total chaos lastnight, 10mins till kick off and the crowd all locked outside

no one really knew what was going on, which was poor from the stewards.

picked up our tickets from the ticket office and the staff were in darkness having to use mobile phones for torches!

think the crowd was 4250 which was above what i expected.

as for the so called catalan fans, they were a bunch of lads tanked up on alcohol from bradford, they didnt come over from France, and were trying to cause trouble all night, one got thrown out after trying to get on the pitch

My son works alongside the team and heard the discussions down near the pitch. I think golden point was considered, but if you have golden point after having it delayed til 8:30 then they wouldn't have made the flights.

I know it's frustrating that there were mixed messages but I imagine it's hard to get the same message to all Stewards without power. I personally think the club handled it well.

What I found when I arrived was not stewards helping out informing the queues. The contingency as far as I was aware if this occasion ever happened was that loudhailers be used and contact between stewards via mobile phones if radio contact was not possible ( though saying that the radios can be worked without a base station) Neither was used which I found strange in fact the stewards at the south end retreated into the gates not willing to help informing or sorting the queues. I did approach the supervisor of these stewards inquiring why certain things were not done as they should and he said I don't have access to a loudhailer ( common sense would've obtained one seeing as they are plenty of spares!!) and we did a good job considering the situation! Hmmm not from my point if view a more thorough professional approach could've been done at the south end as it was chaos!!
But hey no one died and tbh the turnstile operators did a good job! But the rush to the turnstiles reminded me of a well publicised in going enquiry! No organisation!
My son was in tears cos he couldn't get in but I assured him things would be ok! And the amount of folk who approached me to ask what was going on and that well I was in the dark as much as them!

i am sure most people involved did work very hard on the night to get the game on and get the hospitalities fed!

however the issue most people had was the lack of information, most people i spoke to,like myself, had heard the game had been delayed ( where this came from nobody knew) but a lot of people thought the game was delayed and were in no rush to get in the ground for 8.00,hence the massive queue to collect tickets at 7.45
indeed, a lot of people were still in the pub at 7.50 presuming the game was delayed. im fairly sure someone within the club must have known about the "rumour" that the game had been delayed, so why was no message sent out that the game would, in fact kick off at the usual time of 8.00
from arriving at the ground to collect tickets to getting into the ground with 10 minutes gone, not one person representing the club relayed any information to anyone as far as i am aware,most of the stewards, like most of the fans, were under the impression that the match had been delayed and they were as much caught out as the fans when the teams came out for an 8.00 kick off with thousands of people still outside.
wishy, mentioned loudhailers, but even just a tannoy announcement or even relaying a message for sky to broadcast advising that the game wasn't delayed would have been better than nothing.

the real danger occurred after kick off when the previous queues for the turnstiles turned into one massive scrum to get in, thank god it wasn't worse than it was.

i think the club could have handled it a lot better than it was, and the ticket office giving wrong information out didn't help.
but to me, the fans and stewards were just left to it once the game had kicked off, and thankfully, everybody got in safely although most missed the kick off and the first try.

i was disappointed in the stewards, no one knew what was going on and they didnt help the situation, should have been shouting out what was happening, also when the turnstiles opened their was confusion as to which ones were for tickets only and paying only (some had signs above some not) they stewards didnt really help with the queues either.

but overall it could have been worse, could have missed alot more than the 10mins that some did

As Wishy mentions the rush to the turnstiles could have ended a lot worse, but the staff aren't to blame for this...it's us fans, we're all old enough to know better than try cram our way in forcing others out of the way. Do we as adults need a guy probably younger than us in a high vis to tell us to behave?

Being told there was a delay I can understand the frustrations however.