Away fans being moved to the highest tier next season. Are you trying to totally erase any atmosphere in OT? I was at the match yesterday (in the away end) and at half time they announced Man U were asking home fans if they wanted to be seated in a designated singing are. I thought that was what the Stretford End was for - or has it been taken over by plastics?
The expansion of the ground kind of ****ed the Stretford End up cos it put a load of executive boxes and VIP seat right in the middle of the hard core. The second tier of the Stretford End also has ****e acoustics. The current plan is to shift the away fans to the SAF stand and non singing fans to the top tiers in the East and West stand, then collect the hard core on the bottom tiers at each end of the ground so there will be two proper singing areas close to the pitch, rather than having them scattered all over the place. Bit of a shame they're dumping the away fans into the Gods, but if it boosts the atmosphere then it won't be a big issue. The problem is also that we seem to get very few away fans at OT nowadays - only 320 Fulham fans were there back in March for example. Not sure why, maybe people are cutting back due to the recession etc. So if there are going to be 1,700 empty seat / seats on general sale, I'd rather they were up in T3 rather than right by the pitch.
The move to put away fans in the Sir Alex Ferguson stand was decided a couple of months ago. This move has also coincided with plans for a new singing area and to shift some of the fans who sing all game into one area so that a better atmosphere can be provided.
Why can't home and away fans be mingled in together? I watch a lot of GAA and we have opposing fans mixed in together all the time and there are rarely any crowd related problems. We simply have the craic and the banter and go home. Why can't football fans do that?
Have you been a football fan for more than three minutes? I'm not looking to have a dig but I'd have thought it's fairly obvious.
What is it about football fans that require them to be segregated when fans of other sports can mingle without incident, though?
Firstly I think there's more passion involved in following a football team for the vast majority of real fans than for other sports, which followers of other sports may well disagree with, and this would undoubtedly spill over into some sort of fighting when one team celebrates a goal. Football has a more thuggish element to its supporter base at most clubs than other sports, despite the best efforts of the Premier League to turn it into a middle class clappy-stick infested soulless spectacle. The main problem would really be that some teams wouldn't be able to do it due to the huge variation in different clubs' fanbases for having a penchant for violence. At Fulham, the away end is also a 'neutral' end and fans of both clubs do mingle without problems. If you put the same thing in at Millwall you'd be asking for trouble.
I would allow the fans to have fights, legalised fighting with small sticks and headguards, then they can all sit together afterwards. Maybe half time shin kicking competitions?
Not got any real feelings either way. I posted a few times before and after our game and it seems a lively board to while away a few minutes here and there.
