Following Monday evening\u2019s match against Dagenham & Redbridge, the Club would like to issue the following statement.<\/p>\n
This season has seen a remarkable growth in matchday attendance, with league crowds increasing by 102% compared to last year, by far the largest increase across the top six divisions of English football. This is something we are incredibly proud of and a testament to the growing support for Chelmsford City Football Club.<\/p>\n
With that growth, however, come new challenges that we have not previously encountered. While we accept that mistakes may be made along the way, they are never made lightly and always with the best intentions for the safety and enjoyment of our supporters.<\/p>\n
Prior to Monday\u2019s fixture, our average league attendance stood at just over 1,500, with our highest Monday night league crowd this season being just over 1,800 against Hornchurch. Anticipating a large turnout for a local fixture, the Club made the decision to segregate supporters as a precautionary measure. There was no advice from Dagenham or the police to suggest any expected issues.<\/p>\n
On Sunday, ticket sales indicated that attendance would exceed 2,000 and as a result we increased our security presence beyond normal levels. However, a very significant number of tickets were sold late on matchday itself, taking final attendance to nearly 3,000. While we believed our security provision to be appropriate for a typical fixture, with hindsight we would have increased this further had we known the final numbers in advance, as we did for matches against Braintree and Weston.<\/p>\n
During the match, a number of Dagenham supporters breached the first row of security barriers into the designated no-go zone. Club staff were able to restore the barrier, but following Dagenham\u2019s 2nd\u00a0goal in the 73rd minute, further barriers were pulled down by their fans on both sides of the no-go area.<\/p>\n
The Club immediately made the police aware of the situation and we are grateful for their prompt response and assistance. We also acknowledge and appreciate the statement issued by Dagenham & Redbridge apologising for the incident.<\/p>\n
As ever, we will learn from this experience. We are reviewing our internal processes and had already begun reviewing our external security arrangements prior to this fixture.<\/p>\n
Finally, we would like to sincerely apologise to any supporters whose matchday experience was impacted. Ensuring a safe, welcoming and enjoyable environment for everyone remains our absolute priority.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Following Monday evening\u2019s match against Dagenham & Redbridge, the Club would like to issue the following statement. This…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":348816,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[218,101,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-348815","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-football","8":"tag-football","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/348815","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=348815"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/348815\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/348816"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=348815"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=348815"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=348815"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}