According to the results of a suspiciously rounded-up survey released today, 80% of the footballing masses want standing to be brought back into Premier League football grounds.
The issue of 'safe' standing has been bubbling along for a while now, with various groups campaigning for its reintroduction.
The Football Supporters' Federation produced a very carefully considered and measured report on the issue in June last year, there is a dedicated website to the cause and it has even been discussed in parliament, with a good number of MPs signing an early-day motion to bring terraces back to England.
This baffles me.
In general, people who romanticise about standing at football are those who no longer have to do it anymore. The season before last I stood in a puddle at Doncaster's now mercifully demolished old ground Belle Vue, and had a terrible view of a terrible game (which actually turned out to be the last at the 'stadium'), about halfway through which I thought trench-foot had set in.
Aside from sitting next to Ken Bates, I can't imagine a more unpleasant way to watch football. However, that obviously is not the problem.
The problem is that there is no such thing as 'safe' standing. Incidents like Hillsbrough and Heysel may have been freak occurances, but they were disasters that were made possible by the terraces. Advocates of 'safe' standing cannot possibly guarantee that another calamity will not happen.
Germany is often pointed to as the shining example of how standing can work, and there is no doubt that it has certain benefits to the average footballing punter. Crowds are up and prices are down - good for both club and fan, one would think.
However, last week The Times reported new figures from Germany, stating that no less than 851 people (not including players) were injured at football games in 2007. In England, where Premier League grounds have been all-seater for the best part of 15 years, the number banning orders and violent offences have consistently fallen.
It would be naive in the extreme not to make a link between terraces and hooliganism. Anyone who has been watching football for a long time will tell you that grounds are without question safer places these days. Obviously there are isolated incidents, but unfortunately you can't legislate for morons.
Some complain that the atmosphere in all-seater stadiums has suffered, and in some cases that is probably true. However, the air is still thick with tension at big games. Important matches still create electric atmospheres, regardless of whether the fans are sitting down or standing.
However, boring it might sound, seating is much safer than standing in any number of ways. It's a no-brainer to say that it is preferable to watch a game without fear of getting your head kicked in, or being crushed against twenty other men if you're lucky, a barrier if you're not.
The most persuasive argument made is that terraces will make the game cheaper for 'the common man', and given that you have to pay £55 to watch Fulham these days it's difficult to argue against that.
And yet the reason tickets for the Premier League are so expensive because people are willing to pay it. It's not the scarcity of space in all-seater stadiums that make prices high. If clubs wanted to, they could slash prices if they wanted, but as long as people keep stumping up then clubs will keep charging.
While we might all save some money, a return to terraces would represent a dangerous step back for English football, in more ways than one.
Nick Miller
Your Comments
paul_scholes_go
"they wont bring back the terraces , how can they charge thirty to fifty quid or so, so you can stand up and support your team, it would be a showing up and they wont want to lose any profits..also it would be most awkward to eat your prawn sandwich in comfort"
toonarmi30
"for the best example of huge crowds, standing safely on terraces, you need look no further than super league. st helens and wigan to name 2 have crowds of 20,000 plus, half of which are standing, but do we hear of anyone being crushed? NO. Some of the people saying it should not happen have no doubt never even been to a match where you stand. "
stevegrant
"What a load of ill-informed gibberish. I bet you're one of those who reckon Hillsborough was caused solely by terracing and not by the insane decision by the police to allow far more people into the Leppings Lane end than it could physically cope with. The Taylor Report, for what it's worth, stated that the terraces played a part because they were in a poor state of disrepair and because they hadn't been built to withstand the pressure of far too many people crushing against them. It seems to be a very lazy journalistic thing to assume that Hillsborough was caused solely by terracing, when in fact there were other factors that were more to blame."
ScullyToffee
"I'm really surprised at how poor this piece is... The main arguments seem to be around safety, crowd violence and facilities (standing in a puddle?). The discussion on safety has already been taken to pieces sufficiently by others I think. The same goes for crowd violence - I think it really is sub-standard/lazy/ill-researched to suggest much of a link at all between the change to all-seater stadia and diminishing crowd trouble. In terms of facilities, why does Nick think that the re-introduction of terracing will mean that all stand covers would be removed? Why would he think that, in modern stadia, he would be croshed by 20 men if he's lucky or a barrier if unlucky? Why would he not investigate what facilities and controls modern stadia with standing sections are putting in place and objectively analyse them? As far as a piece of journalism goes, this really is as far from objectivity as I can imagine. Don't get me wrong, I like opinionated pieces - but only when they're informed opinions. Grade F - must do better."
icc97
"Spinky, fair point, 12 million is better estimate of the attendance. I wish the English would release some numbers. At least it shows the Germans paying a bit of attention."
blimeys
"The only injury stats I could find for the Premiership and Football League (06/07) are 964, however those are in-stadium only rather than "all football related injuries", so don't include most football-related violence. Your rant is full of uninformed irrational opinions. I really don't understand how you make a connection between being allowed to stand up and hooliganism. I'd also like to see how you can claim that standing is unsafe while even the Taylor Report claimed that it was "not intrinsically unsafe". Your point about Heysel and Hillsborough are both utterly misinformed. Have you even taken a look at the Interim Taylor Report? The main blame is given to the poor police organisation, poor signage, a barrier that should have been replaced, poor layout, and crucially, the perimiter fencing preventing escape. Standing itself is not listed as a cause. And Heysel? How the hell is a wall falling over caused by terracing? A crumbing mess of a stadium and fan violence, yes, but comparing that to state-of-the-art facilities like the Veltins Arena is absolutely absurd. "Safe standing" which you claim doesn't exist is actually a term used to denote stadia designs like Bremen's 'kombi' system, where people get barriers in front of seats, rather than windswept banks of concrete with no safety planning, as after all, nobody wants to see a return of unsafe areas, only carefully planned and managed ones where people can (shock horror) stand up, something which is considered perfectly safe at many other sporting events such as rugby, horse racing (some of those would never pass football safety inspections for League One or whatever), etc. While the point that it would not necessarily result in price cuts is perfectly valid, the rest is sensationalist rubbish based simply on rubbishing those with a different personal preference."
deener
"A few points if I may: -Hillsborough occurred because there were too many people in an enclosed space. The presence or otherwise of seats is incidental. Crushes happen in all-seater stadiums, for example Ellis Park in South Africa, for the same reason. If there are a. not too many people and b. adequate provision made for emergency exit, then the likelihood of a crush is the same for terraces and seating. -The demise of Hooliganism is due to a multitude of reasons including a shift in football culture and a shift in the socio-economic characteristics of those that watch football. The choice between terracing and seating is irrelevant to this. -Many fans stand for the entire 90 mins anyway. The improved safety standards at English football cannot be attributed to the fact that these fans have an unused seat behind them. -If adequately constructed and controlled terracing can be proven to be as safe as seating, which I think it can be, I believe it should be re-introduced as there are obviously many fans out there wish to see its return. "
toph
"Very good, Mutid! Standing is better for atmosphere, definitely. But I'd have nowhere to put my Bovril. So i'll be in the west stand (funny - they're even called stands) if anyone needs me."
toontony
"I want safe standing areas to be introuced. When i go to away games everyone stands and the atmospher is great, but the down side is being told to sit. You can argue that the atmouspher is still there for the big games, yes it is but why not every game. At home matches were i sit there is around 1000 people who stand and sing through out and its ok but if standing was introduced the atmouspher would be 10x as good. Standing areas have worked it Germany. In 2007 851 people were injured. This could have been from a number of caused not from standing. Such outside of the ground and it a totaly diffrent area. Even if all of those injurys were lincked to standing that is a tiny number compared to the millions that go and watch football matches in a year. Fans are allowed to stand in moments of excitement and when thier team scores but why not the whole 90 minutes. People are allowed to stand at concerts which are held in premier leauge football grounds. Standing may bring cheaper ticket prices which would be great news. Fans are already paying too much to support thier football club. "If clubs wanted to, they could slash prices if they wanted, but as long as people keep stumping up then clubs will keep charging." If football clubs cared some much about thier fans they would cut ticket prices. They already recive millions off tv and selling other products. Yes some fans can affored it but for some its leaving a hole in thier pocket, and why should people to have to walk away from supporting thier team something which some have done for many years. Safe standing should be introudced and fans finally give a choice to stand or sit and not be told what to do. "
vorbis
"i've stood at several rugby games and never felt threatened. Standing up is no more dangerous than sitting down once its not overcrowded. As icc97 says you don't even mention the number of fans injured in England!! A rubbish article tbh."
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