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Archived News from August 2005

FIELD MILL CAPACITY RAISED
2nd August 2005 19:53


Field Mill capacity raised
CHAD, 02 August 2005

ANY threat that Mansfield Town's home clash with Rushden and Diamonds next week would be behind closed doors were lifted this afternoon when the club's capacity was raised to a safety rating of 0.8 which means that Field Mill can now house 7,480 fans.
The club had been waiting for the Safety Action Group to return to Field Mill for a review meeting which was scheduled for tomorrow (Wednesday ) to show the committee that the required work had been carried out.
However, the SAG have cancelled the meeting stating they are satisfied with the work that has already been done and have raised the safety rating from 0.5 to 0.8 bringing the ground nearer to its full capacity of just under 10,000.
A club spokesman said: "We are expecting outstanding jobs will be completed by the end of the week when the SAG will come and do a review of the situation.
"The club would like to stress tthere are no safety issues with the Stadium and we hope to be back at full capacity sooner rather than later and would like to apologise for the inconvenience caused through the pre-season."
Stags chairman Keith Haslam has apologised to supporters for last week's tickets farce.
The all-ticket ruling on the Sheffield Wednesday friendly was lifted twice, the second time on the afternoon of the game to leave fans confused and bewildered.
The county's Safety Advisory Group had already cut the Field Mill capacity in half to 4,676 over work they claimed needed doing. And the two decisions on the day to change the ticket arragements left Field Mill staff embarrased.
"We are the only party who will apologise to fans for last week - no one else will," said Haslam. "We just have to accept it but we don't feel the situation was really of our making.
"All the small maintenance jobs that needed to be done were in hand and, in the past, have needed to be done before the season started and not the pre-season.
"The game was made all ticket, yet the day before the game we had only sold 1,200 tickets.
"We were told we couldn't sell tickets on match day and then mid-afternoon, they were telling us to sell them. We were all over the show.
"All the safety certificates were in place and we had no problems at any of the pre-season games."
Stags needed a League requirement minimum of 5,000 seats to start the season which they now have.

 

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