Away end capacity

The sooner Barnsley Council has it's useless nose pushed out of the situation the better.

 

There's no need for any sterile seats in the North Stand itself, except for perhaps the bottom couple of rows, which is fairly standard at most grounds these days. The stand is completely detached from the others and there are empty sections next to it in both the East and West Stands anyway.

 

That's not possible.

They are the ones who issue the safety certificate. Irrespective of joint ownership of assets they have the role as do other councils throughout the country for licencing and certificates etc

So no safety certificate. No games to watch.

 

SYP quite nervy about Hillsboro when policing at Oakwell, yet the policing at and around Leppings Lane at full time where there has been chaos every time I’ve been is crap. This largeley because they allow home fans to come around from the side and mingle. Unbelievable.

 

The "sterile area" at Wembley vs Millwall was a resounding success too!

Some good points there, and I do hope its something that gets looked into as it has a sizeable impact on the revenue we can generate and the perception we give as a club.

 

All I get from this is outsiders get too much say about what happens at Oakwell and SYP don't have enough faith in their ability in the jobs they have to allow us to sell every seat like we should be doing. We should be selling restricted view seats too like other clubs do, but it was dumb to build what's still a fairly modern stand in that way.

 

Let's say, for example, we make progress in the FA Cup this season and get to the sixth round. We draw Man Utd at home, or City. Naturally the away club will want about 10,000 seats (won't get them obviously). What do we do about all those empty seats then? Is it business as usual or do we take the radical step of selling more seats and paying for more security. It would be ridiculous if the gate was about 18,000 because of "H&S".

I'm imagining a scenario by the way where, after Christmas, the team shoots up the league and are also in the top six and looking good bets for promotion (new investment, progress of existing players etc etc). Home league gates are already pushing towards 20K and the thought of going to Wembley for a semi final brings out a few who haven't been since the Chelsea match and beyond. In other words the match is a potential sell out, and I mean a PROPER sell out like we used to see in the Premier League days.

Surely, SURELY we cannot allow the bureaucrats to dictate how many people can attend a football match. Then, of course, we would have the problem of next season in the Premier League. What happens then?

 

This is how I ended up with my jaw being broke a few years ago.

 

The bigger the crowd, the bigger the cost of the policing and stewarding. In some instances, the club would actually lose money (like in the instance of the 'forest for a fiver deal' a few years ago). However, If the game is on TV, the costs are re-couped and it would be possible. So a big FA cup tie or a play off semi final we would be ok so long as it was televised, but if we were to make good league progress and get big crowds in, we would simply lose too much money to start being flexible with capacity.

 

Well let's hope the new owners (if they ever get going) will sort out this out. It is pointless having a stadium of X size that can only be filled to about two thirds capacity because of administrative restrictions.

 

If they can't sort it a new modern stadium (which ours is far from being) could become a strong reality.

 

Wouldn’t be the worst thing to happen but it would be a shame if they moved us “out of town”

 

The Council will still be responsible, in part, for granting (or not) the safety certificate for the ground

I don't get all the **** they are getting. Got to ask why Doyle's and SYP haven't dealt with the issues in the past to allow it become such an issue

 

You're on acid

 

Mr Lee is a billionaire so I am sure he'd find a way to get around the issues. He will have a good business brain. I would prefer us staying at Oakwell but the new owners have no attachment to it and will presumably want us playing in a stadium that can if needed be sold out and not have thousands of perfectly good seats going to waste. He's probably already got ideas to use the ground better than it being idle over 300 days a year. A new stadium could get the town music concerts for example.

 

Last time I we were at Hillsborough I had to constantly crane to look around a pillar...

 

I'd be surprised if they build a stand, never mind a whole stadium.

 

How will we go on in the Premier League next season?