Fancy Flightof
And get ground wecan offthe butuntil Pilotis on board.. fansare more
THE pilots eventually got off the ground. The debate now is about who benefits from refuelling the planes.
Six hundred passengers buckled up in Dingwall and Aberdeen after being accepted on board for the first time six months.
Funnily enough, it was just like being on an actual flight for them.
No singing, no carry on. Go to the toilet one by one. At least on an aeroplane you can buy a soggy sandwich for a fiver.
At the weekend, the fans didn’t even have the privilege of handing over three quid for a watery cup of tea.
But the reality of the situation is that, despite repeated remarks to the contrary from onlookers, those 600 felt like the fortunate ones for a day.
As miserable as it might have seemed to an onlooker with the strict rules of dos and don’ts, fans just want their football fix. No matter how they have to inject it.
Having a chance to watch a game for the first time in six months would have been a thrill. Gauging the feedback, it was.
Was there novelty value? Yes. Was it ideal? Of course not.
It wouldn’t be most folk’s choice to do it every week when you can sit warm in the house watching your stream with the kettle and fridge two steps away and only the wife and weans jostling with you for the toilet cubicle.
But it would be for plenty. Football means so much they’d sit alone on broken glass to see their teams. These people keep the game alive.
It’s a lot of work for clubs to put them on. But, having asked punters to fork out for season-tickets with only the promise of a dodgy stream on their laptops for their money, it’s quite right that any effort is made to get them in the door. Clubs fully see this. If the pilots had been limited to 30 and not 300, club chiefs would still have been duty bound to do it. The punters are due such effort for their loyalty.
But it’s also important to remember the main job of these pilot schemes.
It’s to prove grounds can cope with the measures and be part of the process to get larger numbers into stadiums in the future.
To that extent, you have to feel it doesn’t work. There’s a reason why each letter from
At least on an aeroplane you can buy yourself a soggy sandwich for a fiver
the word pilot also appears in the word pointless. It’s because, in terms of future goals, that’s what they were.
Other than ticking a box for Holyrood, what purpose does dropping 300 people into one section of a stadium which holds 20,000 such as Pittodrie prove to anyone?
Or 300 inside the Global Energy where 6500 can be housed?
Having stopped for a sandwich and crisps at the local Tesco in Dingwall prior to the game to ensure correct social distancing measures were maintained between both ends of the waistline, there are media witnesses who can vouch for the fact there seemed to be as many people in that
supermarket as there were inside the stadium later. The shoppers weren’t apart. They were shuffling up and down aisles alongside each other. All indoors.
We know slow steps have to be climbed to get more football fans back. Given the upturn in Covid-19 cases this week, they are going to be slowed again, perhaps even stopped for a spell if it gets worse.
Some tests are necessary and helpful in gaining information. But, in terms of getting proper numbers back into stadiums, the pilot scheme doesn’t look one of them.
England’s Premier League clubs don’t seem keen on them now with the limit for the rest of this month set at 1000 fans. Perhaps their hierarchy had seen the same NFL match involving Kansas City Chiefs which had 16,000 inside that stadium that Neil Lennon had clapped eyes upon and Jason Leitch subsequently dismissed when they spoke of the need to get back to full stadiums in the messages to Westminster.
The Chiefs’ Arrowhead Stadium seats around 75,000, so it was just over 20 per cent full. That would have meant 4000 at Pittodrie and 1300 in Dingwall to provide actual tangible test cases.
It’s laughable EPL chief Richard Masters was making noises to the government about money lost through lack of fans when the clubs in his league are paying almost £100million to sign a player and over £300,000 a week in salaries. Even so, you can understand some frustration. Over 2,500 were allowed into the Amex Stadium to watch Brighton take on Chelsea in a successful test event.
The Premier League just began behind closed doors and now their pilots are being hauled back in numbers with the irony being Brighton and Chelsea face each other again tonight in the same Amex Stadium – and no one can go.
That talks to you about regression in the state of play. The worrying consequences of the Covid cases rising.
Quite simply, there are two differing angles into this pilot point. In terms of fans, they have shelled out money for their season tickets. Behind this weekend’s 600, there’s another 600 around the country who are desperate to be next for a chance. And 600 after that. For them, they are priceless. But, in terms of solving the biggest issue of getting more and more of them inside grounds as quickly as possible, they feel pointless.