Argyle capacity going up to 17,000

Plymouth Argyle are working to raise the Home Park capacity above the 17,000 by making more seats available for sale around the stadium.

It comes after the Pilgrims had home sell-outs for all 23 of their home Championship games last season, with the average attendance of 16,512 being the club's highest since 1960/61. There has long been talk of 'filling in the corners' at Home Park - the open areas at either end of the Mayflower Grandstand - but that would cost substantial sums of money.

For the time being, Argyle are working on two ways to make extra seats available for matches. One is a new segregation barrier between blocks 20 and 21 in the Barn Park Stand, which separates home and away supporters, and the other is a new set-up for TV gantries.

The segregation barrier will be used instead of netting, as Argyle's head of venue Christian Kent explained to Plymouth Live: "A few years ago we adopted an approach that was to have quite a large segregation area.

One of the things that we wanted to make sure we could do was still have that flexible partition between home and away, so that if we get an away team which might bring a few less (fans) we are still able to maximise home support.

"We are going to have a segregation barrier that will be installed between block 20 and 21. That will be our standard process for setting up for matches. We have worked with other clubs in terms of how that is going to be managed, but if we were to have a scenario where we wanted to move over we could still do that and then have a small netted area."

Kent added: "Last season we were managing two sets of stairwells either side of the netting, whereas this year we are reducing our stewarding to one area, which based on other clubs' experience is also easier to manage."

As a result of the smaller segregation area in the Barn Park Stand there will be a minimum of an extra 162 seats per game available to Argyle supporters.

Changes to the set-up of TV gantries will also make additional seats available which could not be used in the past. A planning application for that has already been submitted.

Kent said: "With the new Sky deal, it's really important we provide the right facilities, not just for Sky but for own media operation. Last season, when we had a Sky game we had to scaffold off the 18-yard positions, meaning that either season tickets or match ticket holders were displaced and it reduced our capacity."

Jamie Yabsley, Argyle's head of marketing and communications, added: "Last season we displaced the season ticket holders in those blocks. I think there were 60 or so season ticket holders in block 10 and block 15. We knew we were going to be displacing them a lot throughout the season and it made sense to get them first dibs at the next best seat where they would like to sit.

"So we only sell match by match in those areas, and we can only sell it when Sky say 'You are not on TV'. In some cases last year that was short notice, particularly towards the end of the season."

The supporters who were displaced from block 10 and block 15 will be asked whether they want to go back to the seats they were in once the new TV gantries are ready for use.

Kent continued: "What we are looking at doing is extending the existing main gantry (at the back of the Lyndhurst Road Stand) by seven metres. We would then build two 18-yard positions on the outside of the ground that would look through the cladding, in the same way the main gantry does, for those two 18-yard cameras.

Then a third position at the Barn Park Stand, which is currently scaffolded off high behind the goal, would become a permanent gantry on the outside, meaning we could release those seats back to away fans as well.

The changes to the segregation area and TV gantries will increase the stadium capacity to above 17,000, provided there are no police restrictions.

Yabsley added: "In front of the big screen when we first did it we didn't sell seats in two rows. We reviewed it, we assessed it and now it's one row. Where possible throughout the stadium we have been looking at every opportunity to open it up so we can get in as many people as possible.

It's a 20 here, a 40 there and a 30 here. It's just constantly adding up, which means it's more accessible for supporters and more revenue for the club.

Taken from Plymouth Live

Half arsed effort as usual. Either fill the corners in, extend the Mayflower or build a second tier on the Devonport/Barn Park FFS!