The death of a man at the Oasis gig at Wembley Stadium last Saturday really got me to wondering just how safe these new-fangled modern stadia really are. According to reports, Lee Claydon slipped and fell to his death. While details are scant, his parents stress that nothing untoward happened. Lee’s dad said:”He doesn’t take drugs [and] may have had a couple of beers but who hadn’t there? People have said horrible things but it was just an accident.” Of course, I know nothing about the incident so it’s pointless and frankly it would be tasteless to speculate. But I have been to some of these stadia, including Wembley, and while I am not normally prone to vertigo, I have taken a sharp intake of breath on occasion.
In 2022, I attended the Rugby League Challenge Cup Final between Wigan Warriors and Huddersfield Giants at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium in North London. I was expecting a cavernous, soulless, generic new stadium, which is exactly what it was. I was seated at one end of the stadium, having to climb what felt like a vertical staircase until I reached my seat. It was breathtaking but not in a nice way. One small step in the wrong direction and I’d have careered down the stairs at a fair rate of knots. I didn’t get used to it, either, and felt just as unsafe at the end of the game as I did at the start. And I honestly did think: someone is really going to hurt themself one day because this just doesn’t feel safe. Maybe, as a regular customer – that’s what football fans are these days at the elite clubs, at least that’s what the clubs think – you get used to it. I wouldn’t want to try to get used to it. A few weeks later, a friend went to see the popular beat combo outfit Guns N’ Roses at the same stadium. She reached her seat and was overwhelmed by a vertigo she never knew she suffered from and was moved by a friendly steward. (Unfortunately, that also meant she could hear the band much clearer.)
I’ve been to the new Wembley a few times over the years and, once more, I thought: “That’s a bit steep!” as we joked about needing crampons to reach our seats. Again, I thought it more than slightly unsafe. To be fair, I have not felt the same way when visiting Cardiff’s Principality Stadium, which I regard as the best stadium I’ve been to, nor at Old Trafford where I have seen a number of Rugby League Grand Finals because, frankly, you’re so tightly packed in, it’s more likely that you will suffocate rather than plunge to your death. (I am not joking. Some of the passageways are so insanely narrow, I would advise anyone with claustrophobia not to go there (or any self-respecting football fan, but that’s another story).
Now if I, a simple fan, can conclude that there are elements to these new stadia that do not appear to be safe, then surely the authorities must have an idea, too? I am never likely to be a supporter of a club that plays in a giant identikit stadium, like Spurs do, but if I did, I’d have to think long and hard about where I chose to sit. I always prefer to stand at the football anyway.
For all I know, everyone knows the risks when they attend games at the big stadia? Maybe there were signs I wasn’t aware of, saying things like: ‘Don’t slip when you are climbing the mountain called the home end because it may not end well’? I do remember leaving the Spurs ground, marching down the steep steps at a glacial speed, in the style of a Penguin who had shit himself, and thinking how I’d like this to be over really quickly, thank you very much, so I could make my way to an overcrowded railway platform just across the way.
We will find out soon enough what really happened to the unfortunate Mr Claydon but in very general terms, something along these lines was always likely to happen and for all we know may happen again. Maybe this was a one-off and it’s just me exaggerating my fears. I hated the experience, though, and I was happy to be back on terra firma once Wigan had collected their winners medals.
