Khaled El-Ahmad was right....

A valid concern.

 

If only the club had say had a break of 18 months with no one using the ground to address any outstanding issues…

 

From the detail of the supporters meeting, it seems the issues were a hole in the floor of the west stand. No detail was given, this could be a mousehole, or it would be a significant one. Given there's been little to no complaint from people sat in the seats, I'm erring towards it being small. Either way, replacing wood is hardly difficult to resolve. Yet they haven't done it.

The second allegation was that people were drinking in sight of the pitch. Hardly insurmountable. Yet nobody has mentioned being warned or seeing anyone being warned about this. No tannoy messages given. No effort to create some sort of flow to stop people gathering that way.

Third, the height of turnstiles for disabled supporters. Someone else can chip in here as I've never been through those turnstiles, but access to the Ponty on the West Stand side is likely the same as those? So why is the Pontefract Road End still open? Or have there been new turnstiles in there? And if it's just a handful of people, surely we can accommodate to open a gate for them?

Aside from that, I'm not really sure what else has been cited for their reasons. But nothing in there warrants a whole stand being closed.

How are stands at somewhere like Bramall lane open? Hillsborough? The Den? Loftus Road? Let alone before you get to grounds like Priestfield Stadium with its dangerous Meccano stand that you have to walk under and had a whole host of crap and litter beneath it.

 

There's a hole in my bucket......

 

Oh my god!!!!!! Quick, condemn his house instantly! Its a danger to us all!!!!!!!

 

There were over a hundred press, directors and the like in there yesterday....thats still a lot of law suits.
Its not the fact its an eye sore or their reasoning....its the way supporters have been treated. The statements dont add up....its kind of ..."we are closing it because i say so....but its ok for me and my pals and that should be enough to say on the matter"

 

Quickest way is to stop selling booze. Not good, but better than shutting the stand.

 

The people who closed it for being unsafe, are still sitting in there.?!!
Don’t we have a PR officer at the club?

 

HSE and unions get hammered for being over zealous at times.
However Khalid's response to this is making him look like a corporate version of Fred Kite.

 

Where's the report been posted please?

 

It was signed off as safe, prior to the season starting. What part of that don't some folk get?

Khaled wouldn't have been done, it was before his time. Good luck to any court trying to hold him responsible.

 

Yes. If I was a CEO. Nothing is 100% safe. You are there to make the right decisions not the easiest "what if" decisions. I felt a lot more unsafe being crowded through the one gate exiting the ponte than I have in a long time, and there were some older fans with obvious mobility issues that were struggling. Bear in mind there is a high bar for corporate manslaughter, errors are made. There's a big difference to say deliberately not having enough lifeboats for economic reasons or not training and giving staff the right safety equipment.

 

The gate got opened in the Ponte to allow a wheelchair into the ground yesterday. There's a gate in the West stand so that's one problem solved!

 

Exactly this, but the club at the minute are Titanic 2. We're aware of what happened to the first Titanic. Yet we're going faster towards the same iceberg. The captain see's it, but he's not trained his crew to change course. However in the ballroom someone's spilt a drink so the owners and shareholders are desperately trying to find a mop and wet floor sign. However they've just realised they scrimped on buying any.
And the band played on.......

 

As someone who has to sign things off as safe on a day to day basis, the fact that there is a high bar for corporate manslaughter would be little consolation to me, if someone was seriously injured or killed after I had signed off to say that an electrical installation was safe. The fact I might not go to prison for it would be scant comfort if I'd caused suffering to another and their family.
I sound like a broken record, but we either disbelieve the whole thing about there being safety issues of whatever type and decide the CEO/owners are complete liars masquerading as business people, or we accept that someone, somewhere has identified a number of issues with the West Stand and the CEO has made a decision based on his own interpretation of the risks involved to close the stand and alienate the fans.

 

Regarding the west stand at Oakwell please let me tell you my understanding of the situation. In 2002 when BFC went in to administration Patrick Cryne was approached by two BFC supporting local business men Alan Sherrif ( the former chairman of the Barnsley Building Society) and Peter Jones ( consultant on water and waste management systems) and they formed a consortium to try and take over the club. Although they were not successful and the consortium disbanded Peter jones kept in contact with Patrick Cryne. Peter Jones was a minor shareholder of the old BFC ltd and so was I. Peter contacted me and all the other shareholders at the time and we had an unofficial meeting in the old library on Shambles Street, I found out that Peter sat near me in the east stand and after that we regularly spoke at the matches.

Peter ( who sadly passed away a few years ago) told me that after Patrick Cryne finally took over BFC he looked in to how to cut down on costs, he had noticed that the west stand did not have many supporters in it and that it was old and had to be maintained, stewarded on match days, had utility bill costs, business rate etc. He knew that if it was demolished the other three relatively new stands would give a stadium capacity of 18000, more than good enough for league 1 and the majority of championship games and there would be the savings from the costs of keeping the west stand. Patrick Cryne had a survey and a quote for demolition but the report and estimate was shocking. The report showed that the utility pipes beneath the west stand where the public do not go were insulated in asbestos and so a specialist company would have to come in and remove all asbestos before demolition could take place, Patrick Cryne did some financial calculations and found that the short and medium term gains from demolition would be obliterated by the cost of the work to achieve it safely.

As I said at the start this is my understanding of the situation and very few people could verify it possibly Alan Sherrif , James Cryne, Jean Cryne and former chairman Gordon Shepperd

With the well published problem with ownership of BFC ltd and Oakwell community assets( ie the stadium, car parks, training facilities) no one is going to pay the bill for maintenance never mind a large expensive project such as demolition.

 

I make risk assessments all the time. My point is you can't just say never do anything because of some slight risk of it going wrong. You can't be too risk adverse as a CEO, otherwise you'd never stage a match. Look at festivals, there are almost always a drugs death but they still go ahead. Life isn't risk free That is a very different thing to saying disregard safety advice.

 

Are directors immune?

 

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