Quote: (Broken) Time Bandit "I'm struggling to think of a ground regulation 'Sherlock' didn't break?'"
The stewards were also frankly clueless last night .... They're a paid employee of their club.
They have certain obligations to maintain. They are supposed to be, amongst other things, to take away the responsabilty (and cost) of providing members of the local constabulary from being in attendance inside the stadium.
Previously at Hull KR, they've had a buy-a-ticket-sit-where-you-like policy ... If this is the case, then fine. I don't have a problem with that and I am quite able to find my own seat. On entering the ground, I was told by one steward "That you've got to sit on the seat allocated on your ticket". If that's the case, then fine, but make sure you enforce it.
After finding the entire row (we'd got a block of about 8 seats on that row supposedly booked to us) with people already occupying the seats we held, upon enquiring with the nearest steward, I was once again confirmed that it was allocated seats policy this evening.
At that point I suggested that he 'do his job' and go sort out the row we were on, that sounded too much like hard work to him, so in consultation with his colleague the policy had a sudden change to 'sit where you like'.
Given that, as I said earlier, they have certain obligations with regards to crowd control and ground safety. I kept an eye on the couple of stewards that were in my visual range from time to time during the game. Not once did I see them taking an active interest in what was going on in the crowd around them. For exmple, the racist abuse given by a certain individual already mentioned on here was actually directed towards the black players on his [iown[/i team, but would have been clearly audible to his nearest steward. From what I observed, suggests to me that the stewarding job at Craven Park is one of the easiest jobs going, because there is little actual effort involved and the entire evening is spent perched on a stool at the front watching the game whilst getting paid for it and the ability to dodge work at every opportunity.
Indeed, during the Ryan Bailey incident towards the end of the game, one of the stewards was having a laugh and a chat with a group that only seconds before had been abusing someone that was potentially seriously injured.
Before Rovers fans come on here and suggest that I've got something against their club or I'm having a go for the sake of it. There are other clubs, including Leeds, who can and do make similar shortfalls in terms of their safety obligations. The vast majority of the time, there's nothing serious happens and there complacent attitude is reinforced. However, history is littered with events, where the 'it won't happen to us' attitude has cost many lives. I merely comment on what I see ....
