Headingley overcrowding (again)

[Mr Plow]

The issues from last season and the Bradford game haven't been resolved. People were stood in walkways and on the stairs to the seats. Definitely feels like they oversell the south stand. 

[Tommygilf]

11 minutes ago, Mr Plow said:

The issues from last season and the Bradford game haven't been resolved. People were stood in walkways and on the stairs to the seats. Definitely feels like they oversell the south stand. 

South stand looked heaving tbf. Carnegie terrace was much more spread out than the Burrow game.

[Dave T]

This does tend to happen with new grounds when full until people work out where to stand. It needs strong stewarding to coordinate it 

[Mr Plow]

11 minutes ago, Dave T said:

This does tend to happen with new grounds when full until people work out where to stand. It needs strong stewarding to coordinate it 

Stewarding at Leeds has always been pretty poor imo. It seems that most of them don’t really give a . Tonight more ‘senior’ stewards were walking round telling other stewards to keep walkways and steps clear

[Rhinoferg]

So poor on and off the field then! Lol

[graveyard johnny]

did you go to to leeds v Australia 1982?

[Chrispmartha]

28 minutes ago, Rhinoferg said:

So poor on and off the field then! Lol

If Leeds are a badly run organisation off the field id hate to think what you think of some of the other teams in SL

I’m not sure why some Leeds fans support them they’ve not got one good word to say about them, even when they were winning titles for fun, Whinos is very well deserved nickname 

[Cdd]

Looked like they oversold the western terrace in the hope that all the Cas fans would leave and then Hull fans would take their place. That seemed to happen. If all the Cas fans had stayed there would have been no room.

[Impartial Observer]

Were you not at the CC final replay at Odsal in 1954?? 

[Old Frightful]

There were plenty of Cas fans on the WT when we arrived about half four and even come kick off time there was still room for latecomers so I would say Leeds got it spot on as regards number of tickets sold.

Also, you'd probably always find folk who stand in the gangways even though there's room on the terracing itself, that's just human nature, people don't want to be stood behind other people.

It's just a selfish action.

[fieldofclothofgold]

I've been at Headingley as a boy many years ago 38000 and Broken  barriers. There is a Wigan fan who was also there we often talk of that game . Rogues Gallery 

[Old Frightful]

2 minutes ago, fieldofclothofgold said:

I've been at Headingley as a boy many years ago 38000 and Broken  barriers. There is a Wigan fan who was also there we often talk of that game . Rogues Gallery 

I'm sure there were plenty of decent fans there as well.

[fieldofclothofgold]

3 minutes ago, Old Frightful said:

I'm sure there were plenty of decent fans there as well.

Oh yes different era as boys we used to get there about an hour early and stood at front near the slope where they used to come out . Then they moved us kids to sit on the straw in front of the south stand. 

[whatmichaelsays]

I really don't think the issue is over-selling. The issue is poor crowd management. 

At the Bradford game, I was in the middle of a section and had plenty of room. It was the same yesterday. The issue is that people tend to congregate at the edges of a section, leaving the middle free and little room for anyone to see / move to those areas where there is room. 

It either needs the stewards to be more proactive at making sure the space is used or more dividing up of those sections. The club won't do the latter, so they need to do the former. 

I get that the stewards are minimum wage agency staff but, if the fact that they can't / won't do their job properly is impacting on a matchday experience that the club is ever-so-keen to promote, then the people for that job aren't minimum wage agency staff. 

[Old Frightful]

2 minutes ago, fieldofclothofgold said:

Oh yes different era as boys we used to get there about an hour early and stood at front near the slope where they used to come out . Then they moved us kids to sit on the straw in front of the south stand. 

Reading that made the Hovis ad music start in my head.

[fieldofclothofgold]

5 minutes ago, Old Frightful said:

Reading that made the Hovis ad music start in my head.

Shurrup 

[Just Browny]

If Leeds hadn't adopted a policy of making their capacity ever smaller we might not have this.

[Rhinoferg]

13 hours ago, Chrispmartha said:

If Leeds are a badly run organisation off the field id hate to think what you think of some of the other teams in SL

I’m not sure why some Leeds fans support them they’ve not got one good word to say about them, even when they were winning titles for fun, Whinos is very well deserved nickname 

The LOL at the end of my comment indicates that it was a joke. Just like the performance v Hull

[DoubleD]

1 hour ago, whatmichaelsays said:

I really don't think the issue is over-selling. The issue is poor crowd management. 

At the Bradford game, I was in the middle of a section and had plenty of room. It was the same yesterday. The issue is that people tend to congregate at the edges of a section, leaving the middle free and little room for anyone to see / move to those areas where there is room. 

It either needs the stewards to be more proactive at making sure the space is used or more dividing up of those sections. The club won't do the latter, so they need to do the former. 

I get that the stewards are minimum wage agency staff but, if the fact that they can't / won't do their job properly is impacting on a matchday experience that the club is ever-so-keen to promote, then the people for that job aren't minimum wage agency staff. 

I think there was a proactive attempt yesterday. If you went to the south stand bar from the middle sections, you got a ticket which you had to show on your way back. I was on the outer edges and got told I couldn’t come to the centre because I didn’t have one. 

In the right hand edge where I was, there was a main steward asking people to move down to make room for others. Unfortunately as the game was on, most people just ignored him. 

I’m not sure there is a solution really - this is what you get with terracing. Like it or lump it 

[Mr Frisky]

27 minutes ago, Just Browny said:

If Leeds hadn't adopted a policy of making their capacity ever smaller we might not have this.

Yes you do think it would have been a faily minimal cost just to add an other (say) 10 rows of seats to the new South Stand..

[whatmichaelsays]

6 minutes ago, DoubleD said:

I think there was a proactive attempt yesterday. If you went to the south stand bar from the middle sections, you got a ticket which you had to show on your way back. I was on the outer edges and got told I couldn’t come to the centre because I didn’t have one. 

In the right hand edge where I was, there was a main steward asking people to move down to make room for others. Unfortunately as the game was on, most people just ignored him. 

I’m not sure there is a solution really - this is what you get with terracing. Like it or lump it 

They've used that system before. What that system does is count people going up and down a stairwell. What it doesn't do is influence where they stand when they're actually on the terrace. 

The issue is more about where people stand within the block/section. A lot of people prefer to stand near to the edge of a section (easier to get to the loo or whatever) and it makes the block/sections look fuller than they are, giving people the impression that the block is fuller than it is. 

Like I said, the club is rightly working hard on improving the matchday experience - and it has done an awful lot right. But that hard work is being undermined by poor stewarding by the idiots that G4S provide. You can invest in facilities and fancy light shows all you want, but if people are having to watch the game on the screens in the concourse because they can't get to their seat, they won't come back. 

[M j M]

2 hours ago, Mr Frisky said:

Yes you do think it would have been a faily minimal cost just to add an other (say) 10 rows of seats to the new South Stand..

The cost is irrelevant. The height of the South Stand was as big as could plausibly be got through planning. It's not that stand which was the issue, it's got more capacity than its predecessor. It's the smaller capacity north stand which was the compromise. 

[DoubleD]

37 minutes ago, M j M said:

The cost is irrelevant. The height of the South Stand was as big as could plausibly be got through planning. It's not that stand which was the issue, it's got more capacity than its predecessor. It's the smaller capacity north stand which was the compromise. 

Out of interest MjM, as someone who knows more about the development plans, is it feasible/any plans to enclose the corner of the South & East stands now the floodlight has been removed? Might add 1-2k 

[DoubleD]

2 hours ago, whatmichaelsays said:

They've used that system before. What that system does is count people going up and down a stairwell. What it doesn't do is influence where they stand when they're actually on the terrace. 

The issue is more about where people stand within the block/section. A lot of people prefer to stand near to the edge of a section (easier to get to the loo or whatever) and it makes the block/sections look fuller than they are, giving people the impression that the block is fuller than it is. 

Like I said, the club is rightly working hard on improving the matchday experience - and it has done an awful lot right. But that hard work is being undermined by poor stewarding by the idiots that G4S provide. You can invest in facilities and fancy light shows all you want, but if people are having to watch the game on the screens in the concourse because they can't get to their seat, they won't come back. 

The problem is you can't force people to move, the stewards can only do so much. And when the match is on, it's impossible because everyone just ignores them anyway

[Tommygilf]

17 minutes ago, DoubleD said:

Out of interest MjM, as someone who knows more about the development plans, is it feasible/any plans to enclose the corner of the South & East stands now the floodlight has been removed? Might add 1-2k 

That is absolutely what I would look to do if possible, at least on the terracing level.