Security intransigence once again threatened the safety of supporters, this time at the Wanderers vs Wellington pre-season friendly.
The WestSydneyFootball Facebook page contains an album of pictures from last night, that includes pictures of the conditions and facilities last night.
The only negative from last night's friendly against the Wellington Phoenix was another poor display of crowd safety from ground security, following a crowd crush at the A-League Grand Final last season. First of all, the RBB was originally locked into a section ground with limited portable toilets, no access to the stadium canteen. The club recognised this was inadequate for the numbers that were expected to turn up, and discussions between several high level officials including Lyall Gorman saw access from the RBB section to the club facilities.
As the stadium began to fill, security began to direct spectators with general admission tickets into what was supposed to be the active support section. The usual issues between active and non-active support unfortunately paled in comparison due to the dangerous situation caused by the numbers of RBB & GA ticket holders filling the area. The seating arrangements were woefully inadequate for such a high demand fixture and included a very odd configuration of temporary plastic fencing that held together by zip ties to protect a 2 meter fall onto the metal fencing. The now opened to GA section became dangerously crowded and several people fell or were pushed by the movement of the crowd, although I have no reports of any injury to spectators.
Security initially refused requests to open the area behind the goals, an action which would have alleviated the crush, until the sheer weight of numbers packed into the small area in the corner forced the police & security into action. I believe the Wanderers officials played their part in preventing a major accident by persuading security to open the gates, and if so I applaud them yet again for taking action where security would not.
The FFA must review their security and ticketing procedures in the wake of this disgrace. If they continue to allow security to ignore crowd crush situations then one day an incident will occur and there will be injuries or worse. Another apathetic response to a crowd crush also concerns me as to what would happen in the event of an emergency requiring an evacuation and/or the movement of people from one section to another.
If there is any information from the club in regards to the situation off the pitch I will update the post with that.
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