Leppings lane

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-south-yorkshire-64943981

 

32 years on and they still haven't learned the lessons.

 

6,500+ down to 3,700.
Not much above half now. Over 2 reductions. Bit like our west stand really. But we could get ours put right. They can't as I can see.

 

Tinpot

 

MASSIVE

 

Less massive..

 

What a tinpot club. Awful stadium they don't own and an away end that needed demolishing three decades ago.

 

Once feared for my life in that tunnel, that was around 40 years ago.

 

Same.
Cup match, not too long since we'd played them in the league too?
V scary.

 

Yep, me, my dad and my uncle. Packed so tight you couldn't take a breath properly, we couldn't even move in any direction exiting it, just squeezed out like toothpaste.

 

So getting promoted will not benefit the club, their away capacity is now slashed so just wait for the moans and groans when the big visiting clubs only get a pittance of tickets.
The home supporters will probably end up paying for it with bigger season ticket prices.

 

Started already

https://www.owlstalk.co.uk/forums/topic/318265-leppings-lane-capacity-reduced-further/

 

The access and egress is shocking to that stand. Always has been. Way too narrow when busy.

A reduced capacity seems a better idea to me.

 

Well at least they act quickly. I mean, it's only 34 years.

I have serious emotional problems within myself when people blame Liverpool fans for what happened that day in April 1989. Not a single second of it was their fault. It was, primarily, the fault of the Tory government. They decided that football fans were animals and we were treated like animals. Secondarily, Mr David Duckenfield was given charge of the lives of tens of thousands of people and he wasn't up to the job. These have both been addressed. Not necessarily very well, but they have.

The third factor in that disaster was Hillsborough. It was a prison not a sporting arena. That wasn't Sheffield Wednesday's fault. They adapted their stadium to fit the rules of the time. But that was 34 F*****G years ago. AND IT HASN'T CHANGED. IT'S A F*****G DEATH TRAP. How has this been allowed to continue for so long?

I can't even fit my femur between the backboard of my seat and the backboard of the seat in front of me. And yet I get stewards screaming at me and threatening me with violence to sit down when I physically cannot. And that's before we talk about the access into the ground and that F*****g tunnel that's still there. It should have been levelled 34 years ago but it's still here.

It is beyond comprehension that the Leppings Lane End still exists. Shame on everyone who has allowed that to happen.

 

Not before time.

 

I want to appeal to people who went to Stoke in January a few months before Hillsborough. That amazing game. Pink Panthers and Peter f*****g Beagrie. You remember how good he was? We beat them eventually, but bloody hell, how good was he? You remember trying to get in and the crush was so violent that you couldn't breathe? You literally couldn't take a breath. And then suddenly someone opened a gate or something that relieved the pressure and the freezing cold January air came back into your lungs. And we laughed and watched the game. And then Cooper and Currie and that backheel on MOTD. We'd already stuffed Chelsea 4-0 and then Red Hot Currie and Southall and Futcher and all that. 33,000 of us in Oakwell. It wasn't funny, we could have died that day, but someone made the right decision. 3 months later someone made the wrong decision, and the air didn't get back into their chests, that crushing feeling we had went on forever, and more than 90 people died. And where they died is still open and it's still a place to die.

 

This is a cut and paste from a thread on Facebook that I was part of, on 8th May 2016, the day of the BBC Panorama Hillsborough broadcast, where Prof Phil Scraton's investigation and analysis was so articulate. Bev's husband had posted about the documentary and, like me, was brought to tears by its content.

"Bev, football supporters were collectively treated as an underclass, still are in some areas. Don't know if Neil went to an FA Cup game at Stoke (their old ground) in 1989. We had sold 5000 tickets in advance and due to the attitude of Staffordshire Police en route (official coaches were held back in Leek for an eternity ) the vast proportion of those supporters arrived 10 minutes before kick off. I'd gone with my Dad, he was 47, I was 14. We got in OK, and we're in a single pen in the corner. Utter chaos outside - 2 turnstiles for 5000 supporters. Just after kick off, a continual wave of supporters suddenly started filling the pen and I have never been as **** scared at a football match. I'm not trying in anyway to compare with Hillsborough but simply to show that the events weren't uncommon, just without the outcome. For 15-20 mins, I literally couldn't move, and just had my dad's hand on my shoulder. Luckily, the fences that created the pens at Stoke back then had gates in them and thankfully someone had the sense to open them so the pressure could be relieved by people accessing the adjacent pen. This was around 12 weeks before Hillsborough."

 

Yep I was there, remember it well.

 

You couldn't pay me to enter the Leppings Lane end. I did it once, in the Glavin era, and that was enough.

The only way to make that stand safe is to reduce its capacity to zero.

 

There is and always will be a stigma attached to the Leppings Lane, like ourselves they have a reduced capacity for away fans. I went in the 80's it was an accident waiting to happen, but I too was at Stoke which was just as bad, circumstances + bad policing caused that at Stoke. In hindsight Leppings Lane should have been knocked down but it's there & has a reduced capacity & no fences, don't see what else they can do to be fair.