By Longsider
September 23 2004

Burnley Football Club are currently conducting an online survey where they are trying to find out fans views on season tickets, match prices and the possibility of a singing section.

There are seven questions on the survey with the first one being nice and simple by asking whether you own a season ticket. Five other questions are based around season tickets where it seems the club are trying to find out what makes fans purchase them.

The final question asks whether you would consider purchasing a Season Ticket in a singing section if it was encouraged at Turf Moor? This topic has been one that fans have debated for some time now with the atmosphere often criticised, by some Burnley fans, as being poor.

Numerous fans have campaigned for the Cricket Field Stand to be given back to Burnley fans and recently Steve Cotterill questioned the wisdom of the home team coming out at the away end. One suggestion has been to segregate the Cricket Field Stand however the club have said, in the past, that this would be at quite a substantial cost.

Other fans believe the club should move the away fans into the Jimmy Mac Lower although the smaller capacity for away fans coupled with the difficulties of security for away fans, compared to the Cricket Field Stand, may make this a non-starter.

Its difficult to see how a singing section can be created without the use of the Cricket Field and although some fans would move into the stand how many would really want to give up their nice seats in the current home stands?

It would be difficult to create a singing section in the Lower Tiers of the two stands as the roof is far too high to give the noise any impact and the Bob Lord is a non-starter for obvious reasons. This leaves the Jimmy Mac Upper and the James Hargreaves Upper, the Jimmy Mac Upper is currently the family stand so they would have to move and don't forget this section is the furthest away from the away fans and its difficult to create atmosphere without the vocal home fans being close to the away end. This leaves the James Hargreaves Upper which is currently the 'unofficial' singing section of the ground anyway so nothing would be really gained by making it the 'official' section.

Fans all have their own views on what the club could do and this is mine.......

Move the away fans into the Jimmy Mac Upper(holds a similar number to the Cricket Field), leave the Jimmy Mac Lower empty(and allocate to the away fans in the following is big enough). By doing this the policing costs should be dramatically cut, the away fans would still create a good atmosphere as they would have a roof. The home fans would then have the Cricket Field(Cotterill would be happy) and some atmosphere could be created and we would also get improved atmosphere from the James Hargreaves Upper as the fans in this section would be closer to the away fans than they currently are.

The James Hargreaves Lower could become the family end and with both stands currently charging the same price this could become quite feasable. If people in the Jimmy Mac Lower still want to sit behing the goal they can move to the 'improved' atmosphere of the Cricket Field or sit in the newer stand down the side.

The survery can be found here