Fans pose the question on dangerous queues at the Bridge but Chelsea chiefs give weak answer

After the Hull game back in August I wrote a brief post questioning why it takes so long to queue to get through the turnstiles at Stamford Bridge. That day it took me half an hour to get from the Britannia Gate to my seat, and I missed the first 12 minutes of the Spurs game on Sunday despite joining the one of the queues into the Matthew Harding Lower at 3.40pm. The queuing time is a huge frustration in itself, not to mention missing parts of games, but the situation is getting worse to such an extent that it is unfortunately easy to envisage a scenario where crowd surges could cause serious injury.

It’s a truly bizarre situation: bringing in new technology should make things faster. But the introduction of the season ticket card readers at Stamford Bridge hasn’t had the desired effect and, if anything, queues have got longer and potentially more dangerous. Some of the key problems are:

• Stewards are there to ensure people don’t touch their card too early and get ‘stuck’ – but they often get in the way
• Queues are a free-for all – there’s no order to them and it slows things down for most
• The queues aren’t managed well, which means that the limited space around the ground seriously restricts movement around the stadium
• Quite simply, there aren’t enough turnstiles

The issue was raised at the recent Chelsea Fans Forum – you can read the minutes from the meeting here – and the club gave its perspective on the issue. In short – they don’t seem to see it as an issue. The club’s response was as follows:

“The problem previously was that stewards couldn’t see what was happening to help fans who were stuck. In testing, we didn’t think there would be any effect in slowing down access by moving the readers. We had c.1,300 people who couldn’t operate the readers per match and got stuck. We are trying to speed up the process.

“About 50% of fans still arrive really late and we do want fans to change their habits to help us and themselves by arriving earlier. Queues for the Porto home match started at 7.20 but we are also fully aware that travel is not easy for fans, especially at night games. Against Hull less than half the total crowd figure was inside the stadium 15 minutes before kick-off, and there was no other match to watch on television so clearly fans expect to be able to get in late.”

cfcnet.co.uk, who attend the forum, added a little extra detail to what was discussed at the meeting on their website:

“Against Hull there were only 19k in at 12.30 – fifteen minutes before Kick Off, the club have looked at other clubs capacities and number of turnstyles they have, and believe we have more then more then most, and definitely more then enough for SB. Skidata technology can reload instantly, but the design is so that once the turnstile has rotated once the card reader then allows the next person to touch in. The club mentioned that there are some habits that won’t go away, the entry to East has improved significantly, but as it got to the point where being there ten minutes before kick off would guarantee entry on time, now people get in five minutes before KO.”

Sadly I think the club has its head in the sand on this one. Anyone who has been to the Emirates will know that there is nothing like the trouble getting into that Stadium. Yes, it’s a brand new stadium, but shouldn’t the club be aspiring to the same standards for Chelsea fans? It hasn’t been as bad when I’ve been to other London grounds, either. My first hand experience suggests that their assertion that arriving ten minutes before kick-off will guarantee entry on time is ludicrous. I now arrive 15 minutes before kick-off and am never in on time – I think it’s unreasonable to demand fans arrive earlier, especially for evening games. Besides which, in their earlier point Chelsea acknowledge that queues for the Porto game were starting at 7.20 – 25 minutes before kick-off.

Chelsea also failed to acknowledge that things are getting worse. I’m not convinced by their assumption – I don’t think they have evidence to prove it – that these problems have been caused by fans arriving later. In fact I now arrive earlier – pitching up five minutes before kick-off after a pint in the Pelican would previously have seen me in my seat just as the game kicked off.

As I said above, there isn’t a quick fix for this, and I really think the club isn’t taking this one seriously enough. But aside from building more turnstiles – which is the only real solution – there are other things that can be done that aren’t rocket science: namely to start managing the queues better.

I read a quote from Kenyon a couple of years ago that said he wanted to stop relying on the ask-no-questions loyalty of fans and start treating them more like customers, meaning treating them with the respect they deserve as people who pay money for tickets and merchandise. The queuing problems are a clear example of the club not following that mantra – can you imagine the uproar if paying customers couldn’t get to their seats on time at the Royal Opera House or the National Theatre? Unfortunately, football fans are a different breed and sometimes get treated as such.

Regardless of the arguments, this needs to change as quickly as possible – for both fans’ sanity and safety.

What have other Chelsea fans’ experiences been? Am I making a mountain out of a molehill? Post a comment! Posting a comment is easy to do – you don’t have to register a username if you don’t want to.

Comments

[M.Dove]

The queue for the Lower Matthew Harding on sunday against Spurs was positively dangerous .... I arrived 25 minutes before kick-off and got to my seat 10 minutes after the game had started, which is not only unacceptable but more and more people were arriving and pushing towards the gates that it became dangerous for small children and women.

[PaulMc]

I am amazed that the queues at SB seem to be getting worse since the technology has gone in. The queues for the 1st game of the season against Hull were diabloical. Just trying to walk around the ground from Britannia gate to MH Lower was a job in itself, gettting past all the queuing fans. I too am concerned and dissapointed that CFC are not taking the seriously enough. As you say, Arsenal is easy to get in and out of.

[CFC_KD]

Whole thing makes me crazy. The club treat the fans like rubbish. I've been all over the place with Chelsea (and just watching football) and none of the other stadiums have been to have problems like this.

[J]

As a United supporter who queued for nearly an hour on Sunday I am disgusted... I missed 30 mins of the game... I paid 50 quid for an hour of football. There was a huge crowd surge and lots of people were pushed up against walls and there were women and children in tears because of the crush. The police had to interviene (as the stewards ran off - out of the crush) Only three working turnstiles for the whole away support. The worse organisation I have ever seen at a footie match...

[Russell Saunders]

J - am very glad you posted this. Sitting in the Matthew Harding I had no idea any of this was going on.

It's emabarrassing as well as dangerous. Will be writing yet another article on the topic.