A few ideas for the Banks's Stadium

Walsall blogger Mark Jones has a few ideas which could spruce up the Banks's Stadium and could finally add a bit of spice to the old Bescot again.

Atmosphere - An old Joy Division or Russ Abbott song or something sadly lacking at the Banks's Stadium these days.

Saturday Feb 6, Bristol Rovers at home in a dull goalless draw in a truly uninspiring game. Three days later a trip to Bristol Rovers, end result a competent and fairly comfortable 1-0 away win.

Sure Troy Deeney was back, Richard Taundry notched a welcome first career goal and goalkeeper Clayton Ince helped us out a bit with the penalty, but I can't help wondering if the difficulty might lie in the old Bescot itself.

A record of four wins out of 17, and all against lowly opponents, in all competitions this season, is pretty shocking. Especially when they follow on from the less than ordinary home results of the 2007/08 and 2008/09 campaigns, is pretty shocking.

Seemingly every set of visiting away fans will sing about our support being flipping shocking, or words to that effect. To a certain extent they have a point, I mean having to rely on Dancing Kev to act as a 'special' kind of cheerleader in order to get some singing going has to be a bit of an embarrassment.

I still believe that as fans we aren't fundamentally different to fans of other teams, how can we be? The question of why so many of us are disillusioned with the club is one that's been mentioned before and will be up for discussion again pretty soon.

The issue is how do we make the best of those remaining fans and try and create something resembling an atmosphere back home again?

Some ideas were bandied about at the Focus Group Meeting before Christmas and it will be interesting to hear how the club intend to act on these at the next one, and when is that exactly?

But given the lack of faith in certain people in authority at the football club to come up with anything innovative, I've come up with a few suggestions, ideas to be considered and debated. They all have pros and cons, they may upset people and some may ultimately prove to be unworkable, but it's surely better to be proactive than inactive.

Idea One - Close the top tier

This will mean more fans are closer to the pitch and should go someway to creating an 'end' downstairs again.

Allow any home fan, or season ticket holders only or have some kind of membership card, to access the Stadium Suite before, at half-time and after the match.

Logistically this is possible with sensible stewarding and would counteract the obvious argument about loss of revenue from the club. Actually enabling more people to access the best facility for fans in the stadium might even maximise income.

Idea Two - Move the away end to the side, then create an end on the opposite side of the ground

The low roof of the away end could be used to our advantage to generate some noise, the knock on effect is that you'd have home and away fans in closer proximity which creates a bit of an edge – something which should not regarded as a bad thing.

There is nothing inherently wrong with home and away fans being closer together. It happens in every other ground in the West Midlands before anyone quotes police objections, and it happens in the bigger and therefore potentially more problematic home games against the Leeds' and Norwich's of the league Southampton anyway.

The major disadvantages are that people in the family stand would have to move elsewhere, and most of us remember how appalling the away end actually is from when we had to squat there while the new stand was being built in 2002.

Idea Three - Still move the away fans to the side but just close the existing away end down

Similar to Idea Two, with elements of Idea One, and already tried out in Football League Trophy games. The idea is to encourage more fans to go behind the goal with a concentration of our support in one place and still create an atmosphere where there can at least be a bit of 'banter' with the opposition.

Idea Four - Price discrimination

In order to maximise numbers downstairs behind the goal and create an end, within which there could be a sit anywhere policy and even for Season Ticket holders.

There could even be a tolerance of standing and we could even try to add a bit of colour by encouraging flags and banners. And all for a reasonable price.

This is not an exhaustive list, so other people may have different and better ideas.

Yes there will be logistical problems implementing anything radical, yes some people will object and moan whatever, yes some will have to change their matchday routines - and that is me included - but can the club really afford not to try something different?