Bit of commotion yesterday in The Medway Stand when a few pensioners were ejected from the ground! Apparently they had made use of the wine & dine facility at Priestfield! A friend of mine who spoke to the chief steward was told that they were Millwall fans! HAHAHAHAHAHA, so, Millwall pensioners get tickets including the wine & dine, buy Burton scarves and sit there very quiet until Burton score! I pointed out to a steward at 2.55 that 2 guys were standing in front of a single seat in Block 3 of the Rainham End and nothing was done! That may not be much to some, but shouldn't they at least check it out rather than pick on a few pensioners?
I can only speak for what I witnessed directly below them in the lower tier and that was a total over heavy handiness by the stewards. Even IF the two gentlemen who later appeared with Lions jackets on were Millwall supporters they were old boys, has football really lost all sense of reality and proportion. Even IF it upsets the Gills fans in that area, why sell the travelling fans tickets in that section in the first place! Since when have the thought police ejected fans from grounds for non abusive very high spirits, cheering on their team. It actually livened things up, no wonder football grounds are becoming morgues with this shut and sit down brigade attitude. The guys were just a having a laugh and one of them even dropped his scarf over the edge of the tier and felt right dumb, none more so than I felt for our treatment of them.
at the end of the day you are not allowed to mix fans, to be honest I thought they would get kicked out straight away after showing their true colours, if you get what i mean. at barent and wombles and other places where we have sold out the club has made it clear on messages out to the fan that any fan found in with the wrong section of the crowd will be immediately ejected. that the reason they were thrown out not just our stewards having a superiority complex
jokey - that would make sense what you say. However, I question whether the club are knowingly selling tickets to away fans in that section. By coincidence I was looking through some football photgraphs yesterday for a completely different reason but saw a Gills v Leeds game where Leeds fans were sitting in the Medway Stand with shirts on full display. I can remember a Leeds fan actually sitting down next to me and my son (no Leeds shirt and he behaved!), I can remember when it kicked off, he turned round and looked and said oh! that's my son - lol. I suppose it is easier to evict a couple of pensioners than a large group of Leeds fans? Just saying.
There is a lot of hypocracy in all of this. The club actively promotes the wine and dine facility at £50 a head and it is as happy to sell to people in Staffordshire (or anywhere else) as it is to people living in Kent. I have been up there a few times myself and after drinks in the Piano Bar you have an excellent meal with a 70/30 mix of home and away fans who are then seated in the Medway stand at the Rainham End. Usually behaviour is impeccable, but not always, and it is absolute nonsense to suggest that away supporters are not allowed in that seating area because the club organises it in that way. It would be a major shift in policy to do otherwise. So, really this is all the club's doing and very little harm is done unless brainless heavy handed stewards overreact. The away supporters paying their £50 are never thugs but they may well have spent their pension at the bar and be in a "happy" mood. Good sense all round can cope with this and selecting the right security staff should be part of that process. Elsewhere people are speculating on the cost/benefit of kids for a quid and probably rightly reaching the conclusion that there are no financial advantages but a lot of non-financial ones. It might be better to think just how much financial benefit is rolling in from a few hundred wine and diners, including the away guests. It must be worth half a million a season even allowing for meal costs and if a few of them get overexcited they should be tolerated, within reason.
bristol - thanks for clairity on the wine and dine situation. I thought as much but could not prove it. I have seen away fans in the upper tier many times and there was no way I could believe that was by error or the away fans exploiting the ticketing system because it is always in the same area directly above me. So as you rightly point out it is hypocrisy in that we promote it but then evict them for getting loud. If the guys were abusive or threatening stewards in any way then fair enough, I can only say I did not witness that but obviously from the lower tier it is not possible for me to have a clear view of the entire events.
fair points and maybe away fans are allowed into the medway stand if partaking in the wine and dine experience, but let me put this to you, the stewards clearly approached these gentlemen atleast 3 or 4 times before eventually evicting them, i can only imagine (and ok i didnt hear the exact conversations, that they were asked no to entice/provoke the home support and as with anything else you only get asked nicely a few time before something is done about it. yes you can argue that they didnt kick out a mass of leeds fans but this is where common sense and good crowd management come into play. if the leeds fans are going mental but not provoking trouble and they easily outnumber the stewards and police then why start something that you cant control. i feel i shoudl say i am against the stewards reaction in the past to kicking home fans out for expressing their views or other similar trivial things, however if you are stupid enough after being warned a couple of times that your behaviour is deemed unacceptable (and when you buy a ticket you sign up to a certain set or terms and conditions surrounding behaviour) then you will be kicked out simple as.
I agree with jokeykid. I sit in the Medway stand but saw the stewards on at least 3 seperate occasions ask the gentlmen to stop doing what they were doing. They kept doing it so got kicked out. Lets not forget it was kids for a quid, under where that was all happening I saw a LOT of young children, having that kind of chanting and noise flung in their direction from the Rainham end was probably very intimidating. I am glad they threw them out, I have seen a lot of posts over different boards saying they were 'old boys', they should of known better then.
