The campaign for safe standing areas to be incorporated into top-level football grounds has received a major boost, after Aston Villa said they are examining introducing a standing section at Villa Park.
Paul Faulkner, Villa's chief executive, told a supporters' consultation group that he recognises fans want to stand, that safe standing areas could help improve the match atmosphere, allow for some cheaper ticket prices, and therefore attract younger supporters currently priced out by the cost of seats.
Faulkner has met the Football Supporters' Federation, which has long campaigned for a relaxation of the law compulsory requiring clubs in the top two divisions to have all-seating in their grounds.
Villa have become the first Premier League club to break publicly with the orthodoxy which has lasted two decades, that standing is too associated with football's bleak period in the 1980s ever to return.
Lord Justice Taylor recommended compulsory all-seating for all football grounds, later confined to the top two divisions, in his final report after the 1989 Hillsborough Disaster. His recommendation was opposed by the then Football Supporters Association, which pointed out that terracing itself had not been a cause of the disaster, which happened due to mismanagement of the FA Cup semi-final crowd by the South Yorkshire police, Sheffield Wednesday's negligently unsafe ground, and the fences at the front of the Leppings Lane terrace.
The FSA argued that grounds, including standing areas, should be made safe, and that if seating was made compulsory, the clubs would raise prices so substantially that long-standing supporters would be priced out.
Taylor rejected that, saying: "It should be possible to plan a price structure which suits the cheapest seats to the pockets of those at present paying to stand," citing the cost of standing at Rangers' Ibrox ground then, of £4. With cumulative inflation of 77.1% since, the price of that ticket at the beginning of this season would have been £7. Yet prices at the bigger Premier League clubs mostly start at a minimum £30 and go much higher than that. At Liverpool, whose supporters were the victims at Hillsborough, standing on the Kop cost £4 in 1989-90; the price for a seat this season at category A games is £45.
Politicians have been reluctant even to discuss standing at football, because of the association with Hillsborough, but last year the sports minister, Hugh Robertson, said he would look at the issue if presented with overwhelming agreement by the police and safety authorities. That remains a long way off, but the argument has shifted, with the authorities no longer able to argue that standing is in itself unsafe.
Awareness has grown of the standing areas in the German Bundesliga, between rails spaced closely enough to make a large crush physically impossible. The FSF points to the safety risk at Premier League grounds now, where many fans stand throughout matches, in seated areas not designed to accommodate standing.
One entrepreneurial supporter, Jon Darch, has been visiting clubs in the Championship, Premier League and Scotland with a sample Bundesliga-style rail structure, and says he has had an "enthusiastic response" from all clubs. The Liberal Democrat MP Don Foster, who has introduced a private members bill to remove the standing prohibition, is planning to bring Darch's exhibition to Parliament shortly.
Seating has never been compulsory in Scottish football, and last month the Scottish Premier League positively invited applications from clubs to introduce safe standing areas. All the SPL clubs, including Celtic and Rangers, have been positive about doing so, with Neil Doncaster, the SPL chief executive, saying: "I do expect to receive applications, including from Celtic and Rangers, as early as this summer, and the rail system has the most chance of being approved."
Peter Daykin, of the FSF, pointed to St Helens opening a new stadium for this 2012 Super League season, incorporating large standing areas, and said: "We hope football's status as a pariah sport is coming to an end. Our members have always been overwhelmingly in favour of safe standing areas."
A Premier League spokesman said it remains the league's position that stadiums should be all-seat, in line with government policy. "If Aston Villa want to explore safe standing and bring it forward as an issue, we welcome the debate around the table," he said.
