The sound of the crowd: Fulham is wrong about the crush at Brazil v Ghana

07/07/2011: The Guardian has this astonishing quote from Fulham comms boss Sarah Brookes:

“I didn’t see anything that alarmed me hugely although I do see why some people could have been concerned. There were a lot of people with musical instruments and vuvuzelas and so on and if you’re not used to that environment it might be unsettling.”

Mishandle ticket collections, claim nobody got stuck in a dangerous crowd, patronise us by saying we’re scared of vuvuzelas. It keeps getting better.

I gather from an email string involving some of the folks mentioned below that a few complainants have been offered complimentary seats for Fulham matches. Advice from the Football Supporters’ Federation is to refuse the offer ‘until we get answers’.

06/09/2011: This is a simple one: my first-person account of last night’s crush outside the Brazil v Ghana game at Craven Cottage.

It went to Amanda Jacks at the Football Supporters’ Federation, who appealed for eyewitnesses after another, better account appeared on Headers and Volleys. Journalist Benji Lanyado has one too.

The Evening Standard has Fulham’s account. Judge it from the comments.

My girlfriend and I booked online and arrived at around 7.20, 25 minutes before kick-off. As we approached it was immediately obvious that we weren’t going to get in before kick-off, and that if there was ever a queuing system it had broken down. A crowd between 20-30 deep and twice as wide was converging on two small huts. We could see one person inside each hut dealing with the public, but that may be because we were so far back – other accounts say there were two in each.

The space between the back of that crowd and the housing opposite the Johnny Haynes stand was now too limited to accommodate the flow of people trying to reach the Putney End or Hammersmith End turnstiles. As the flow seized up, it became impossible for those who had retrieved their tickets from the collection points to get out and make their way to the stands. We were stuck in a largely immobile crowd with groups jostling to move north, east and west.

My girlfriend and I were separated on several occasions. I found myself lifted onto the tips of my toes more than once, to the point of nearly overbalancing. There were a number of young children in the crowd, for whom the situation will have been terrifying if not seriously dangerous.

I understand stewards and police did eventually intervene, but it came far too late; during the 30 minutes or so we were in the crowd all I heard or saw was one man ordering people not to push, which though good advice did nothing to solve the problem.

We managed to squeeze our way out after those on the edge of the crowd started to drift away. Unable to leave altogether due to a police cordon now understandably in place at the near end of the Putney End turnstiles, we spoke to a steward about alternative ways of getting our tickets and entering the ground.

The steward advised us to return to the collection queue, and after we refused on safety grounds suggested we get our tickets reprinted at the enquiry window – where we were again advised to return to the collection point, and again refused. There seemed to be little recognition from staff members that anything was going wrong.

Ticket enquiry staff eventually agreed to print our tickets, and we took our seats some five minutes before the end of the first half. We found our seats already occupied and saw several other fans in the same situation – I can only speculate this was down to the knock-on effects of some seats being allocated twice in the chaos. But the atmosphere was good, and there were no serious problems or safety issues once inside the ground.