There were seats at the top, only a few rows, in the 1960s. Hard to see on the TV pictures at the time as you didn't get all the angles you did later.
Crowd surges were like tidal waves on the streford end ...the kop any many other grounds in the 70s. Everytime the home team went on the attack. They really were Mr Ref
I'm not saying there were none Filey, blimey any local derby brought out the worst in the fans of both teams be it Liverpool v Everton, Man Utd v Man City, Newcastle v Sunderland, Leeds v Sheff Utd, and then there are the umpteen London local derbies but considering there were 92 league clubs playing most weekends I think most fans were pretty safe standing, on the way out or on the way into stadiums were a different matter. And as I stated the grounds I visited, a few I have mentioned earlier there were only a couple of places where we were in trouble, Cardiff, mainly because England had won the World Cup that year and we wouldn't let them forget it, and Derby, where instead of pushing us down the steps a group of Derby supporters thought it was fun to push us back into more Derby supporters behind us and considering there were only about 30+ of us there was not a lot we could do, we had police protection at both grounds eventually. Incidentally I went to one Man Utd v Man City derby and the fans were kept well apart in the ground and outside again both set of supporters were kept apart, never been to Anfield.
I have been to numerous games where you were lucky to get home in one piece. Nothing to do with local derbies. It was just the things were from the late sixties until the late eighties. You really do seem a bit confused about all this, it was about safe standing and you seem to think only idiots and troublemakers were involved in surges and that they only happened on the relatively small Bunkrr ?Hill terracing.
Best ban standing at music festivals where that's actually still an issue then. Easily avoided at football using the rails between aisles which have existed for decades.
The most dangerous time of all must be when the whole stadium stands for a minute's silence. Better ban those.
No confusion Castro just going by my own experience that's all, mostly it was piss taking by apposing fans during and after the match after we had been beaten. And if I remember correctly the seating thing was only brought in after the tragedies at Hillsborough and Bradford not due to crowd surges of previous seasons. I visited Nou Camp many years ago when Terry Venabels was in charge and that was all seating back then.
Standing wasn't a direct contribution to either of those tragedies, arguably seating could have made both worse. The argument in favour of seating was that it would socially engineer the crowd, away from groups of males, into more mixed groups, as seating was part of a package to encourage women and children to attend football, breaking up larger groups of male. In that respect, it was successful, but in my view, to the detriment of the occasion. This was helped along with the Euro 96 changes in interest and marketing. The current proposed changes are a step in the right direction, but they're not much different to what we currently have.
The Bradford fire precipitated the rebuilding of outdated stadia, but was not a justification for all seater stadia. The fire happened in a seated stand.
Anyone who brings Bradford City into debates regarding the introduction of all seater stadia has no idea.
I can only surmise you didn't go to many away games in the late sixties, dusting the seventies or eighties. No one has suggested all seater stadia were brought in because of crowd surges. And the Bradford City tragedy had absolutely nothing to do with the introduction of all seater stadia either.
Anyone who brings Bradford City into debates regarding the introduction of all seater stadia has no idea. Ok, fair enough. This is an extract from the Taylor Report, its 9 pages long and goes into great detail. These two disasters highlighted various deficiencies in stadium safety and the management of spectators. The Government set up an inquiry and the report of that inquiry, by Lord Justice Taylor and published in January 1990, set out 76 recommendations for change. The Taylor Report has become a watershed for English football; the transformation that we can see today is largely due to that report and its detailed review of all aspects of stadium safety. Most, if not all, of the Taylor Report recommendations were incorporated into a revised version of the Government’s Guide to Safety at Sports Grounds. Known more familiarly as the Green Guide (due to the colour of its cover), this has become the safety “bible” in the UK, setting out guidance on all aspects of stadium safety. The Fifth Edition, published in 2008, includes guidance on every technical aspect of safety in sports stadia, with particular relevance to football stadia. There are separate chapters on stewarding, fire safety and first aid and medical provision. Implementation of this guidance has been made obligatory for professional football in England, as it is a prime requirement of each club’s stadium safety certificate (issued and monitored by the local government authority) that the stadium must comply with all aspects of the Green Guide. The local authority is responsible for ensuring that the stadium complies with the guidance laid down in the “Green Guide” and has to carry out regular inspections of the stadium. The local authority also chairs a Safety Advisory Group, comprising club officials and representatives of the police, fire and ambulance services, which meets on a regular (usually monthly) basis. The Safety Advisory Group can also be called together at short notice to consider any issue arising out of a recent match or any special measures that are proposed for a forthcoming match. As part of the safety certificate, each club is required to have: § A designated Safety Officer, responsible for the safety management operation at the stadium on match days; § Stewards trained to a nationally-recognised standard; § A computerised turnstile counting system, recording each spectator admission through every turnstile and immediately registering same on a display monitor in the stadium control room. Through this method, the Safety Officer can see at any moment the exact number of spectators in each area of the ground. An alarm may sound on the monitor when an area reaches a specified percentage of its allowed capacity. § Closed circuit television (CCTV) cameras covering key areas of the ground; § A stadium control room with radio communications links to steward supervisors and police, CCTV display monitors, access to the public address system and a display monitor linked to the computerised turnstile counting system. If the local authority is not entirely satisfied with the efficiency of any of the above items, it may reduce the capacity of the whole stadium or specific areas of the stadium accordingly. In 1991 the Government also appointed a new body, the Football Licensing Authority (FLA), to oversee stadium safety in England and Wales, to monitor local authorities' oversight of spectator safety at international, Premiership and Football League grounds and for ensuring through a system of licensing that the grounds of clubs in the top two divisions became all seated. In 2011 the Sports Grounds Safety Authority (SGSA) was established to build on the success of the Football Licensing Authority and the critical role it had played in transforming spectator safety at football grounds in the UK over the last 20 years. The SGSA has a number of regional inspectors who are responsible for liaising with the clubs / local authorities in their area. The inspectors attend Safety Advisory Group meetings of the clubs in their area and visit matches at these clubs on a regular basis. The FLA / SGSA has also taken on responsibility for subsequent revisions of the Green Guide. A principal recommendation of the Taylor Report was the move towards all-seated stadia and the Government duly passed legislation requiring all clubs in the top two divisions to play matches before spectators in seated accommodation only. This heralded a massive building and development programme in the UK. As a general rule of thumb, it is considered that installing seats on a standing terrace would probably reduce the spectator capacity by half. So clubs now had to consider how best to change their standing areas into seats, without significant reduction of their stadium capacity. In most cases, this could only be achieved by demolishing the old standing terrace and building a new seated stand. Some clubs decided to do this on their existing stadium site; others opted to sell their existing stadium (usually for housing development) and to build a new stadium elsewhere in the city. In the two decades since publication of the Taylor Report, more than 30 new stadia have been built in England, along with some 200 new grandstands which have been built on existing stadium sites. But if football clubs were suffering financially from falling attendances, how could they afford to fund such an extensive programme of stadium development? In the first instance the UK Government lent a hand. In discussion with the football pools companies, the Government reduced the betting tax that it levied on the football pools. Monies accruing from this betting tax reduction were channeled into a special Trust Fund which clubs could draw on as pump-priming funding for any stadium development. Then, in 1992 the Premier League was formed and a link-up with Sky TV led to a significant increase in broadcasting revenue for the major football clubs in England. But the re-development of stadia provided other commercial opportunities – it gave clubs not only the chance to provide improved facilities for spectators, but also to incorporate additional restaurant and hospitality facilities and even conference facilities, enabling the stadium to be used on more than just match days. Some stadia have also marketed the naming rights of the stadium itself or of the individual stands. There are now some fabulous stadia in England, including the new Wembley Stadium (90,000 seats), Manchester United’s Old Trafford (78,000 seats) and Arsenal’s Emirates Stadium (60,000 seats).
That doesn't support your argument. The Green Guide drew its content from a variety of sources, the fire ones will have been linked to Bradford amongst other things. The seating wasn't a direct consequence of Hillsborough. It was an indirect one, with the aim of changing the demographic of football crowds.
As I said, a fire in an all seater stand where people were trapped,, which wouldn't have happened on an open terrace made of concrete, had nothing to do with the introduction of all seater stadia.
Hillsborough wasn't caused by crowds surging. It was caused by overcrowding and fences stopping lateral movement to the areas at either side where there was room.of course one of the tragic ironies was that this came about because of incidents like Heysel.
The investigation into the Bradford fire was conducted by Popplewell, not Taylor. Never has the plea "when in a hole, stop digging" been more appropriate.
It was caused by the police flagrantly not controlling the entrance of fans into the pens, allowing the central one, which fans would naturally gravitate to if not guided, to over fill. You can go into the away end at Hillsborough today and see how an uncontrolled crowd would have done what they did.
Indeed the police were useless, but the fact that fans could just pile into that section was the fault ofbthevdtadium and ticketing arrangements, as fans could just enter a ground and go where they wanted as the tickets didn't restrict you to one section and, needless to say, a lot of fans decided that they wanted to be directly behind the goal. This wasn't the first time there had been a problem at Hillsborough. As I said, if railings hadn't been put up preventing sideways movement thevtragedynwouldn't have occurred. And those railing wouldn't have been there if it wasn't for incidents like Hillsborough.
As I said, anyone who brings the Bradford fire into discussions regarding the introduction of all seater stadia really has no idea.
