Just why are Brentford being so short sighted with regard to our game there on Saturday.

In these days of football clubs being in financial trouble, Brentford are throwing away a potential windfall of around £60,000, almost as good as extra home game in terms of finance.

Despite rumours that the police had refused to let Saints have more tickets a look at Brentfords official website confirms that the police only advised the game be all ticket, it was the club itself who decided not to see more tickets to Saints. Something that they could have easily done if they wanted to, following the lead of both Orient & Notts County who allocated us extra seats usually reserved for home fans.

Griffin Park has a capacity of 12,763, this season's highest attendance was the 6,543 for the visit of Peterborough back in October, its lowest crowd was only about six weeks ago when only 3,795 could be bothered to turn up, giving a average for this season of 5,088, so its quite clear that by giving Saints more tickets it is not going to mean that brentford fans will not be able to get in. in fact despite a Wembley visit for the JPT final, Brentford fans havent been following their club with any great enthusiasm this seasons average being almost a thousand down on last years, the 6,501 who watched our game there in January 2010 including a sold out away section only being 500 more than their average crowd.

Logistically it would have been very easy to give Saints fans the best part of 3,000 extra tickets,, the Bill Axbey stand runs the length of the pitch and last year only had about 200 people in it, it would have been easy to give us the whole of this stand or at least 75% of it perhaps.

Some would point back to our FA Cup game in 2005 when Brentford suddenly decided they wanted more tickets when it was too late and claim that this is now perhaps a tit for tat gesture from them, if so its firstly cutting off their nose to spite their face and secondly extremely short sighted in terms of potential crowd control issues.

Even at this late hour Brentford could probably make an extra thousand or so tickets available to Saints in this stand by perhaps giving us half of it, the gate whilst possibly heading towards the biggest of their season, is probabaly going to attract 7,000 at best, but failing that I would hope that they would consider making part of this stand an away area, there are undoubtably a fair few Saints fans who have obtained tickets in home areas, to prevent confrontation perhaps the club could allow these fans to move to an area where they can be policed more efficiently thus cutting down the potential for crowd trouble.

But perhaps the biggest worry for the police will be those going to the game without tickets in the hope of getting in, certainly with so much riding on the gmae and the potential for us to be promoted alongside the fact that its a day out in London there could be a lot going without tickets who will then be left to sit in the pubs around the ground whilst the game is on, again perhaps Brentford could do something on the day about this by allowing Saints fans seats in the Bill Axbey stand, whilst this would have to be kept quiet, the fact that it would take a lot of Saints fans off the streets has to be good.

Of course football clubs dont usually seem to think about the ordinary supporter, their website states that we havent been given extra tickets to give as many of their  supporters as possible the chance to see the game, this being the case then given their -revious attendances they are possibly the most optimistic club in the entire world of football to hope that 6,000 Brentford fans will suddenly appear from nowhere, but congratulations Brentford, Im not sure what you hoped to achieve, but what you actually have done is stop football fans watching a game of football. .       

Photo: Action Images

bstokesaint added 17:08 - Apr 26 Well said Nick. It's a shame Brentford are being so short sighted here. I'm sure our fans will make themselves heard still mind and Brentford will be left wondering why they didn't take the extra £60k. Hopefully next season we'll start getting proper allocations.
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