Liverpool fan sites cover safe standing debate

Recent months have seen safe standing featured on Liverpool fan websites and in items produced by prominent Liverpool fans on TV and in the mainstream press. In November 2013, for instance, major fans' website 'This is Anfield' began a series of featured articles on the safe standing debate.

After regular contributor John Ritchie had set the ball rolling with a piece entitled 'Liverpool FC: The case for safe standing', our own Jon Darch contributed an article looking at the social background to the standing ban and suggesting that to support a ban based on the premise that fans who like to stand are trouble waiting to happen was an insult to the 96. Jon also contributed a set of safe standing FAQs for the site.

More recently, 'This is Anfield' has added a further piece by Peter Caton, author of 'Stand Up, Sit Down', arguing that to assert that standing is unsafe harms the fight for justice, a view with which Sheila Coleman of the Hillsborough Justice Campaign appears to agree:

It is very encouraging and interesting to see such Liverpool websites and individuals carry / link to such articles, which were preceded in the late summer by a safe standing video feature for BT Sport produced by Times football editor and long-standing Liverpool fan Tony Evans and followed in January 2014 by an article by Evan's Times colleague and fellow Reds fans Tony Barrett in The Times and on Liverpool fan site The Anfield Wrap, in which he asserted that safe standing deserves calm consideration.

Never let it be said, therefore, that all in Liverpool are against standing. Clearly that is not the case.