Big things are happening in England with this rail seating issue.
Parliament has been debating it for a while. Clubs have applied and been turned down. For the first time though, there are signs that the government is coming around to this. The fans are going to win this battle, and teams all over England are going to see a return to standing at games.
This wouldn’t be happening with such impetus, and with such a hope for success, without Celtic leading the way first. We were very brave in proceeding with this plan, especially when it would have taken the supporters of just one club – Liverpool – to torpedo the whole thing by branding it unsafe and a return to the dark ages.
But not only did we prove that, actually, rail seating and safe standing works, but we invited a delegation from Anfield to come and check it out, and won them over. They faced some real opposition but they, too, have made their case and made it well.
Celtic took the lead on this from Europe, of course, where rail seating is more common, and from Germany in particular. Our fans went over to see it and the club was convinced to look at the concept. But we still had to go and sell it to the licensing people and we had to make them believe in it, and I think credit should go to the authorities here in Scotland for being brave along with us, and giving this the go-ahead.
Without it, the English fans who want it would be miles from where they are now.
There are hurdles to overcome. Tracey Crouch, the Sports Minister, has only called for a review. This would not be significant were it not for the fact that it’s only two months since she personally slammed the idea and labelled those calling for it “no more than a vocal minority.” But fans in England are as adept in canvassing opinion as we’ve become up here and the overwhelming support for this in poll after poll is changing the course of things.
Here in Scotland, the idea already has adherents at clubs out-with Celtic, most notably over at Ibrox, where they have been lobbying their board on this since our own proved to be a success. It’s worth noting that, because Ibrox was Scotland’s first all-seater ground and their fans have been justifiably proud of that for a long time.
That so many of them support the concept shows that this is an idea whose time has come.
They are more used to sitting watching football than any other fans in the country, but there’s no mental hurdle to overcome here; some of them would just prefer to stand, and if they can do so in safety, which we’ve shown they can, many will choose it over sitting any day of the week. This is one of those moments where supporters are singing from the same song-sheet and driving forward an agenda, and a positive one at that.
Fans in England will get their safe standing.
Other clubs in Scotland will adopt the scheme.
This is inevitable, and here Celtic can genuinely claim to have been leading the way. Delegations not only from England but from other European countries have come to Celtic Park to see this area in operation, and none have left with many doubts.
It’s an emotive subject south of the border, for reasons that are wholly understandable. As the Ibrox disasters forced clubs in Scotland to get their acts together on spectator safety the twin tragedies of Bradford and Hillsborough – and to some extent Heysel as well – forced the English FA to take big issues more seriously and look at ways of making grounds safer. The Taylor Report did that, but it cost a lot of clubs a lot of money they didn’t have and forced fans towards the comforts of seating but a situation they didn’t necessarily want to embrace.
Perhaps it’s just that the apparatus to make grounds safer whilst letting fans stand for the matches wasn’t there at the time; maybe this has just evolved in terms of the technology we have now and the infrastructure to make something like this work. We’re certainly not talking, here, of thousands of people standing as they used to on crumbling concrete with only a few support barriers to keep them upright for 90 minutes.
There’s comfort to be had here for those who want it, and there’s safety as well. Maybe we’ve just found the happy medium fans never had the choice of back then. Whatever it is, Celtic was first and that was a bold decision that’s proven to be right.