Liverpool are a club with a permanent place in my affections. I don’t really have an “English club” but I retain a deep rooted respect and admiration for them.
It’s not one thing. It’s complicated by many factors.
For a start, it’s a city close to my heart from my time in the trade union youth wing, where we met up with the dockers and got to see first-hand their unique, and touching, solidarity. The 96 are part of it too, of course, because you could imagine being there that day yourself. The strength of the families and those who survived was beyond admirable. Brendan Rodgers is a wee bit of the picture, but Kenny Dalglish is a bigger part of it; he has a special relationship to my family.
I remember when we announced that we were starting work on the safe standing section; it was in the season ticket packs that were sent out in May last year.
Not a day had gone by before a disreputable hack called one of the Hillsborough campaigners and asked a loaded question on the issue and got to write a scandalous headline. I knew instantly what had happened before even looking into the matter.
The article said we’d just announced the plan – a week after the Hillsborough verdict – and the tenor of the piece was about how “insensitive” we were for doing so.
They had actually called a Hillsborough campaigner and told her this, whilst omitting one or two crucial details; first, the idea had been signed off on by every health and safety official we could find, to make sure it was 100% kosher … and second, the idea had been discussed for years before it got the green light and the announcement giving it one had been made a full 12 months before.
I was spewing. It was perhaps the angriest I’ve ever been with the Scottish press. I was all set up to write a flamethrower response, targeting the paper.
But before I did I reached out to someone at Celtic.
There were Hillsborough families due at Celtic Park for the Aberdeen game that very weekend; I didn’t want to jump in with both feet and risk offending any of our guests.
If the club had preferred that I not write that article I would have left it alone.
I was told to let them have it; Celtic were making their own representations to the press on the subject and I would be broadly in line with them on it. The apology the club got for that is one of the most satisfying we’ve ever forced out of lying media mouths.
It’s impossible not to recognise how football safety is the most sensitive subject for those families – how could it not be? – which is why I was so infuriated that day, just a week after the verdict, which confirmed what we all knew; those 96 people had been “unlawfully killed.”
You recognised, immediately, that some scummy hack was throwing a gutterball. The press here has a shady history of exploiting Celtic’s good intentions. What was especially disgusting was that they stooped so low as to try and exploit people’s grief just to make us look bad.
As it turns out, the safe standing area has won us plaudits from all over Europe. It is considered the perfect model for how one of those should be set up. The rave reviews it’s had from all across the continent – all across the world – have been very welcome.
But one from the Liverpool fans means more than most.
They grade it on a whole other level.
Most people are interested only in the way this section generates atmosphere. Their fans know it has to do more.
Today one of their sites, The Anfield Wrap, published an excellent article on the safe standing area. The writer, their editor Gareth Roberts, has been interested in the section for a while now. He’s discussed it on podcasts and written about it previously.
What made this piece especially interesting, to me, and to all of us, is that he actually came up here to see it for himself, during a match. He was interested in the noise the section generated. But he was also interested in safety.
Let’s start with saying that the article is very well written and honest.
I am putting a link to it at the bottom of this piece; I hope everyone checks it out.
In it he talks about the way the atmosphere at Anfield has changed over the years; we experienced similar when Celtic Park was being rebuilt and The Jungle was no longer there. Various fan groups have done their best to change that, but there have been stretches, over the last ten years, when things haven’t been terribly exciting in the ground.
Liverpool have had the same issues.
Gareth had been told that the standing section generates atmosphere like no other part of the stadium, that it changes the way Celtic Park sounds. He wanted to see that for himself, and he was especially happy that it wasn’t for a “major game”, but a relatively tame affair, allowing him to get a more rounded experience.
But ever in his thoughts was safety, safety, safety.
As he points out, there are no guarantees that seats in a stadium make fans safer. He doesn’t mention, because he doesn’t have to, for example, that a seat can used as a very effective missile. All of us have sat in stands where the seats were too small or the space too cramped. It’s not hard to envision a situation where this could be dangerous, perhaps not in a mass casualty sense but in terms of little individual moments of heightened risk.
Even Celtic Park, which is a wonderful and perfectly safe arena with a nearly unblemished record, has not been without those moments.
During the 6-2 game, for example, things got so incredibly overwhelming when Paul Lambert rattled in the third that I was quite literally pulled backwards over my own chair by the wild celebrations of the guy behind me.
I didn’t realise what had happened for about thirty seconds; I ended up flat on my back with my legs draped over my own seat.
Someone at some point stood on my chest.
I felt fine, don’t get me wrong, and I was overjoyed … but that’s a moment that comes back to me sometimes when I hear people talk about how safe grounds are now.
Gareth enjoyed his experience at Celtic Park.
He was impressed by the atmosphere, but he was very impressed by how safe the area is.
That is a ringing endorsement, on both fronts, that somehow outweighs all the others.
Honestly, the article is fantastic.
You can check it out at the link below. Please share it wherever you can.
Liverpool And Safe Standing: The Experience Of Celtic Park’s Rail Seating Section