FANS’RETURN FOR KICKOFF
HarveysaysWOSLmustfollowleadofEuros
Rutherglen Glencairn boss Willie Harvey says the West of Scotland League must follow the European Championships and allow fans into grounds this season.
Harvey says there needs to be a positive start to the new campaign on July 17, and criteria must be in place for supporters in stadiums and players in dressing rooms.
He said: “If they don’t let fans in and they don’t let us back into the dressing rooms, there’s too many negatives to start the game.
“We’ve got to start with a fully positive attitude.
“They say they’re letting fans in percentage-wise, a percentage of your ground capacity.
“Our stadium is licensed for 1650, the most we’ve ever had was 1250 which was five or six years ago for the semi-finals of the Scottish Cup; our average gates can be 250 to 350, depending on who we’re playing, so our stadium can take it no problem.
“If they’ve allowed crowds into the European Championships, which was a stipulation, they’ve got to look at some sort of criteria for allowing supporters back in to our grounds. Every club needs the money.
“Right through the winter we had players getting ready in the cold and the rain, and just as temperatures were starting to change a little bit they shut down the football.
“It made a joke of what these players put themselves through for the sport, and they can’t do that this year.
“They’ve got to start it, they’ve got to allow us in, so put criteria in place for the use of dressing rooms, put safety aspects in.
“They’ve got to look at the areas and say ‘if you want to use the dressing rooms here’s the criteria that you have to abide by’ and we’re confident we can do that.”
Harvey is pleased with the July 17 start date, however, and says summer football should have been explored before now.
“I’m an advocate of summer football,” he said.
“When we were in the juniors I thought summer football would have been great for us, because senior football shuts down over the summer, and that then gave all their supporters their weekly fix of football. I’m sure the crowds would have been up.”
Harvey added: “We’ve not started looking at friendlies yet but we’re talking about starting training on June 5.
“Our aim is to get back to as much normality as possible and in pre-season we always start six weeks before kick-off.”