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Cardiff fans walk out of Elland Road over treatment of fans

editor

editor

hiraethified
This is a really excellent article and one that should be of interest to all fans:

In some respects it was inevitable that a group of fans would collectively reach a breaking point, and take a stand at the way supporters are treated by many professional clubs. However the fact that it happened at Elland Road yesterday, and the Cardiff City fans concerned ended up boycotting the end of a game where they had already paid was still a surprise...

Once in the ground, the treatment of the fans did not improve. As well as being filmed and photographed from the front of the stand by a handful of police officers, the stewards started ejecting large numbers of fans for persistent standing ...

Now, contrary to popular belief, standing up at a Premier League or Championship ground is not illegal. The Football Spectators Act states that clubs in the top two tiers have to provide all-seater stadia, not that fans have to use the seats.

This was confirmed by a letter from the Department for Culture, Media and Sport to the Football Supporter’s Federation in 2008 stated ‘At no point has it been argued that the individual spectator commits a criminal offence by standing in a seated area. ‘Persistent standing; however is against Leeds United’s ground regulations – but this is the case for almost all Premier League and Championship clubs, and the standard ground regulations that the Football League pass on to their member clubs state: ‘Nobody may stand in any seating area whilst play is in progress. Persistent standing in seated areas whilst play is in progress is strictly forbidden and may result in ejection from the ground’.

However, in reality most clubs try and adopt a relaxed attitude towards fans standing in seated areas (Richard Scudamore is quoted as saying that ‘a measure of persistent standing should be tolerated’ at a meeting of the Football Licensing Authory in 2006) and surely, if the game was being treated as such a potential flashpoint in the build up by the police, that surely the stewards should have taken an approach to turn a blind eye, rather than risk inflaming what the local police had otherwise considered such a delicate situation.

However, the action that approximately 100 of the Cardiff City contingent took, was not to respond to such heavy-handed tactics in kind. Instead, they walked out in solidarity, and began demonstrating outside the ground, in protest at the ejection of their fellow supporters.
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More: http://www.twohundredpercent.net/?p=15926
 
Look at the fucking ridiculous hoops they made the Cardiff fans go through - it's almost like they want to wind them up so much that they respond:

As well as the time, there come the excessive prices at Elland Road. These apply to all fans at all clubs, and Leeds fans bear the brunt of one of the most expensive ticket schemes outside the Premier League. Adult tickets were £36, with the “concessions” being a bargain £29 and £25 for seniors and children respectively, for a seat at the southern end of in the West Stand Upper (an area that Leeds have struggled to sell tickets to home fans in the past, mainly because it offers the worst view of Elland Road, with the far goal obscured).

However, Cardiff fans were not able to get these tickets from the ticket office in Cardiff – they had to collect them from Woolley Edge service station on the M1, eleven miles away from Elland Road – between 10.45am and 11.30am – before being escorted to the ground. This meant that you either had to drive (an option presumably only allowed for non-Cardiff based fans), or take the coaches laid on by the club, and even then you either had to be a season ticket holder and be an away member with photo membership card to get a ticket in the first place. This membership scheme one of the many successful measures that Cardiff have brought in to try and curb their hooligan element.
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I know a few of your Soul Crew lot and for a few years they've been on about the way an increasing number of your away games are 'bubble trips' where you have to travel with an approved coach, can't travel independently and can't simply goto the football but are, as it refers, in a buble from Cardiff to the away ground and back.
 
I've more or less given up on a load of away trips now. I need a fucking membership card, a fans card and an 'away fan' card just to get a ticket (these all cost extra, natch).

I refuse to go on bubble trips and if I do get to an away game, being told to sit down all the time because I've got excited by the - you know - football match going on - just squeezes the last bit of enjoyment out even more.

The truth is that the higher we progress in the league, the less fun it has become.
 
editor said:
I've more or less given up on a load of away trips now. I need a fucking membership card, a fans card and an 'away fan' card just to get a ticket (these all cost extra, natch).

I refuse to go on bubble trips and if I do get to an away game, being told to sit down all the time because I've got excited by the - you know - football match going on - just squeezes the last bit of enjoyment out even more.

The truth is that the higher we progress in the league, the less fun it has become.
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probably more common amongst other clubs soon too sadly.
 
A lot of Leeds fans aren't happy about some of this (not about it happening to the Cardiff fans, due to the bad relationship there) but due to the way tickets and Elland Road in general are being managed. The Leeds fans have already been putting on anti-Ken Bates protests due in part that he's more bothered about hospitality suites and making fans pay far too much for tickets and not investing much of that money back into the team.
 
Don't adult men who stand in seated areas ruin the experience for anyone under, say, 5'8" - which would include most women and all children? That was what I saw looking around me as a season ticket holder, anyway. Fwiw, I do support designated standing areas.
 
I'm 5'8 and always stand in seating areas unless the guy behind me (annoyingly) wants to sit down. When I was a kid (and even smaller!) I would stand on the back of the seat. One of my fav memories is holding the rafters of the oldest stand in England whilst standing on the seat as we beat our rivals in front of 8,000 away fans. We'll never play here again! Women and children enjoy standing too and usually the non standings sit at the front and the singers stand at the back.

Well done to the Cardiff fans, hopefully a completely boycott next season. Leeds stewards, especially the bald guy with the clipboard and very anal about standing. Making sure every fan is seated.

Bubble trips are ridiculous. If you live in the oppositions team's town you still have to try to your home ground and get a coach back to the away ground and the same after the game! Some Swansea fans living in Bristol still agreed to this!

£36?! :eek:
 
That's a confusing post. You did have to stand on seats - it's even a fav memory - but now you're 5'8" it's annoying when people behind you who may have paid £36 want you to sit down?
 
bromley said:
Bubble trips are ridiculous. If you live in the oppositions team's town you still have to try to your home ground and get a coach back to the away ground and the same after the game! Some Swansea fans living in Bristol still agreed to this!

£36?! :eek:
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Few years back I was at an Ajax game with a mate and we got chatting to an Ajax fan who lived less than a mile from Feyenoords ground. When he went to Feyenoord v Ajax he had to get the train into Amsterdam. Then get a train to Amsterdam Arena. Get on a special train with the Ajax fans then get the train back to Rotterdam and then by train right to near the ground. Then to go home he had to travel with all the Ajax fans back on the train into Amterdam, then out to Amsterdam Arena. Then a train back to Amsterdam Centraal and a train back to Rotteram, all to watch a game a mile from his house.....
 
London_Calling said:
That's a confusing post. You did have to stand on seats - it's even a fav memory - but now you're 5'8" it's annoying when people behind you who may have paid £36 want you to sit down?
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It's annoying because I want to stand but don't want to be an arsehole and block their view, so I sit down.

A win over a local rival is a fav memory, and the atmosphere is better when people stand. You can't deny that all seater stadiums lack the atmosphere of older grounds.
 
London_Calling said:
Don't adult men who stand in seated areas ruin the experience for anyone under, say, 5'8" - which would include most women and all children? That was what I saw looking around me as a season ticket holder, anyway. Fwiw, I do support designated standing areas.
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Don't people who insist that everyone should remain seated for the while game ruin the experience for everyone else?

It's not a fucking cinema screening or a classical concert. It's football, ffs. Having a steward trying to get Cardiff fans to sit down during the heat of an FA Cup Final summed up all that was wrong with modern football for me.
 
Fedayn said:
Few years back I was at an Ajax game with a mate and we got chatting to an Ajax fan who lived less than a mile from Feyenoords ground. When he went to Feyenoord v Ajax he had to get the train into Amsterdam. Then get a train to Amsterdam Arena. Get on a special train with the Ajax fans then get the train back to Rotterdam and then by train right to near the ground. Then to go home he had to travel with all the Ajax fans back on the train into Amterdam, then out to Amsterdam Arena. Then a train back to Amsterdam Centraal and a train back to Rotteram, all to watch a game a mile from his house.....
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A few years back for me to get to Millwall v Cardiff (some 3 miles from my doorstep), I had to travel all the way to Hammersmith to then get on a coach to the ground - and do the same thing all over again on the way back.
:facepalm:
 
Safe standing is the only way forward.

The "Knobs" wont let it happen though as they cant identify you by your designated seat number if you havent got one".

Its all about knowing who you are or where to start looking for you (even if your not going to be any trouble).

Good on the Cardiff fans, enough is enough
 
editor said:
Don't people who insist that everyone should remain seated for the while game ruin the experience for everyone else?

It's not a fucking cinema screening or a classical concert. It's football, ffs. Having a steward trying to get Cardiff fans to sit down during the heat of an FA Cup Final summed up all that was wrong with modern football for me.
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God, how ignorant this view still sounds, even after being batterd over the head with it's simplicity for a decade or more.
 
chieftain said:
Safe standing is the only way forward.

The "Knobs" wont let it happen though as they cant identify you by your designated seat number if you havent got one".
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Modern stadiums are stuffed full of CCTV with facial recognition and fans already have to indulge in civil liberty-busting ID card schemes to get into the ground in the first place, so there is no coherent argument against standing - except that modern, TV-friendly football likes nice polite crowds.
 
London_Calling said:
That's a confusing post. You did have to stand on seats - it's even a fav memory - but now you're 5'8" it's annoying when people behind you who may have paid £36 want you to sit down?
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Do you ever go to football matches?

Most fans know where the "standers" will be and where the "sitters" will be and buy their season tickets accordingly!
 
Like Ed though a forest fan, same thing for me when we played millwall and I was living in Peckham at the time - showing local plod my driving licence and address made no odds, still put on the train to London bridge!
 
Back in the day these problems did arise as you had the choice of seating or standing, ho hum.
 
editor said:
Modern stadiums are stuffed full of CCTV with facial recognition and fans already have to indulge in civil liberty-busting ID card schemes to get into the ground in the first place, so there is no coherent argument against standing - except that modern, TV-friendly football likes nice polite crowds.
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TBF there never was a coherent argument against standing, even the Taylor Report recognized that it was safe (provided that the clubs actually maintained it (edit: their ground) and ran those areas properly).

edit: also well done to those Cardiff fans who walked out, its just a shame that Bates got their money in the first place
 
The blanket ban on standing came quite rightly as a reaction to a terrible disaster but it also came during a period where little or no money was being reinvested into the stadiums , with the modern game and the income that goes with it there can be no real safety issue regarding standing fans . I would have thought that most clubs would welcome standing areas , giving an increase in gates . We have forgotten how much better standing watching a game was because we have been sitting for so long , I would gladly give up my ST seat for a standing one .
 
I'm 5' 5" and i love standing at football. as i support sunderland, it usually improves my experience if someone like spacemonkey is standing in front of me.

good on them Cardiff fans. they always bring plenty of noise.
 
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