Safety Gate

[loyalroyaldaz]

How much longer are we going to have to put up with this stupid thing?

I have never uderstood the purpose of it and you ask a steward and he will tell you its the Police decision and the Police tell you its the Clubs decision.

Time after time you are forced to walk all round the ground to get down shooters hill only to be met by away supporters walking to the car parks and abusing everybody.

When you get round by the away coaches you have a line of pathetic stewards doing nothing but stand in a line. They dont even stop people walking through it and down the side of the coaches.

Whats the point? Why dont they just open the safety gate and let the home fans clear the area much quicker?

I have even asked the hairy bearded chief twat of a steward why and he just looks at you and shakes his hair out of his eyes!!

[Ian Royal]

To prevent immediate mingling en masse of the away & home fans who have been potentially antagonising each other all game. By making them have to walk around the ground, you make it less convenient to just go and kick off with each other and harder to find each other assuming they can still be arsed by the time they've got round.

It's not possible to prevent mingling eventually, but you can easily take steps to slow it down and spread it out. Hence the gate. And why it's not shut before the game, when no antagonism has gone on at that point.

[loyalroyaldaz]

Its fecking annoying.
Imagine if you had to walk round the settee to turn Radio Berkshire off every game instead of just going straight to the radiogram!

[bobby1413]

only to be met by away supporters walking to the car parks and abusing everybody.

I think you've answered your own question.

It's a safety precaution just in case.

Straight after the match tempers are raised, away fans are pished, and have a long miserable journey to their pig sty of a town, and then out pops the y26 youth club.

It would be mayhem

[loyalroyaldaz]

I would agree if it wasnt for the fact that both parties can get to eachother round the ground in a matter of 2 or 3 minutes and frequently do !
Move the gate to just at the end of the away turnstiles, park their coaches there, straight out of their seats and onto the coach meanwhile the rest of us can come out from the East Stand, straight down Shooters Hill and away.
No pushing through opposition fans and getting abused/threatend etc.

[The Real Sandhurst Royal]

The safety gate has been debate on here many times.

The club should apply some common sense on this one.

Wigan at Home on a Tuesday night with 150 away supporters, does it really warrant the gate being in place NO.

[Ian Royal]

Its fecking annoying.
Imagine if you had to walk round the settee to turn Radio Berkshire off every game instead of just going straight to the radiogram!

I'd just deal with if it was set up that way for obvious safety reasons.

[Z175]

I'm sure they only used to use it by exception and would announce it during the second half if in use. I don't recall seeing any trouble.

Its clearly absurd to force people on the lengthy detour to avoid the Wigan posse. I agree its not a major problem, but for me its the symbolism as much as the inconvenience.

Frankly this is just one of countless examples of treating football fans like animals, like being coralled onto trains or held in buses. At Reading we don't suffer as much as some.

Clearly there is are a minority, known to the police, of troublemakers who follow certain clubs.But then Tesco don't strip search every customer because of shoplifters do they.

Frankly I think they should do away with segregation altogether apart from certain obvious clubs or fixtures. I've always been very welcome on the occasions I've been sitting with home fans when Reading are away.