, whilst there may be a good reason for it, what i am not clear on is why, rather than shoving a black dividing net down a fixed line and deciding to move us from the left hand side of it to the bigger right hand side of it, which meant that they had to go unreserved seating because of those already sold, why didn't they just move the dividing net and make the left hand side bigger? Then those who had already had seats could have kept them.

 

There isn't just a black dividing net. The two sections have dividing fencing.

 

and maybe if the idiots had behaved themselves the situation would have been resolved quicker and more amicably

 

Ah, ok. That explains it. Thanks

 

Quality précis. A* in an English exam.

 

It's true a lot had been drinking heavily but they didn't think to close the bars whist the game was on, was going to take my daughter Saturday glad I didn't, the decision not to let fans filter into the empty section would have made a lot more sense too.

 

Very fair response, although old school heavy handed policing with a few batons drawn would have sorted it quick-sticks and maybe taught the pond life a few lessons and that "We are Barnsley we do what we want" doesn't mean you get to ruin the day for the well-behaved majority. Harsh BUT fair by my reckoning.