This article was originally written in July 2020 – slap bang in the middle of the Covid-19 pandemic…thankfully my fears were not realised. CLP

The time has come to take a fresh look at the Sports Ground Safety Act (1975). Sitting down all the time was never good for public health and now even less so.

How many EFL League One and Two clubs will make it through the pandemic and perhaps more crucially, how many of our traditional football grounds?

Bury went bust before the 2019/20 season even started. Bolton just pulled through. Blackpool having stepped out of the Oyston family shadow, have walked straight into this maelstrom. Coventry City, renting the matchday facilities at Birmingham’s St Andrew’s, was just clinging on with crowds of around 6,700. Ipswich, are just finding their feet with crowds of around 19,500 for every home game, having struggled financially since the club went full Premier League and lost control of their finances. Portsmouth have only recently been pulled out of a financial black hole by their fans, who in turn must be relieved that their local team is now under-written by a billionaire’s family trust.

And what of Sunderland AFC, once the ‘Bank of England Club’? The unluckiest Black Cats ever known, were in the middle of addressing complex fiscal arrangements and scratching up some embarrassing financial details, when the time came for us all to hold our breaths.

Every club in the lower divisions and several bigger ones higher up the ladder, are walking a precarious financial tight-rope. Player wages, contracts? Player safety? Play behind closed doors? Scrap the season? Play the play-offs? TV money paid out or paid back? iFollow? Regionalised leagues? Five substitutes (really!)? All is up for discussion, but one factor is potentially the critical one for the long-term survival of professional football; stadium design.

No one wants football without fans, it will be a disaster for viewing figures and the Premier League / SKY / BT balloon will just float away. As in the theatre industry, sitting fans, or an audience down in thigh-to-thigh proximity is not going to meet Covid-19 health guidelines. I believe that all seater regulations, brought in following the tragedy of Hillsborough in 1989, will have to be scrapped. Without a vaccine, no local authority will be able to issue Sports Ground Safety Certificates, unless clubs reorganise how they accommodate spectators.

If you can smell stale beer, exhaled cigarettes, pie belches, bad breath, or even toothpaste and chewing gum from the people sitting around you at a game; spending a couple of hours at your favourite football club could well lead you to contracting the coronavirus. When a mate next tells you, “Academicals will be the death of me!” It won’t be the basis for a jocular discussion.

Portsmouth’s Fratton Park started 2019/20 with a reputation for impregnability. By the time Arsenal came and went on 2^nd March, leaving Covid 19 to infect at least four Pompey players, League One ground to a halt. The old stadium had crammed in an average 17, 804 spectators, plus stewards, caterers, police and media for each home fixture. The team were unbeaten at home in League One and the dream of Michael Eisner’s family and his Tournate Company, to redevelop the ground to keep its famous matchday buzz, was well on the way to fulfilment. The developing plans, some of which are now with the local planning authorities, allowed for increased capacity, greater comfort and increased profit from improved match-day facilities and catering.

The Eisner (and that of most Pompey fans) ideal is to sustain the club on a better than break-even basis, using the ground’s now unique character, with its Leitch stand, as the appeal. With Everton and Burnley, there are now few such traditional feeling grounds in England and there were none available for just £5 million to buy when the Eisners came calling.

Plans to develop the very unpopular, uncomfortable and appallingly provisioned, away end on Milton Lane had just been publicised when the coronavirus Lockdown began. Now, I fear, these plans will have to be shredded, along with the concept of Fratton Park as a traditional football Jurrasic-park, complete with some real dinosaurs in the Fratton End.

How can a ground with a capacity of 19,669 and averaging 17, 804 in the third tier, ever be Covid-19 compatible within the congested confines it offers? Operating at 90.5% of attendance capacity is every Chairman’s dream. You can plan a business on that basis and enjoy the bonuses from televised games, cup games, EFL finals and if necessary, play-off matches. But such attendances cannot be sustained in a Covid-19 world, within small all-seater stadiums.

So, will football find a corner and quietly curl up and fade away? I don’t think so, because I believe “safe standing” will become the rule not the exception.

Grounds like the Stadium MK in Bedfordshire, with perfect sightlines from all positions are big and modern enough to allow supporters to spread out. MK Dons attract an average gate of 9,246 – just 30% of the 30, 500 capacity.  The Stadium of Light with over 30,000 fans at each home game, was only working at 61% of capacity. These are clubs that could distribute supporters around the ground safely. 

Bolton’s average turnout is just 11,420, but again this only fills 40% of its 28,723 potential. Even a thankfully Oyston-free Blackpool, are playing games at Bloomfield Road when it is just over half full.

How will Fleetwood Town cope at Highbury? Exeter at St James Park? Lincoln at Sincil Bank? Clubs like these, who were getting the benefit of a feisty atmosphere by packing the fans in very tightly, will really suffer. Capacity and matchday revenues will be reduced dramatically. Hopefully Lincoln can adjust their plans for their proposed ground improvements to cope; luckily, they have some space to work in immediately adjacent to the club.

Grounds that generate a good atmosphere, like these, will be forced to think again. Safe standing could potentially increase capacities by around 80% if every seat was replaced by safe standing, but only in theory. The need is for fans to keep within household groups, (impossible to police), or maintain physically distances – even if the social distance is reduced to a metre. How will accessibility for those with disability be guaranteed?

It may be feasible to get similar, or slightly reduced attendances if standing is brought back into football grounds, but not everyone is able to stand and then how will be seating be arranged to allow people to get around each other for a loo break, or if arriving late? 

Will football be like opera, where late arriving ticket holders have to wait to be seated at the interval? You can see this going down well when the police socially-distanced kettle has kept you waiting at the station for safe passage, or congestion on the M25 has held up the away fans’ coaches en route. However, on the bright side, the re-designs and new ground regulations may end the tiresome habits of those who take perverse pleasure from leaving games disruptively, five minutes before half-time and again before the final whistle.

It is going to take quite some time to resolve all these questions. Pinning the hopes for “live” football on finding a vaccine rather dodges the more immediate issues of sustaining good public health, if crowds are to return to our football grounds.

Pompey started 2019-20 with two of its iconic floodlight pylons removed. One was cut up and taken away, the other moved to the club car park as a reminder that Fratton Park was the first ground to play a Football League Division One game under floodlights in 1956. I found the asymmetrical image of the ground unsettling, but accepted that time passes and some change is inevitable. I obviously had no inkling that this season may turn out to be the very last season for the old ground. The place where my grandfather introduced me to Pompey. Missing a quartet of floodlight pylons will be as nothing, if my old home ground goes too.

CLP 01/07/2020