Up For the Cup – The Europa Cup 4 August 2016

Tonight was a chance for me to go to a European club game and a chance to visit a new ground. Many thanks to my good friends, Tony and Lisa , West Ham United season ticket holders who offered me one of their carer tickets to the game. They knew I wanted to visit the London Stadium, the new home of West Ham.

We met at Stratford Station and made our way to the ground. It’s around a mile from the railway station. To get to the ground you have to filter through the Westfield Shopping Centre, all 60,000 fans. It was bad enough tonight, imagine it on a Saturday in the run up to Christmas, a busy shopping centre and 60,000 football fans…It doesn’t really bear thinking about.

Still, getting into the ground was easy. Our seats, bear in mind they are for 2 people with mobility issues and were disabled season tickets. The seats were on the upper tier of the East Stand, which is accessible via stairs or a lift. Then you have to walk down a number of steps of seating and make your way some 37 seats along a row of other fans…. This is West Ham’s idea of disabled seats. One of my group had an electric mobility scooter. He was told that even if he could have made his way to the seats, could not be left as it would be a health and safety issue. Quite how these seats, which were sold as disabled season tickets to  Tony & Lisa, are in any way suitable is beyond me. Now West Ham can’t claim they did not know of the needs of Tony & Lisa as the season tickets were clearly sold as disabled seats and come with free carer tickets.

Teething troubles perhaps? Fortunately many of the stewards we spoke to work down the Orient as well and know Tony & Lisa. A supervisor found us a seat in the proper disable section. We lasted there until 5 minutes into the game when we were asked to move as the seat we were in belonged to another disabled season ticket holder. We were moved a few blocks round to seats in the Bobby Moore Stand, in the disabled section. The views from here were excellent. One of the Stewards volunteered that we were not the only holders of disabled tickets that were given tickets in totally unsuitable seats.

The ground itself is impressive. The disabled seats when we located them give an excellent view. There appeared to be plenty of places to buy food and drink.

I am not sure what the view is like from the Upper Tier Seats. They appear to be a long way back and a long way from the pitch. The ground has a large bank of seats down the East Side. This is obviously intended to create a wall of noise. The other 3 sides of the bowl have 2 tiers, with disabled seats in between the 2 tiers. The Main Stand also has the press seats and the seats for the Prawn Sandwich brigade. Like Wembley these are empty before and after half timer as people remain eating their sandwiches rather than watching the game.

Access to and from the ground tonight was not as bad as I feared. It is a ground where you have to go via public transport, so the station entrance is controlled to regulate flow and stop over crowding.

Overall, although it is a new ground and a concrete bowl, I have to say that inside the ground impressions were favourable. The getting to / from the ground was not brilliant, and hopefully will ease as people get used to the place.

Oh, West Ham won an uneventful game 3-0 to progress 4-2 on aggregate against their part-time opposition.

Thanks Tony & Lisa for the ticket. See you on Sunday for the Juventus game.

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