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The Safety of Fans in the North Stand

darius said:
The club have got it wrong. The away supporters need to moved back to where they came from. The inconvenience to some is a small price to pay for the safety of our supporters. A net Will not stop all missiles.
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Neither will moving them to the south stand. Just means things thrown sideways at a shorter distance instead of over the top
 

It sums up Davisons penny wise, pound foolish approach to off the pitch matters. From the last RAWA minutes: "The Club is currently researching options in relation to academic research into missile throwing by supporters". How much time and money is SAFC wasting on this which seems like a chance to kick the can down the road for a few years?

Why dont the club address the obvious things like the lack of police in the ground and that fans have no fear of being caught or there being consequences if they throw things? Put in proper preventative measures like a net which work in grounds all over Europe. Or is it because these things cost money so is a non starter? The club need to get a grip on this as they are opening themselves up to a massive liability when the worst happens.
 
Goldeneye said:
It sums up Davisons penny wise, pound foolish approach to off the pitch matters. From the last RAWA minutes: "The Club is currently researching options in relation to academic research into missile throwing by supporters". How much time and money is SAFC wasting on this which seems like a chance to kick the can down the road for a few years?

Why dont the club address the obvious things like the lack of police in the ground and that fans have no fear of being caught or there being consequences if they throw things? Put in proper preventative measures like a net which work in grounds all over Europe. Or is it because these things cost money so is a non starter? The club need to get a grip on this as they are opening themselves up to a massive liability when the worst happens.
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I couldnt believe some of the quotes that come from them minutes mind
 
SAFC11 said:
Neither will moving them to the south stand. Just means things thrown sideways at a shorter distance instead of over the top
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that's nowhere near the same problem and is a pathetic argument. Misdirection height onto fans below is a far greater danger and you know it.
 
bagpiperay said:
Unfortunately, little account will be taken of your seating preference when health and safety issues arise. The same will be true when a resumption of standing is allowed as there will be wholesale cancellations of fan's seat replacing the seating that was previously offered. To be fair the same was true at Roker Park when the Roker End was deemed to be unfit and the number of fans able to stand there was drastically reduced.

The fact that fan's groups and social media are having conversations about missiles being thrown makes the club more aware and, thus, more culpable for any ensuing calamities which, if reasonable mitigation of those issues is not adequately addressed, will inevitable happen at some point.

I wonder whether KLD would contemplate sitting in the lower North Stand occasionally (especially when we have one of the big teams come to us) as a test of his and the Club's support for current measures in place to ensure the safety of the fans?
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It’s nothing to do with health and safety movements of fans though. It’s to do with being forced to move due to Davisons and Neil’s incompetence. There won’t ever be a reason to seat the away fans in my seat at the north stand, as you’d then just get the same problem in reverse with our fans above theirs.
 
darius said:
that's nowhere near the same problem and is a pathetic argument. Misdirection height onto fans below is a far greater danger and you know it.
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It's not a pathetic argument. You said a net won't stop all items. Neither will moving to the south.
 
soapster said:
I appreciate the sentiment, but is it really enforceable.
Names on the tickets are, but to force someone to carry photo identifiable id, will be a massive no no. Look at the bother, they are having re voting with id. In the sake of fairness will this have to be implemented with the home supporters as well. That would create a massive headache, even for just away fans.

Look at the issues caused in the south stand when supporters all crowded together to be with their mates. to force people to sit in their seats allocated, is non enforceable. what happens when a group go to the toilet or at half time or a goal is scored.

Re cctv, this has to be central to the solution. Problem is the amount of cameras. To get accuracy and definition the camera needs to be pretty close up. once close up the camera looses the wideness of the coverage, so a large area is left uncovered. as it is not known from what seat the object is thrown, it is always a reactive action. vipes coins etc dont leave a trail. smoke bombs do, but again reactive but then the smoke may hide the thrower.

just from memory, we are talking about smoke being thrown by (apologies for wrong or missed out names) coventry, Burnley, hull and birmingham.

It appears to me, the throwers hide in the crowd and depend on that to avoid detection (may be a rather simplistic, but I am not aware of the full statistics).

The away crowd , is linked in with the safety committee and no doubt, if we reduce the away crowd, will the away team then limit our away allocation (remember a number of our supporters are not angels)

Talk is about nets and perspex screens. How will this react with health and safety rules. What if a fire was to break our some other dangerous situation, would the fans blocked in the perspex or nets be able to escape. I understand Other countries do have these in place, but those countries are not covered by either GB or english regulations

You are right re the wanker who is caught.

My line of thought which may work is to send in undercover police with covert cameras to sit in with the away crowd. It may work it may not. However if it did work, that publicised would be amazing.
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I think you seriously underestimate how good modern CCTV can be. We run a nuclear facility and have wide angled cameras panning the whole place and we leave them on the widest setting, yet can zoom in on the footage retrospectively and read barcode numbers on packages from 200 foot away. These cameras cost about £28k each. The club use cheap bullshit cameras and therefore that is the problem.

Once again, the HSE demands that the club take reasonably practicable measures to prevent risk of injury to every attendee. They are clearly not doing this - I can tell you from experience that 2 or 3 of those cameras would cover the full away end easily and provide all of the views needed to identify anyone committing any offence in view. I have numerous times provided the specification of these cameras to Neil and the club too.

The whole problem can be made a lot better by spending 50k on some better cameras, or 50k on a net (Neil provided that estimate in the RAWA minutes). That isn’t unreasonably practicable for a business turning over £50m a year
SAFC11 said:
I'm not comparing. He said a net won't stop all items and neither will moving them to the south. The fact is nothing should be getting chucked. And our alleged checks must be pathetic
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Moving them to the south will prevent all items being chucked from a height, and hence remove that risk entirely. Sideways chucking is a different risk. Or if we’re being facetious, then we could lock them all in a vacuum sealed box and they could still chuck items around in there… no idea why some are coming on here to antagonise other Sunderland fans, it’s absolutely pathetic mate
tony_not_in_london said:
Not sure calling fellow fans “moron” helps, does it?
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When they are in a thread like this with the intention to wind up other Sunderland fans, maybe it does help
 
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The Sheepfolds development should have no impact on decisions made in the Stadium of light.

It’s an absolute joke of an excuse.
 
TravellingMackem said:
I think you seriously underestimate how good modern CCTV can be. We run a nuclear facility and have wide angled cameras panning the whole place and we leave them on the widest setting, yet can zoom in on the footage retrospectively and read barcode numbers on packages from 200 foot away. These cameras cost about £28k each. The club use cheap bullshit cameras and therefore that is the problem.

Once again, the HSE demands that the club take reasonably practicable measures to prevent risk of injury to every attendee. They are clearly not doing this - I can tell you from experience that 2 or 3 of those cameras would cover the full away end easily and provide all of the views needed to identify anyone committing any offence in view. I have numerous times provided the specification of these cameras to Neil and the club too.

The whole problem can be made a lot better by spending 50k on some better cameras, or 50k on a net (Neil provided that estimate in the RAWA minutes). That isn’t unreasonably practicable for a business turning over £50m a year

Moving them to the south will prevent all items being chucked from a height, and hence remove that risk entirely. Sideways chucking is a different risk. Or if we’re being facetious, then we could lock them all in a vacuum sealed box and they could still chuck items around in there… no idea why some are coming on here to antagonise other Sunderland fans, it’s absolutely pathetic mate

When they are in a thread like this with the intention to wind up other Sunderland fans, maybe it does help
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Same as previously, you think anyone who has a differing view is on the wind up.
It’s no different to last night.
You need to take a step back and calm down.
 
darius said:
It wasn't an issue before when they were there because it's not the same problem.
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Football has changed for the worst in the last 15 years, there's much more trouble nowadays especially post Covid.

It's the same argument as there was no problem with away fans in the North Stand for 10 years either.

The South stand has different problems and our own supporters over there aren't angels either. Having them next to Coventry being twats is asking for a disaster ie:

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and that's just Coventry.
 
TAD said:
In the south strand searching my handbag every week. A 50 year old woman whose bag is smaller than the pockets on teenagers coats yet I get searched every week. Security is a joke.
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Exactly. I go to the cricket and they have a look into a bag I take. Why it’s not done with these known problems is beyond me
 
Zimba said:
Football has changed for the worst in the last 15 years, there's much more trouble nowadays especially post Covid.

It's the same argument as there was no problem with away fans in the North Stand for 10 years either.

The South stand has different problems and our own supporters over there aren't angels either. Having them next to Coventry being twats is asking for a disaster ie:

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and that's just Coventry.
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The difference with the SS is that the fans seating in that area are old enough or daft enough to look after themselves, and were seated in that area to be near the away fans by choice. In the NS, the away fans were forced on us one day and they are amongst our most vulnerable fans, such as the disabled seating and a lot of the kids - especially when they give out the free school tickets in that area. Previously, it was easy to avoid trouble if you wanted to by sitting in the NS, or find trouble if you wanted to be sitting in the SWC at the time. Now it’s just forced on you by moving the away fans.
 
Would it be OK to take my work hardhat on Tuesday or would that be considered a potential missile and be confiscated ?
 
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