Shrews lead way on safe standing
ENGLISH football’s first safe standing area will be opened in the coming season by Shrewsbury, paving the way for similar facilities at Premier League grounds.
The League One club will know within weeks whether they have permission to create a standing section for 400 fans at their New Meadow ground.
Watford, Huddersfield and Southampton are among the top-flight clubs understood to be interested in safe standing areas of their own.
Standing was banned in England’s top two divisions in 1990, following the Hillsborough disaster, and clubs in the third and fourth tiers were stopped from turning seated areas back into terraces.
But the Football League recently struck an agreement with the Sports Ground Safety Authority, meaning lowerdivision sides can now apply to have safe standing areas similar to the one at Celtic.
Shrewsbury chief executive Brian Caldwell said: ‘I am very familiar with the success Celtic have had with it. We see it as an enhancement in spectator safety and hope we’re paving the way for other clubs.’
ALeague One club will become the first in england to copy Celtic by creating a safe standing section in their all- seat stadium, Sportsmail can reveal.
Shrewsbury Town are seizing on new rules and will today seek permission to build a standing area for 400 fans in their 10,000-capacity New Meadow ground.
No other english all-seat stadium has been modified to include a standing area and thousands of fans who want similar sections in Premier League grounds believe this will demonstrate that the conversion process is straightforward.
The club hope to have the green light from the Sports ground Safety authority (SgSa) within weeks and to have the standing area in place before the end of the season.
Sportsmail revealed last week that the Premier League have asked member clubs if any would be interested in piloting safe-standing.
a significant number are in favour, including Watford, Huddersfield and Southampton, while Stoke seem positive. Shrewsbury are seeking to raise the estimated £50,000-£75,000 needed to install the standing area through crowdsourcing, run by their Supporters’ Parliament and the Football Supporters’ Federation.
The sum includes a contingency fund in case Shrewsbury are promoted to the Championship, in which case — under current legislation — they would have to convert the area back to seats.
Football League clubs have been ahead of their Premier League counterparts in lobbying for ‘rail seating’, with 77 per cent indicating they wanted the League to pursue the idea with the government.
Many stadiums in the bottom two divisions are all- seat, despite legislation introduced after Lord Justice Taylor’s 1990 report into the Hillsborough disaster stipulating that only clubs in the top two divisions must ditch standing areas.
That is because all stadiums which have gone all- seat must stay that way, no matter how far a club falls down the League. even eight clubs who have not made it to the top tiers — Colchester, Chesterfield, Northampton, Shrewsbury, Oxford, Bury, Mansfield and Orient — have made their stadiums all-seat.
But an agreement was struck recently between the League and the SgSa allowing clubs which had not made the top two tiers since 1994 to apply to install rail seating.
Shrewsbury insist it will make their stadium safer. ‘I am very familiar with the great success Celtic have had with their rail seating,’ said chief executive Brian Caldwell, who was approached by fans about introducing safe standing.
‘Our safety officer visited Celtic Park recently. We see it as an enhancement in spectator safety and a welcome provision of supporter choice. We hope, too, that by pioneering the use of rail seating in the Football League, we will be paving the way for other clubs in england and Wales to follow suit.’
Support for Premier League safe seating is expected to gain momentum when the influential Spirit of Shankly (SoS) group in Liverpool adopt a formal position on it.
The government’s reluctance to change legislation to allow safe standing is, in part, out of respect to the families of the 96 who died at Hillsborough in 1989. But most Liverpool fans are now in favour and the SoS position may reflect that.