General Manager Stadium Update

Stadium capacity update from General Manager, Dale Pryde-MacDonald:

I know there have been a lot of questions around the capacity of the stadium in light of the match this evening. There are many factors that are taken into consideration that I hope I can provide clarity on.

Firstly, the Cowshed & Sinclair Street. Due to the infrastructure in terms of Sinclair Street fans being able to access the Cowshed throughout the match we can not stop people from migrating to the Cowshed in the case of poor weather which we need to then account for in the Cowshed number.

So, in reality if you added the Cowshed capacity (with segregation) to the Sinclair Street number on a good weather day its going to be completely different (higher) to the number we would be coming to based on a poor weather match in terms of how many one area could hold safely should people move across. If it was a day where it was bucketing down with rain, people are naturally going to go to a covered area and that is where we have to be sensible with our numbering in there.

Within the main stand we have had to use segregation which left us with a capacity of 1,000.

Motherwell were given 3,000 tickets for the Wee Dublin End which naturally (on a good day) could potentially have 3,600 in the away section, with segregation this was again brought down slightly. Plus, a small number of seats in the Main Stand, which gave Motherwell a total capacity of 3,000, of which they have sold 2,000.

There are also reductions in capacity for segregation in the Cowshed (on the Wee Dublin End side) and the effects on the number due to the TV presence.

All in all, that left us with the following capacities for the home ends:

Sinclair Street & Cowshed – 2,500 and Main Stand – 1,000 plus 3,000 – away fans, a capacity in total of 6,700 when other areas such as disabled zones and hospitality are taken into consideration.

This is far from ideal but with having a large portion of the stadium uncovered & unseated we have to take the most pragmatic and sensible decisions around capacities to ensure that we limit the opportunity for overcrowding and potential crushing endangering supporters. We are also dealing with a stadium that needs significant infrastructure upgrades to handle larger crowds which most people can see. In order for those upgrades to happen, significant investment would be required which is not a conversation for today.

The safety team and advisors have had my full support on this as everybody should be entitled to come to Cappielow and enjoy the match comfortably and safely- safety is paramount.

We have had an absolutely fantastic uptake on attendance for this evening. So much so that we have less than 400 tickets remaining for the home ends, which is why the decision was taken to close the ticket office this evening. The timing of this has been very fast paced in the last 24 hours due to the fact that we had only sold 800 home tickets by Wednesday this week and as of last night we were sat at 2,400 when I was on a call with our safety team at midnight.

If anybody wishes to speak to me directly on this matter, please do not hesitate to get in contact with the club and I will happily meet and discuss with supporters.

I hope everybody comes along this evening, has a great night and gets right behind Dougie and the team where we can hopefully make it a night to remember.