Excessive use of netting off seats in Sheffield

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Any future development of the ground should start with the BL end first. It should be made into a single tiered stand, thus allowing the club to allocate away tickets depending on the demand.
 



I presume that the decision to put away fans in the top tier was taken a while ago and we couldn't be arsed to move them when ticket sales for Boxing day and New Years eve looked high.

Perhaps though, the club can start to look at putting away fans in the lower tier only and Blades in the top tier. Perhaps making the top tier members/ Season ticket holders only. This could surely be done before the end of January, couldn't it?
 
CarlMcBlade said:
Any future development of the ground should start with the BL end first. It should be made into a single tiered stand, thus allowing the club to allocate away tickets depending on the demand.
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Could be a decent sized stand, built over BL putting a tunnel in or cantilever it out over the road (obviously closed during matches) and building around the Cricketers.

Kop is in greater need of upgrading though... considering everything is still outside
 
I'm guessing as there are home fans in the Westfield corner it's easier to steward/cater/open facilities for the away and home fans in the upper part of the stand with no need to open the lower section,
 
Sean Thornton said:
The ones looking for a reason to knock the club will just ignore that, like they have done every other time it's been explained.
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I was going to say isn't this trolling over old ground again? It's the Police and relevant safety people who apparently have the power of gods these days. I'm guessing the club would sell every single seat it could.
 
SwissBlade said:
Could be a decent sized stand, built over BL putting a tunnel in or cantilever it out over the road .
Click to expand...

I suggested this as an option in '96 when I was working with the club for a while on redesign and development of the stadium.

The city council, has for years harboured the intention of making Bramall Lane a major trunk road into the city - for this reason it has prevented development along the opposite side of the street from the ground (I don't know if it bought up the land) but the results of the policy are there to see. Between the pubs, there are just empty spaces, used (as) car lots & further out, there are wide grass verges and shrubby trees where the buildings have been demolished.......... - it looks as though the breweries were strong enough to hold out against the pressure so the result has been 40 years of stalemate and blight.

Screen Shot 2017-01-03 at 06.57.39.png


Because the council wants room to eventually widen Bramall Lane, I think it would be difficult for the club to get hold of the land required t'other side of the road to bridge Bramall Lane with a stand even if it wanted to.

As a side issue, this points up that SUFC should have considered buying property on the other side of John Street in order to give it room to grow but it didn't and when properties there were demolished, the plots of land were built on again & the presence of housing there limits the height that the John Street stand can be built to. The stand that is most in need of rebuilding is of course the Kop and there is room to move it back towards Shoreham Street to make more room for the Bramall Lane stand BUT again, it starts overshadowing the houses on that street the closer it gets and in effect, it's height would be restricted by the length of that shadow.
 
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vorpal blade said:
I suggested this as an option in '96 when I was working with the club for a while on redesign and development of the stadium.

The city council, has for years harboured the intention of making Bramall Lane a major trunk road into the city - for this reason it has prevented development along the opposite side of the street from the ground (I don't know if it bought up the land) but the results of the policy are there to see. Between the pubs, there are just empty spaces, used (as) car lots & further out, there are wide grass verges and shrubby trees where the buildings have been demolished.......... - it looks as though the breweries were strong enough to hold out against the pressure so the result has been 40 years of stalemate and blight.

View attachment 21678


Because the council wants room to eventually widen Bramall Lane, I think it would be difficult for the club to get hold of the land required t'other side of the road to bridge Bramall Lane with a stand even if it wanted to.

As a side issue, this points up that SUFC should have considered buying property on the other side of John Street in order to give it room to grow but it didn't and when properties there were demolished, the plots of land were built on again & the presence of housing there limits the height that the John Street stand can be built to. The stand that is most in need of rebuilding is of course the Kop and there is room to move it back towards Shoreham Street to make more room for the Bramall Lane stand BUT again, it starts overshadowing the houses on that street the closer it gets and in effect, it's height would be restricted by the length of that shadow.
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Cheers for that!

Personally i wouldn't really want the stands to be much higher, the proposals to extend the Kop and South Stand would be about right for us, taking the capacity to something like 45,000 would be ideal.

We definitely missed a trick with John Street, but i'm guessing we didn't really have the finances or the vision to do it back in the mid '90'
 
vorpal blade said:
I suggested this as an option in '96 when I was working with the club for a while on redesign and development of the stadium.

The city council, has for years harboured the intention of making Bramall Lane a major trunk road into the city - for this reason it has prevented development along the opposite side of the street from the ground (I don't know if it bought up the land) but the results of the policy are there to see. Between the pubs, there are just empty spaces, used (as) car lots

View attachment 21678


Because the council wants room to eventually widen Bramall Lane, I think it would be difficult for the club to get hold of the land required t'other side of the road to bridge Bramall Lane with a stand even if it wanted to.
.
Click to expand...
THE VINCENTE CALDERON IN MADRID SHOWS WHATS POSSIBLE

VC STAD .jpg

When you look at it realistically its a venue thats only used 25 to 30 days a year and is dead space the rest of the year
I could also see an argument for the club paying for bramall lane in ring road form to be put in a tunnel coming out at the roundabout , leaving the top bit as just access roads

here in Spain theres hundreds of ravines dug , roads built then concreted over as living space , removing major roads underground
 
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vorpal blade said:
I suggested this as an option in '96 when I was working with the club for a while on redesign and development of the stadium.

The city council, has for years harboured the intention of making Bramall Lane a major trunk road into the city - for this reason it has prevented development along the opposite side of the street from the ground (I don't know if it bought up the land) but the results of the policy are there to see. Between the pubs, there are just empty spaces, used (as) car lots & further out, there are wide grass verges and shrubby trees where the buildings have been demolished.......... - it looks as though the breweries were strong enough to hold out against the pressure so the result has been 40 years of stalemate and blight.

View attachment 21678


Because the council wants room to eventually widen Bramall Lane, I think it would be difficult for the club to get hold of the land required t'other side of the road to bridge Bramall Lane with a stand even if it wanted to.

As a side issue, this points up that SUFC should have considered buying property on the other side of John Street in order to give it room to grow but it didn't and when properties there were demolished, the plots of land were built on again & the presence of housing there limits the height that the John Street stand can be built to. The stand that is most in need of rebuilding is of course the Kop and there is room to move it back towards Shoreham Street to make more room for the Bramall Lane stand BUT again, it starts overshadowing the houses on that street the closer it gets and in effect, it's height would be restricted by the length of that shadow.
Click to expand...

How long do you think it would take to rebuild the Kop
Had a conversation with a mate on this very subject on Friday, he reckoned 3 months I thought it would be more like 6 or 9 months
 
9 month minimum.

Here in 4 lines is what happens at the design team meeting at the start of EVERY building project in the world.



Client - "How long is it going to take, how much will it cost?"

Design team leader, QS or Architect*- " A year, about £5 million" (*whoever is forced to answer the question or stupidest AKA the "fall-guy.")

Client - "But we must have the building opened in 6 months and we only have £2.5 million to spend"

Fall-Guy - (thinking, "thats impossible, it simply can't be done.... but if I say this out loud, I'm off the job and I lose my fee")....says......... "erm, OK, we'll try."



This, in a NUTS-HELL is why most projects are built late and over-budget or someone goes bankrupt in the process.
IF they don't find anything particularly toxic in the pile of earth that the Kop is built from, it could be done in 2 cricket seasons and one football season, I would have thought. Its basically a season with ground capacity around 20,000 unless the South Stand is redeveloped first. For me, the John Street Stand should be thoroughly rebuilt closer to the pitch and the pitch should be nudged south too as was envisaged when the South Stand was first erected - that way, it can be built higher than it is now. But its the newest stand so it will take a deep intake of breath & some inner tormoil if not torment? on Kevin's part to demolish it and try again.

The John Street stand was built without sufficient oversight by the club. It was a design that was unwanted (it predates Kevin's ownership of the club) but the contractors had a signed contract and forced the club to build it as they had 'us' over a barrel. Its cheap and unthought through.
 
Sheffsteel said:
Ive been hearing all week how Wednesday how today's match with Wolves was a sell out days ago.
Apparently Wolves have terrible support becuase they've hardly sold any tickets, so of course Wednesday had extra tickets in the away end.

But the callers to Radio Sheffield failed to say that it was £36 for Wolves fans
And only £18 for home fans (cheaper than what we charge).

So with their half price ticket deal for their only match over the Christmas period what was the gate?

The official sell out was 30,549, so that's 9,000 empty seats.
Most of those were netted off and not for sale but there was large blocks of unsold seats on all 4 sides of the ground. Also restricted view tickets weren't put up for sale either.

So it's now official......anything at S6 approaching 30K means it's a sell out.

Joking aside...it does highlight a serious point about the excessive safety aspect in Sheffield.

Example for a Spurs-Arsenal Derby or a Manchester derby they net off about 200 seats and have a thin line of stewards separating rival fans.

In Sheffield we keep away fans in totally seperate stands but SU still net off 2,500 seats every match
But it's even worse at Hillsboro where they net off a good 5,000+ seats.

This type of safety doesn't even happen at Millwall when they have mis behaved.
So what's going on in Sheffield and can the clubs claim compensation for being ordered to reduce capacity?
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Ordered this ordered that. Just ignore it and fill the seats. That's how you do it.
 
sitwell said:
It wasn't an easy game for the stewards and cops at Bury today ,we had some knuckleheads down the front today ,but they were organised and cheerful which helps enormously. Actually to be fair the stewards and five oh on duty at the Lane are pretty good, its the nobheads in charge at SYP who are beyond useless.
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Indeed - always impressed with GMP when visiting the red rose county - they are used to big games and the stewards dealt with the drunken Blades well yesterday.

UTB
 
Let's be right.

Cost here is part of the issue. We are in league one, we don't need to open the whole stadium as we aren't going to fill it.
The club will meet with the police, council and steward suppliers to agree a cost. If the club want police in the ground they have to pay for them which is expensive, so they use stewards. To reduce costs they will then agree the amount of stewarding they want to pay for. Once settled the council along with the police will go over the plan to agree it and sign it off.

If the club were to say we only want to pay for stewards on turnstiles, and 10 in the ground say....then the attendance would be adjusted accordingly. Areas would be closed off, and netting all over the shop. So I suggest the current issues with areas being netted off are due to this.
Placing a barrier allows for less policing/stewards, thus reducing the cost to the club. I don't have a problem with it, and I am confident that if we went up the plan would change.

As for development, I can't see Kev wanting to flatten John street. I can't see him flattening his upgrade of BL stand either, and tunnels over roads for a huge stand is pie in the sky. Furthermore, we have just spent a shed load on the bloody pitch, so moving that is also a ballache!

Kop will get done, and if we are on the up needs doing sharpish. We could shut the kop for redevelopment and level it close season, and at a push have something temporary in place through the season while building works take place allowing a couple of thousand on there. Filling the rest of the ground would mean a very low capacity, and away areas would be difficult to arrange but low on numbers. But we could scrape 20k. This would take 12 months minimum depending on size/plans.
But for me....we need to get the chuff on with it because if we are serious about the premier league, losing seating while there would be very costly compared to in the next 12 months going forwards.
 



I agree with everything in your post Grizzly.

But the last time there was a plan to update the Kop, it was to just extend it backwards. Unless there is something I missed? the inadequate squeezed in seats would just stay as they are now.

Clearly the people in positions of control in the club haven't spent 90minutes sitting in the Kop trying to watch a match.... if they did, then I think they would consider it's complete demolition and rebuilding the priority that most of us do.

It would dawn on them as they lost feeling in their lower legs halfway through the first half, or maybe it'll take someone to die of deep-vein thrombosis on the kop before anyone realises just how inadequate the present arrangements are.

It should be sponsored by RyanAir

- there is obviously the Catch-22 that it would be better to close down one end of the ground when we are in a lower-division but while we are, there is not the urgent need for more seats nor possibly the money to do it.
 
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Hmmm....you may be right. I thought the kop was going to be a whole new stand as the current one is just a mound of earth with seats on. While I thought the new one was going to have property for students, and office use inside, meaning it had to be a hollow structure.
 
Broomhall Blade said:
Apparently it's all down to SAG, (Safety Advisory Group).
Which consists of you've guessed it
People from our wonderful Council, SY Police, Fire Service, Ambulance Service, lollipop person dept, Parks and Gardens, women's institute, Boys and Girls Brigade,
Wheel tappers and shunters club, and people who won a crackerjack pencil.
.
Click to expand...

So its Gordon Whitaker's fault
 
Grizzly blade said:
Let's be right.

Cost here is part of the issue. We are in league one, we don't need to open the whole stadium as we aren't going to fill it.
The club will meet with the police, council and steward suppliers to agree a cost. If the club want police in the ground they have to pay for them which is expensive, so they use stewards. To reduce costs they will then agree the amount of stewarding they want to pay for. Once settled the council along with the police will go over the plan to agree it and sign it off.

If the club were to say we only want to pay for stewards on turnstiles, and 10 in the ground say....then the attendance would be adjusted accordingly. Areas would be closed off, and netting all over the shop. So I suggest the current issues with areas being netted off are due to this.
Placing a barrier allows for less policing/stewards, thus reducing the cost to the club. I don't have a problem with it, and I am confident that if we went up the plan would change.

As for development, I can't see Kev wanting to flatten John street. I can't see him flattening his upgrade of BL stand either, and tunnels over roads for a huge stand is pie in the sky. Furthermore, we have just spent a shed load on the bloody pitch, so moving that is also a ballache!

Kop will get done, and if we are on the up needs doing sharpish. We could shut the kop for redevelopment and level it close season, and at a push have something temporary in place through the season while building works take place allowing a couple of thousand on there. Filling the rest of the ground would mean a very low capacity, and away areas would be difficult to arrange but low on numbers. But we could scrape 20k. This would take 12 months minimum depending on size/plans.
But for me....we need to get the chuff on with it because if we are serious about the premier league, losing seating while there would be very costly compared to in the next 12 months going forwards.
Click to expand...


This was the guy who designed the Kop, he became an architect after the war.

article-2292943-18A3A6DC000005DC-187_634x406.jpg
 
Well anyway, it's nice to see that the netting they use at the Sty to cover their deathtraps doesn't go to waste during the week.

Here's Miss South Barnsley 2016 making use of the Leppings Lane coverings.

 
for Grizzly blade said:
Hmmm....you may be right. I thought the kop was going to be a whole new stand as the current one is just a mound of earth with seats on. While I thought the new one was going to have property for students, and office use inside, meaning it had to be a hollow structure.
Click to expand...

If it's for students, just hollow it out and let em live in caves. They'll not know the difference after two weeks.
 
The way things are going we will need a 45K capacity stadium.

So then SYP can close 10K seats off with netting leaving 35K for the fans.
That should satisfy their safety concerns.
 
Little known fact, Baader coming from the west side of Doncaster was a Blade - its not common knowledge that his legs went numb halfway through the second half of a cup-fixture while sitting on the Kop (as he was wedged into the seat in front) and had to be amputated....don't believe all you see in black&white war films.

And Snooty, I'd totally forgotten that we were sponsored by Flybe and our link with

Robin Hood® Doncaster dont forget Sheffield Airport!
 
SwissBlade said:
Could be a decent sized stand, built over BL putting a tunnel in or cantilever it out over the road (obviously closed during matches) and building around the Cricketers.

Kop is in greater need of upgrading though... considering everything is still outside
Click to expand...
 
vorpal blade said:
Little known fact, Baader coming from the west side of Doncaster was a Blade - its not common knowledge that his leg went numb halfway through the second half of a cup-fixture while sitting on the Kop and had to be amputated....don't believe all you see in black&white war films.
Click to expand...

Born in that London but brought up in Spotborough:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Bader

A true 'legend' (despite the current overuse of the word for celebrity numpties) who re-joined the RAF despite losing two legs, shot down at least 20 odd German planes and then made several escape attempts as a POW.

We owe him and his like everything.

It's okay, I don't need any help getting down from the hobby horse......
 



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