Citizens (cont)

[jrb]

What did us English do when Taylor brought out his utterly bullshit report?
All seated stadiums killed English football culture.

96 people had just died at a fucking football match, and you expected hundred of thousands of us to take to the streets and protest because the crumbling deathtraps we went to watch football in were told to become all-seater, and everyone had to have a ticket with a specific seat number on it?

Incidentally, if you read the Taylor Report it doesn't say standing is unsafe - the Govt decided that. Did you also disagree with the recommendations on crush barriers, fences and turnstiles?

How old were you in the 80's?

Taken from another forum.

Taking a stand: Aston Villa back plans to trial standing areas - but Hillsborough Family Support Group remain opposed

"We are absolutely against it and always will be. Our football clubs should remain all-seater stadiums," says HFSG spokesman Margaret Aspinall

Aston Villa have become the first Premier League club to support the campaign for standing areas to return to top flight football grounds.

The campaign has been launched by the Football Supporters' Federation (FSF) and with Birmingham MP Roger Godsiff. Aston Villa and Peterborough have both given their support to calls for the Government to allow "small-scale trials of safe standing areas" and have volunteered to host a trial.

Villa chief executive Paul Faulkner said: "We have had a number of good discussions and meetings with the FSF over the past 12 months and fully support their campaign to allow small-scale trials of safe standing areas at grounds.

"Whenever we have discussed the topic with our fans we've found almost unanimous support for such a trial, and the concept of giving fans the choice to decide to either sit or stand at a game.

"We believe Villa Park could be a potential venue for such a trial, and would like the opportunity to progress the plans further with the wider support of the football community in this country."

Godsiff has also submitted an early day motion to Parliament which "urges the Government to accept the case for introducing, on a trial basis, limited standing areas".

The trials would need a change in the Football Spectators Act 1989, brought in after the Hillsborough disaster.

Peter Daykin, Safe Standing Coordinator at the FSF, said: "For two decades since the Taylor Report, the overwhelming majority of football supporters have favoured a choice of standing and sitting at football, and fans continue to stand throughout all levels of the game today, even in the Premier League and Championship where it is against ground regulations and facilities are designed for sitting.

"Standing was outlawed on grounds of safety, and yet successive governments have agreed that standing is safe - it's hard not to when it is done perfectly safely every week at rugby grounds, lower league football grounds and in top football leagues all around the world."

Last year the Hillsborough Family Support Group opposed any move to bring back standing areas.

HFSG spokesman Margaret Aspinall said then: "The Hillsborough Family Support Group are totally against any form of standing whatsoever. We are absolutely against it and always will be. Our football clubs should remain all-seater stadiums.

"People always say they have standing areas in Germany, but we don't play any part over what happens in that country - we just believe there's no such thing as safe standing in this country. We will not be encouraging the government to change the law."

The Premier League and successive governments have until now also opposed any change.

The Premier League will not support the campaign and argued that all-seater grounds had had significant benefits.

A PL spokesman said: "Since the introduction of all-seater stadia the supporter experience has improved significantly and we have seen more diverse crowds attending Premier League matches including more women and children.

"The police, safety officers and licensing authorities remain clear on this issue and have consistently informed us that crowd management has improved as a result of all-seater stadia being in place in the top two divisions in this country.

"We will not be encouraging the Government to change the law."


Great news about Villa's positive response to talks with FSF. Let's hope that more clubs follow suit.

As to the HFSG, I have great respect for the way that the families have fought a long, patient and determined battle to uncover the truth and to seek justice. I wish them all the best in that regard. But that doesn't give them the right to dictate to the rest of us how we should watch football today.

This is not 1989. Football stadia have changed dramatically. Stewarding has changed dramatically. Policing has changed dramatically. Fans' habits and behaviour have changed dramatically. Standing areas in football stadiums are now as safe as, if not even safer than, seating areas.

So HFSG should butt out and stop interfering, where they have no right, in other people's lives. They are not experts on stadium safety. They are just normal people who, tragically, lost loved ones in a stadium disaster 23 years ago.

Absolutely spot on.(underlined)

 

[BETTER-DEAD-THAN-RED]

cheers dead than red for letting me know about which pub,i will be there next time....

we need to get meeting asap to improve atmosphere,it was flat at swansea game yesterday.

getting us all in the same section at games is a must,but we know the club will not help much yet.

but if we stay posotive and keep meeting etc,it will be difficult for the club to ignore how important it is and how serios we are.

looking foward to the juve game, colourful and loud everybody please .....

to those who keep coming up with negative comments on this thread please refrain,we are not forcing anybody to join in,it is threw choice. if you want a drum, capo,ticker tape,flag or banana, the fact that you are supporting the campaign is all that matters. when the day comes that we are on motd bouncing round and players loving it like they do with the poznan, we can be proud.....

ctid

No problem, Thanks for the support and something does need doing about the atmosphere, look at the Swansea game for example we only sang after the goal and at that woman steward. I'm on the east stand side so i can only account for that side but it was really bad something has to happen.

 

[stonerblue]

No. I think as fans of a club like Manchester City a Manchester City atmosphere group would like to take the good bits of English football culture from the past (that has been lost because of bone idle lazy fans who would be in their forties and fifties now, sitting back and doing precisely fuck all when the authorities tried to ruin English football culture and succeeded - wouldn't happen on the continent) and the good bits from the continent and South America now and create a distinctive new English style of supporting a football club. Palace do their thing, what they do is very good to be honest, but I wouldn't say City fans will or should copy Palace. We have the potential to do something fucking special with regards to atmosphere because of the club we follow (size, situation). So let's fucking do it. Let's have people say in a decades time; "lets follow City fans blueprint".

The Blue Alliance are in their infancy still. They keep getting bigger and arrange some decent things and have improved our away atmospheres (that had stagnated into a load of older blokes and families stood watching a footy match). This group is two weeks old. They haven't even had chance to actively do anything yet. Give them a chance. Just because people had tried things in the last that have fizzled out, doesn't mean this will. Like NorthernBoy has said previously, he started something that was too big for him and one mate to keep going. But if a big enough group of people can be patient and dedicated, there is absolutely no reason why this cant work.

TBA are a good group of lads who are persistently dedicated to their cause and they are still going strong in a time where they would easily fold (how long have they been around, two years?) and where other groups have folded at City and at other clubs in the past.

You, and others, might think that some of what his group does isn't your sort of thing and you're entitled to feel like that. But hat doesn't mean they shouldn't go ahead and do it. Anything they do has to be better than games of total silence for five minutes at a time and the odd piping up of absolute dross like "we score when we want" or CBeebies bollocks like "if you hate Man United clap your hands".

As already pointed out, the emboldened statement is probably the biggest pile of steaming horseshit in a thread with a lot of contenders.

When the German FA tried to put ticket prices up by just [was it?] 7.5% there were fans out in their hundreds of thousands across the country marching in protest. What did us English do when Taylor brought out his utterly bullshit report?

All seated stadiums killed English football culture.

We're just as bad today when we're taken the piss out of with ticket prices across the country and still pay for them at £58 a pop. We're happily being raped up the arse out of or money to go and watch football. I'm part of that too. Why is that? What is it about the English that we just accept being taken advantage of?

Lets not pretend we don't.

So you still assert that the laziness of todays 40/50 year old fans when it came to opposing the Taylor guidelines is to blame for modern footballs ills?
Like a lot of supporters i went less and less in response to the changing face of going to the match. I remeber paying 50p for a raffle ticket in a portakabin at Maine Road to be a 'member' and qualify for buying a ticket.
The all -seater rules were forced on the clubs by the FA. The fans had no say and no choice in the matter.
As for emulating the German approach, the whole of English football, from ownership through to the FA needs to be re-structured. Fans have little if a influence at club level, and clubs have even less with the FA.
I've made my stand on ticket prices etc by not going to as many games. as i'd like to. I gave up my season ticket years ago.

 

[Interstate 5]

jrb, that is not the issue I was attacking, which is the accusation of a whole generation of "bone idle lazy fans who would be in their forties and fifties now, sitting back and doing precisely fuck all when the authorities tried to ruin English football culture and succeeded"

That is totally different to the issue of safe standing, and is just ill-informed bollocks.

 

[BETTER-DEAD-THAN-RED]

One thing we can all agree on though is that safe standing should be allowed. People have the right to choose whether they want to sit or stand. Something needs doing and if you want to help please sign this petition:

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.fsf.org.uk/petitions/safestanding.php?id&page=sign" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.fsf.org.uk/petitions/safesta ... &page=sign</a>

 

[Anonymous]

anyone got the list of songs your gonna sing for the eds match to remind people. Already know that the song celtic sing come on you boys in green is a st pauli song as are most of the green brigades. So nothing wrong with using other fans ideas.

 

[mcfcliam]

You'll just get laughed out of the ground.

We don't need any of this daft shite. It's not the City way.

We are MCFC, not some geeks with a drum and shite songs. I've seen the songs on facebook from print screens on twitter and they're an utter embarrassment.

 

[Anonymous]

You'll just get laughed out of the ground.

We don't need any of this daft shite. It's not the City way.

We are MCFC, not some geeks with a drum and shite songs. I've seen the songs on facebook from print screens on twitter and they're an utter embarrassment.

in your opinion though, which is fair enough. a lot of people agree with the main principles behind the group, one week you seem to be behind the idea the next week your not. I personally would rather have some effort made towards improving the declining atmosphere. which is happening in every ground in the country

 

[mcfcliam]

COME ON YOU BOYS IN BLUE

EASTLANDS BLUE AND WHITE

Seriously?

 

[Anonymous]

COME ON YOU BOYS IN BLUE

EASTLANDS BLUE AND WHITE

Seriously?

why not, better than " we score when we want" :D or cosntant songs related to united. St pauli sing it, barca sing it whats wrong with it.