Turnstile Chaos …

[howitis]

It's a strong argument to say "you should have got their earlier", but the reality is not everyone can due to personal circumstances such as work, or variables such as travel delays. Saturdays is always a race for us to meet kickoff because my kids play U13 & U16 football.

We arrived around 7:30 on Wednesday, at the first turnstile my younger son's ticket just would not scan. He spent a good 60 seconds holding it higher, lower, closer, further. We were advised to try another turnstile. We did so, the queue was maybe 15 people at that time and the ticket worked first time. If it had been 100 people and closer to kickoff I don't think this would have been an acceptable suggestion.

Its always the home turnstiles that have the queues, I've never seen masses at the away turnstiles despite a high incidence of later arrivals.

At last a sensible response to what was a fair point. There are significant problems with the entrance management and the fulham ticket office have been in touch to apologise and amazingly didn't tell me that I was a victim of outing up when I did !!!

[EN1 FFC]

From the feedback by Fans on different media there's seems to be a combination of things that cause significant problems.

1. The turnstile card reader seems to have a problem with reading some of the mobile or printed Q codes.
whether this is due to the system being slow (ie looking for duplication) or just poor print outs or in the case of mobile codes that it needs a stable focus to submit the code. All of these cause multiple swipes or rejection & delays. I've been at others grounds where this also happens.

2. There does seem to be a correlation of the amount of people all turning up too near to kick off time and the turnstile scanning problems get multiplied. I got to the JHS about 7.20 and there were only 4 people in front of me, one had his scan rejected and was turned away but went as directed by the steward with his friend may be to try elsewhere. I had a standard ticket that went through fine.

3. Others have said that STH who bought their normal Season Ticket seat but had a Q-code print or mobile seemed to go through OK, but if they had friends their tickets sometimes got rejected.

4. The crowding in Stevenage Rd has been worsened by the access to The Riverside stand making people walk the whole length to gain access to the Riverwalk turnstile (where again there are large Ques to get in).
When Qs form outside people are still trying to pass through to get to their designated area in JHS, Hammersmith or Putney Ends.

5. On the JHS there still seems to be a turnstile attendant in the booth operating it, do 'they' activate the turnstile & are they having to wait for an indicator from the system to let people through? All these things could cause delay with large crowds outside.

6. We know that the Stevenage Rd Building is Historically preserved and the turnstiles have always been narrow, but I have noticed for years that a piece of wood after the turnstile makes entry even tighter (obviously done to stop the 2for1 entry) but it can make entry slower.

Don't think these problems are going to be solved quickly, as it seems to be a combination of things needs to be ironed out for big games. It happened during Internationals for Brazil & Columbia, and it did happen many years ago when big games caused large crowds. Back in the days when we had 5,000 it was no problem to turn up 5 minutes before KO and still get in, 'but the times they are a changing'.