While Town’s move to bring Churchman’s into the 21st Century continues apace it seems some other areas of the ground are lagging well behind, in the 1950s in fact!
At Saturday’s match with West Ham many supporters will have been frustrated to discover once again one of the North Stand turnstiles out of action and long queues developing, a problem which has been ongoing for a couple of years now.
This latest turnstile problem has added to congestion initially brought about by the closure and bricking up of two other turnstiles a few seasons back which left the North Stand with just seven turnstiles. These were lost as improvements were made to the North Stand toilets. This latest closure, caused by the mechanism’s dangerous state, reduces this to just six, a level which is clearly not enough.
And even the ones that are working aren’t working that well. Apparently the electronic counting system, purchased by the club at great expense over the summer, won’t work in conjunction with the existing equipment.
Why are we having such problems? Well it seems that some of Town’s stadium infrastructure has changed little since the days of Division Three South. Many of the turnstiles still in use in the ground were originally bought from Bedford Town in the 1950s and are in a poor state of repair. The turnstile currently out of action is actually one of a number throughout the ground which date from the 1980s and many of these are also reaching a state of disrepair.
And don’t think because we have a new stand we will be getting new turnstiles. The new Churchman’s turnstile block has been built using the existing mechanisms, which some insiders feel are not up to the job.
It seems there is an awful lot of work required to bring our stadium up to the level of many of the Premiership grounds we are visiting this season.