Re: Stewards.
Posted: Fri Jul 12, 2013 2:05 pm
You're right TTT, the crowd should be able to control themselves, although there's been a few incidents over the season that would indicate that not all of them can, with or without away supporters/officials to direct their abuse/frustrations at, leading to a number of complaints and NFA investigations that are currently ongoing that the Duke touched on. Unfortunately crowd control is far from being not really an issue. (The incidents I'm thinking of have nothing to do with you or the singers that seemed to receive a bit of a bashing in the past TTT).
The fact that you see nothing wrong with the way it is currently is exactly one of the problems. From the outside I know things seemed to go well and so people think everything is fine therefore we don't need any help - this couldn't be further from the truth. We are desperate for help, not just with matchdays.
From a matchday perspective we were really stretched at some points last season, especially on Tuesday nights where we were lucky that some of us were able to be at the ground from 5pm onwards to start getting things ready, but many people can't due to work etc so we were understaffed many times last season.
We currently have only a couple of properly trained and qualified stewards amongst our volunteers, this simply is not enough. We also can't expect unqualified volunteers to have to deal with situations that arise and with the level of support some of our opponents have in the Prem this is a far bigger potential issue than it has been with the level of support from the away teams we encountered last season. Although last season as well showed that it only take one muppet to cause a problem that can easily escalate, especially when drink has been involved. That's why we need to get more qualified stewards and pay for them if necessary.
The other problem is of course that it's the same people week in week out helping out, so just doubling the amount of help we currently have means that people could actually have a match off and watch the game for a change.
Even if you can't/don't want to help on matchdays there's still plenty of jobs in the vacancies that don't require you to work on matchdays and indeed some of the help I desperately need is for coordinators to make sure we have cover in certain areas and is purely an administrative role that can be carried out in your spare time and not on matchdays (it would be far too late by then!).
One final point on a personal note, stewards are/should not be glorified ball boys, that's not their role and not what they should be expected to do on matchdays.
The fact that you see nothing wrong with the way it is currently is exactly one of the problems. From the outside I know things seemed to go well and so people think everything is fine therefore we don't need any help - this couldn't be further from the truth. We are desperate for help, not just with matchdays.
From a matchday perspective we were really stretched at some points last season, especially on Tuesday nights where we were lucky that some of us were able to be at the ground from 5pm onwards to start getting things ready, but many people can't due to work etc so we were understaffed many times last season.
We currently have only a couple of properly trained and qualified stewards amongst our volunteers, this simply is not enough. We also can't expect unqualified volunteers to have to deal with situations that arise and with the level of support some of our opponents have in the Prem this is a far bigger potential issue than it has been with the level of support from the away teams we encountered last season. Although last season as well showed that it only take one muppet to cause a problem that can easily escalate, especially when drink has been involved. That's why we need to get more qualified stewards and pay for them if necessary.
The other problem is of course that it's the same people week in week out helping out, so just doubling the amount of help we currently have means that people could actually have a match off and watch the game for a change.
Even if you can't/don't want to help on matchdays there's still plenty of jobs in the vacancies that don't require you to work on matchdays and indeed some of the help I desperately need is for coordinators to make sure we have cover in certain areas and is purely an administrative role that can be carried out in your spare time and not on matchdays (it would be far too late by then!).
One final point on a personal note, stewards are/should not be glorified ball boys, that's not their role and not what they should be expected to do on matchdays.
