WHY KEITH WYNESS IS WRONG ABOUT STANDING AREAS
By
Mickey Blue Eyes

Like all professional sport, football is one of those human activities that draws out the best and worst in people. Principally it does this through its rivalries on and off the pitch. Nowhere is this demonstrated better than in the history of the provision of spectator standing terraces, a subject touched on by Keith Wyness in a recent House of Commons seminar. If the reports are correct he said he favoured consideration of the return of limited standing areas in football grounds.

By conviction and temperament I am totally opposed to the return of this kind of spectator accommodation. Here’s why:

One of the reasons the game developed so rapidly from obscure beginnings was because it was codified by public schools in mid-late nineteenth century Britain. This gave it an easily understood universal form. And though this was also applied to the running of each club’s affairs and in its competitive leagues and associations, the same attention was not given to spectator comfort and safety. Thus the evolution of standing terraces. From the beginning seated accommodation was limited and relatively costly and usually occupied by those who had more money.

Initially there were no terraces, simply mounded earth. Eventually these were replaced by concrete terraces to prevent spectator areas becoming churned and to provide a “stable platform” for each spectator. At least that was its crude theory. It took no account of mass forward, sideways and backward motions in a crowd surge caused by a stumble or overcrowding, not even when tragedy visited some of the early football grounds. So crush barriers were introduced. Virtually no thought was given to the affects on the transfer of crush forces on human beings who stood behind the barriers. And there, incredibly, it stopped for almost a century. Only the frequency and location of barriers was varied due to primitive safety legislation and the introduction of ground safety certificates, both of which merely tinkered with design logistics. The physical danger remained. Once a crowd reached a certain density both movement and safety became uncertain, impossible to control and thus unsafe. The first hundred years of the game was littered with tragedy as a direct result.

But it also had cultural and social affects on spectators who watched the game. On the plus side it helped form identity, solidarity and continuity for working-class spectators who could only afford the cheaper admission price and had few avenues for escape from bleak daily subsistence in a primitive capitalist society. J. B. Priestley put it this way in his book “Good Companions” in 1929:

“To say these men paid their shillings to watch twenty-two hirelings kick a ball is merely to say that a violin is wood and catgut, that ‘Hamlet’ is so much paper and ink. For a shilling Bruddesford United AFC offered you Conflict and Art.”

These were the roots of “terrace culture” and they would not be easily removed. They grew over decades until they became accepted as almost a natural development. For instance it became standard practice for some individuals to use the same spot on the terraces and form match friendships with those who used the same space and stayed. Fathers and elder brothers took their youngsters to the same place and thus it got passed on. Certain areas of terraces became identified with the most committed fans, particularly behind goals. If you felt that fanatical – the origin of the word ”fan” – then that’s where you went to shout your head off. Football grounds became the source of great affection because at the time they were as familiar and reliable as a local church, the difference being it was one of the few working-class institutions in our society, albeit administered by local merchants.

Then time changed society. Greater leisure time and money gradually ate into the game’s popularity. Peak post-Second World War attendance figures steadily eroded until a tedious newspaper “debate” in the 50s asked “Where are the missing millions?” In the late 60s the game even became chic, an unthinkable development a mere ten years earlier. “Terrace culture” changed slowly but perceptibly. Gradually, familiarity and affection was literally elbowed aside by regional chauvinism, then fanaticism, then outright organised hooliganism. An always-there tiny minority became large enough to almost destroy the game by the mid 80s. Standing terrace crowds had become places for minority thugs to hide their inadequacy in organised violence. Eventually the mayhem spread outside football grounds.

None of it happened overnight. It happened slowly, osmotically, and as a result the football and civic authorities were slow to react. When they did, it was almost too late. And when the reaction came it was draconian and commercially opportunist. It was easy for the game to be snatched by a few right-wing political and commercial extremists nurtured in the socioeconomic horror of the 80s. By then almost everybody had had enough and that made it even easier to push through. The sheer tragedy of the Heysel disaster in 1985 and the Hillsborough disaster in 1989 finally put paid to the old “terrace culture.” Quite rightly, all-seater stadia were made mandatory. Enough was enough.

But I always greatly disliked terraced standing areas even when I first watched football as a child. Perhaps I was lucky because my Dad usually took me in the stands when he took me to either Goodison Park or Anfield. When I went with school friends we always went into the terraced standing areas because it was cheaper and, well, everybody else went there. When you are a kid it doesn’t often cross your mind to be different from everybody else, especially when it comes to supporting your team. At that age, mostly you WANT to be part of the crowd. It takes time to feel and then assert your individuality.

However I never grew to like the brutishness and close up smells you sometimes got, and I positively resented a crowd crush. To me it seemed unnecessary and ugly. As time wore on and organised hooliganism smeared the game more and more I finally decided – a long time ago – terraces were no place for anybody with a reasonable set of civilised values. The truth is most sensible fans saw Heysel and Hillsborough coming years before they scarred the game for all time. History shows there had been plenty of crowd disaster warnings prior to that, and when organised hooliganism was added to the mixture it was a petroleum mix awaiting a spark. Ignition was only a matter of time. The difference between the two tragedies was of course that Hillsborough was entirely due to appalling ground conditions and even worse police crowd control methods. Heysel was due to thuggery exacerbated by appalling ground conditions and a police force who stood by and did nothing. But by then police forces everywhere had almost open contempt for football spectators. Each disaster was almost inevitable given the contemporary attitude of the authorities and too many fans. Everyone closed their eyes to the growing threat. EVERYONE.

So I welcomed all-seater stadia without reservation. There had been too much tragedy, too many tears and too much ignorance. It automatically meant reduced capacity in most grounds but that was a small price to pay if it meant more comfort and safety and less opportunity for minority thugs to endanger the future of the game. Those who owned and administered the game and those who supported it had turned their backs on the problems too many times to have legitimate complaint, though there were those who accused the Establishment of shipping “their” social problems into football grounds. This was utter nonsense and long term football fans and commonsense commentators knew it. The problems had grown gradually for years because nobody in or out of the game did anything of worth to prevent them. Certainly an extreme reactionary government in the 80s made matters worse but it didn’t create the situation in the first place. Too many good men, including fans, stood by and did nothing.

Keith Wyness is reported as saying he saw limited standing areas in German football grounds and was surprised at the “atmosphere” these generated. Well, I saw the same areas in a professional capacity during a stadia study tour in Europe and the USA in the late 90s. I was completely unimpressed, even though the areas I saw were well behaved and there were no apparent problems. The best I saw were the areas in the Gottlieb Daimler Stadion (home of VfB Stuttgart) during a boring 0-0 draw with a then-outstanding Borussia Dortmund team. As elsewhere, I sat in the main stand to gauge the overall affect. It was certainly true the standing areas were noisier than the seated areas but I can’t say it added anything whatsoever to the feel of the match, either in Stuttgart or in other matches elsewhere in Germany.

All of which confirmed my opinion that an “atmosphere” will generate according to the standard of the game, the collective crowd mood and acoustic design of the ground, particularly the roof. There are of course other factors but generally they don’t approach the impact of these three. And if a crowd choose to watch a game in relative silence, so what? It just isn’t that important, whatever lies untalented journalists and commentators try to manufacture about the subject.

Furthermore, it is important to consider what we MEAN by “atmosphere.” Very often it is possible to hear an opinion that all-seater grounds are “not as intimidating” as old grounds with standing terraces. To which my reply is, again……………so what? What is more important, tribal intimidation or healthy sports rivalry? Why make it easier for the big-mouthed slob spitting regional or team hate? Why not make it easier for fans to shout spontaneous encouragement FOR their team rather than hate AGAINST the opposition? There is nothing whatsoever “atmospheric” about hatred and ignorance. Nor is there anything “atmospheric” about a pitchside cheer leader shouting quasi hyped-up nonsense into a multi-decibel sound system. The more organised this sort of thing gets the more artificial it looks and sounds.

After the Hillsborough disaster the experiment of limited standing areas was first tried in Italian and Spanish stadia. It was confined to fenced areas immediately behind goals and it failed dismally. Few things were more demeaning than the TV sight of a goalscorer racing to the fans and he and they climbing the fence like caged animals trying to get at each other. It was thoroughly sickening and rightly abandoned after a couple of seasons. Common sense finally took over.

The subject has particular resonance on Merseyside because of the two disasters described above. Because of Establishment opposition, the Hillsborough families still campaign for justice eighteen years later. Good friends of mine still suffer terrible flashbacks and memory trauma. In fact the experience of tragedy was seared into everyone who lived through the era even though the game’s popularity has (relatively) revived. The horror will never be forgotten as long as that generation lives. In my case it finally set like stone my opposition to standing areas. In recent years I have seen enough – particularly at away matches – to know there is sufficient embryo thuggery, hatred and racism ready to spark all over again. IF IT GETS THE OPPORTUNITY. At present these cowards can be relatively easily identified in seated accommodation. The only way to contain such behaviour in standing areas would be to introduce even tighter draconian measures, all of which destroys the reason for reintroduction. If all we get is a bigger Big Brother it only further erodes enjoyment of the game. Have we not had enough of CRS-style policing, riot gear, snapping dogs and CCTV? More of this, and what for? More animal noises? More ridiculous football hatred? Is that all the game is about?

Not having lived through it here, Keith Wyness cannot be expected to understand the depth of this feeling in our city. Which is why I hope he thinks again and then quietly drops the idea of limited standing areas. It is regressive and will not help the future of the sport in England. Comparisons with Germany are simply not valid. The game evolved differently here.

As for us fans, we long ago ran out of excuses. It is time we stopped making them. (24/03/07)

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