The Southampton game was the worst for a long time on both the bus into town and the metrolink running any sort of a decent service. I buy an any bus and metro daysaver on match days and travel in from Altrincham. Getting to the game is fine as i can get a tram straight to the ground.....getting home is another matter however.
As the final whistle blew i quickly made my way to the parked buses and soon found myself in a very large queue that was going nowhere fast.As usual there were about another 8-10 buses waiting all with their doors shut and all the while the queue for the front bus was not moving at all.Various showsec people were waving their arms about and in discussion with one another,the bus was revving it's engine as if it had a problem but nobody was relaying any information,nobody was boarding buses and nobody was moving!
Eventually we got onto the bus and set off,by now in heavy traffic. On reaching the town centre i walked to the train station to hopefully get a tram to Altrincham it was 17:40. It had taken me around 40 minutes to get from the ground to town on the bus.As i waited numerous trams were arriving,three to Bury,two to Eccles/Media City but not one going to Altrincham. In fact two Bury trams arrived and departed a minute apart which was ludicrous. A woman who was a City fan got off the first Bury tram and was complaining to a metrolink person.I struck a conversation up with her and it seemed she got on a double Altrincham tram outside the ground only to be told this was now changing to a Bury tram and to alight at Piccadilly and wait there.She was not happy and neither was anyone else waiting for an Altrincham tram. Eventually at around 18:25 one turned up,a good hour and thirty five minutes after the game had ended,meaning people had missed connecting buses and were late for pre-arranged meets with friends.
As you would expect the tram was packed solid. What added insult to injury was there must have been at least 15 metrolink staff crammed in too,none of whom had the sense to get off to let people on and off the tram until i shouted at them.We the could get onboard.As we reached Piccadilly not one of these staff took any control and there was a crowd of people trying to get off at the same time as a crowd trying to get on,resulting in chaos. One large City fan tried to hold back the crowd pushing to get on to let people off resulting in him getting into a heated argument with a group of young lads leading the pushing to get on which could have turned nasty.Again all the metrolink staff just stood and watched.
The whole organisation of both the trams and buses on matchdays is a shambles with no thought seemingly given to the running order of the trams in particular.I have stated before the priority on match days should be to get people away and dispersed from the stadium as quickly as possible,even more so with the heightened terrorism threat. If they have to inconvenience a few shoppers for 30-40 minutes while they do so then so be it,it is only a small window and people know there is a game on.I hope someone sorts it out but i won't hold my breath!
