A group of fans were ejected from Ashton Gate yesterday, just because two little boys were spotted wearing Leeds socks, leading to a brilliant response from Andrea Radrizzani.
Philip Joel bought tickets for the family stand for himself, his two young sons and his brother-in-law, and they were told at the time of booking that it wasn’t a problem that they were Leeds fans. They drove the 200 miles from Cornwall to attend their nearest fixture of the season in anticipation of a rare chance to see their team in action.
But half an hour before kick-off they were ejected from the stadium after someone had spotted that the two little boys had Leeds socks on. Do Bristol City seriously think that two little boys are going to kick off in the family section?
Joel posted a picture on twitter of one of his sons crying outside the ground and asked all his followers to retweet. And thankfully it got as far as Andrea Radrizzani, who has delivered a withering response.
"This is unacceptable and we will invite the family at Elland Road as guests. what can you expect from a club whom request points deductions for no reasons and didn’t accept our documentary crew to access at the ground and follow our team.”
This all came about after the home club decided to restrict the away allocation to 2,600 for yesterday’s game, even though the stand at that end holds over 4,000. At the game they very pedantically covered the unused seats at the front, which emphasised how much revenue they’d cost themselves through the lost ticket sales.
The restricted allocation was always going to force Leeds fans to seek tickets in the home stands as the only way of getting into the game. But late last week as many as 400 Leeds fans had their tickets cancelled, once they had cross-referenced their details with the Leeds database. Rather harsh for fans who only wanted to see the team and had no intention of causing trouble.
Radz also referred to the comments made by Bristol City’s egotistical chairman Stephen Lansdown in the wake of the Spygate scandal, when he said we had "damaged the reputation of English football”. He was one of 11 club chairmen who wrote to the EFL to demand a points deduction, even though he acknowledged we hadn’t broken any rules.
The documentary he mentioned is one that is being made by Radrizzani’s own Eleven Studios, in conjunction with Leeds-based media firm ‘The City Talking’. It’s the story of the season, similar to the recent films about Manchester City and Sunderland, and sounds like something to look forward to. The Bristol Post are claiming the film crew were let into the stadium, but couldn’t access the tunnel because there were too many people in that area at the time.
The Bristol Post and the Yorkshire Post have both asked Bristol City for their comments, but so far they have yet to come up with an excuse for the actions of their employees.