What you can do
Sign the petition!
Online or at the ground
More than 600 City fans have signed so far
Write to or email Julian Rhodes and Mark Lawn at the Club »
Stand up for the Bantams
City fans for the right to choose to sit or stand
» Click here to visit The Standupsitdown site
» Click here to download The FSF safestanding pdf
(Best viewed at fullscreen, press esc to revert to normal view)
Safestanding is not about a return to old style terraces or making standing compulsory.
It is about giving people the freedom to watch football in the way that suits them, whether that be sitting or standing.
There is no rhyme or reason as to why people can stand in some grounds and not others. The rules, which are rules, not laws, say that grounds in the top two divisions have to be all- seater. However, clubs coming into the Championship are exempted from having to comply with this rule for three years and for clubs relegated from the Championship, it never gets rescinded.
This gives rise to leagues like ours, where people can stand in some grounds but not others and it is no wonder that an increasing number of fans choose to ignore this rule and stand in front of their seats for the whole game.
This is less than perfect and having fans who want to stand mixed in with those who want to sit is never a good idea. The people who want to sit get fed up because they can’t see. The people who want to stand get fed up with being told to sit-down the whole time and with being harangued by stewards and sometimes even police trying to enforce the sitting rule, as if it was law.
Nobody wants this aggravation and the solution is a simple one. That is, to provide safestanding areas where people can stand, in complete safety and away from those who want to sit.
Safestanding areas have sturdy barriers along the whole length of each row.
This is safe, proven technology and some designs have flip down seats that make these areas highly flexible.
This flexibility is important. Safestanding areas are safe and have been used on the continent for many, many years but we don’t want to go to the trouble of putting them in, only to have to rip them out again when we’re back in the Championship. By using the ”Werder Bremen” seating (named after the German club who were first to have them installed) we won’t have to. A standing area is a standing area when we want it to be and a sitting area when it has to be.
Installing safestanding areas can also be pretty well cost neutral because you can get more people into standing areas than you can into sitting areas. This is because people in the current style of seating take up two rows (one for bums and one for feet) instead of the one they use when standing. Blocks of 1000 seats can be converted to accommodate, within every safety recommendation currently laid down, nearly 1800 people standing.
Safestanding areas won’t cost us that new striker and if anything, they will raise our income as standing is something that people are actively seeking to do.
Safestanding gives football fans choices.
Choices that rugby fans and concert goers using Valley Parade can already take for granted.
This is no joke. We’re told that standing is dangerous, so how come it’s not dangerous if you’re watching rugby (you can also get a drink) or watching a concert? Football fans were being thrown out of Wembley stadium for standing just a few days before pictures were beamed all round the world of thousands of concert goers in that same stadium not only standing but swaying and dancing.
That can’t be right.
The authorities want football fans to sit down, shut up and do what we’re told because they’re frightened of what we might do if they don’t make us do this.
The answer is that we will probably do nothing, except make more noise, sing more songs and make a better atmosphere because of the good time we’re having standing up and supporting our team.