Done.
In my comments, I stated firmly that the atmosphere-improving aim of the North Stand development is the biggest single factor, for me as a fan. The club has got to get it right this time. (By the way, atmosphere is a problem at many, many grounds, and you've only got to look round other club forums to find, very quickly, a thread on improving atmosphere. Atmosphere can be improved, but I believe — and have always said — that what we're looking at here is a sea change in society and the way it approaches leisure, a sea change which has arrived slowly but surely over many years, and above all the whole generation growing up — two generations really, now — who live the world through a screen — even, subconsciously, transferring that over to the match day experience. This is something very deep, and it will take decades before we fully grasp the implications of it. That's my firm conviction).
But as a South Stander who sits very close to the hospitality block, I also pointed out that the hospitality block should not be situated slap bang in the middle of singing blocks, as it is in the SS. It intensely winds up people around me when people in the hospitality block — supposedly neutral — get up and vociferously cheer an opposition goal (funnily enough, never more so than when it's an LFC goal! People start frothing at the mouth!). And let's be realistic, opposition supporters are always going to get hold of tickets in hospitality, here and there, by hook or by crook. You just know it can't be eliminated.
Just as bad, though, probably worse, is the way the hospitality block acts as a passive, dragging anchor, an inert “dead” presence, on any attempt to get the whole level singing. They leave en masse five minutes before the half-time whistle, and they don't come back until up to ten minutes after the start of the second half. I kid you not, and I could take photos to prove it.
I don't think realistically the club are going to eliminate hospitality seats from the new development. 1894 and other groups can ask for it till they're blue in the face. I just don't. It's business, and it's big business, and — like it or not — that is partly what City are, these days. But I do strongly suggest that a hospitality block should be placed off to one side, either left or right (probably to the Colin Bell side, since they don't sing anyway… JJ any offended CB fans).
Would I relocate from the South to the North. I'm honestly not sure. I've grown very fond of that seat. I also don't have a bunch of whingeing bellends around me — I have a bunch of good lads, who tolerate my presence humorously, and that counts.
What I'd really like to see, though, is the North Stand serenading the South Stand in those hypercharged matches (and you know what they are). And vice versa.
