Friends and I had taken a radio and a few bottles of cheap s**t Tesco lager to listen to

our game in chapelfield. Was nice weather I believe. Then listened in stunned disbelief as the news came through and our result became less important. Almost background noise.

I have thankfully not experienced anything like you did. The only games I went to as a kid before the seating came in were at Carrow Road and Wembley. I did get the chills in 2000 when I went to the Koning Boudewijn-stadion, formerly the Heysel stadium, for the France-Portugal euro 2000 semi final and discovered my seat was about 20 feet to the left of where the infamous wall had been located.

They talk about safe standing. I’m not sure how that works. Allowing standing in certain seated areas would be ok (see Barclay) but I honestly don’t see the need to go back to terracing. You can point to design and condition of stadia, process in controlling capacity, policing etc all of which as we know contributed tragically to the Hillsborough disaster in particular but if you have hundreds or thousands of human beings in an open area there is always a risk of crushing, trampling and panic. Crowds swarm in recognised patterns but at unpredictable triggers.

Posted By: Steve in Holland on April 15th 2019 at 07:35:54

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