After recently seeing at first hand in the FA Cup Final what happens to fans season after season in domestic Wembley games, we believe the respect in the game should be extended to the fans.
The road to Wembley, the chance to walk down Wembley way, to look up at the archway, to sing with your family, friends and fellow fans to support your team in a final, that's the pinnacle of every football fan's dreams. Unfortunately that is a dream that doesn't become reality for many fans due to poor allocations. The Respect Campaign is calling for a fresh look at allocations at finals, whether play off, Carling Cup or FA Cup, a fresh look which aims to give the best allocation to reward the real football fans and the real football family.
Each season up to 16 of the 92 league clubs will play a major game at Wembley, whether in the FA Cup, Carling Cup, play offs or community shield, and most of these clubs and their fans will have some form of problems with the FA over the poor allocations as many match going fans unfortunately miss out on being able to watch their team in what is most likely to be their biggest game of the season at our national stadium.
Our aim is simple, we want the FA to take a fresh look at it's ticket allocation for Wembley matches.
The FA currently give out up to 23000 tickets for Wembley games to what it calls the ''Football Family'', and around 17000 to Club Wembley. Despite this, the vast majority in the stadium will always remain the fans of the two clubs playing, many of whom would have been forced to pay hundreds to touts in order to get into these ''neutral'' seats. We want the FA to remove the touts by cutting off the supply, firstly by reducing the numbers of neutral seats, and secondly by taking serious action against those caught touting.
The fans are the back bone of English football, with England having two of the four top supported leagues in Europe. We believe the most loyal and the best supporters in Europe deserve respect and to be given the best possible chance of getting a ticket for our national stadium if their team ever gets there.
We also want the ''Football Family'' to be addressed again. A look into whether they should get an allocation for cup finals or whether it should be spread over England games and the rest of the season.
As well as this we think there needs to be a fresh look into what is the best way to reward the football family and who deserves to be in it. The current system has seen families split as, for example, a father gets a ticket and a son does not and supporters clubs are threatened by resignations as they fail to get an allocation of tickets for Wembley games, thus harming what some may call the ''Football Family''. The current system also offers little recognition for those who have run youth teams for years, who have worked in the background of clubs or those who have helped fans by setting up and running supporters clubs. Thus we are calling for a rethink on ticket allocation for the ''Football Family'' and who deserves to be classed as the ''Football Family''.
If you support the ideas of the Respect Campaign please sign our petition
http://www.petitiononline.com/facup71/
and visit our website http://www.respectcampaign.com/Home_Page.php
for more information on the Respect Campaign including our Facebook group, ways to spread the campaign and how to contact us.