There's A Petition To Get Football Fans Back In Stadiums

Football fans are calling on the government to reconsider letting fans back into stadiums, and have started a petition.

Since March, when the football season was put on hiatus, no football fans have been allowed in grounds in England and it doesn't look like changing anytime soon.

There were meant to be trial runs of fans returning at the beginning of October but a spike in Covid-19 cases put an end to that.

Fans being kept out of stadiums is seriously affecting clubs' finances, especially at the lower end of the Football League and in the Conference and below.

There's now a petition to get the government to allow fans back in, at reduced capacity to help with social distancing, which needs 100,000 signatures to get debated in parliament.

The petition calls on the government to consider the 'devastating effect' the lack of fans will have on fans. "Due to the current issues around COVID places such as France and Germany now allow a percentage of fans to return to football games.

"I ask for the support of this petition as I fear that smaller clubs in particular will go out of business leading to a devastating effect on people. This petition is to ask the government to reconsider their judgement on not letting football fans back into the stadiums and reconsider doing this with the right safety measures in place surrounding the COVID-19."

As the petition points out fans have been allowed back in some countries in Europe and it could mean English clubs in the Champions League and Europa League are faced with fans in away games.

Brighton hosted Chelsea in a pre-season friendly with some fans allowed in the ground whilst rugby Union hosted a test event and even the snooker World Championships was also used as a test event on two days.

The public have been allowed in places like the cinema and theatres which have a similar format to the stands at football grounds but they are inside and it seems like far more likely for their to be issues indoors than out.