Like many oth­er Trin­bag­o­ni­ans, I sin­cere­ly be­lieved that the T&TFA and the man­age­ment of the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um had got­ten their act to­geth­er af­ter the de­ba­cle of herd­ing fans like cat­tle in­to the HCS in No­vem­ber 2015 against the USA.

In stark con­trast, the flow in­to the March 2016 game against St Vin­cent was smooth, and I was proud to even have car­ried a vis­it­ing col­league from Brazil to that game. But last Fri­day ver­sus Guatemala we seemed to have lost the plot once more... or per­haps the rel­a­tive­ly low­er at­ten­dance of the St Vin­cent game dis­guised what was oth­er­wise an­oth­er sub­stan­dard per­for­mance by the Lo­cal Or­gan­is­ing Com­mit­tee (LOC).

I ar­rived at the en­trance to the venue about 30 min­utes be­fore kick-off, and joined the herd with my four-year old daugh­ter in my arms. Af­ter she had tak­en a few ran­dom push­ing el­bows to her face I de­cid­ed to turn back and wait un­til half­time. By then hun­dreds were still en­ter­ing, se­cu­ri­ty search­es had mys­te­ri­ous­ly stopped and an at­ten­dant grabbed our cov­ered stand tick­ets out of our hands as we passed by. I had to turn back and ne­go­ti­ate to get the tick­ets back so that I could prop­er­ly iden­ti­fy my­self as a pa­tron of that sec­tion when I ar­rived at the turn­stile of the cov­ered stand.

Up to this point I tru­ly con­sid­ered walk­ing back to my car and go­ing home, con­tem­plat­ing launch­ing a cam­paign to boy­cott fu­ture match­es, but I thought that the ded­i­cat­ed lads on the pitch should not have to suf­fer be­cause of poor or­gan­i­sa­tion and in­com­pe­tence.

To the or­gan­is­ers–open­ing the gates ear­ly must not pre­clude hav­ing a smooth and or­gan­ised flow in­to the venue. Reach­ing the en­trance 15-20 min­utes be­fore kick-off should not equate to be­ing jos­tled and crushed amidst thou­sands of peo­ple try­ing to squeeze in­to a sin­gle en­trance, with a mere five slots, each a foot wide.

I am sure the ex­ec­u­tives of the T&TFA and HCS are well-trav­elled and have thus ex­pe­ri­enced fan-friend­ly treat­ment when en­ter­ing foot­ball and sport­ing are­nas across the world. Re­cent­ly I had the plea­sure of dis­em­bark­ing pub­lic trans­port in Bor­deaux, France and with­in 15 min­utes found my­self com­fort­ably seat­ed amongst 42,000 fans for a Eu­ro­pean foot­ball match. A week lat­er my friends and I parked at the Met Life Sta­di­um in New Jer­sey, USA and in less than 20 min­utes walked straight to our seats in­to the Co­pa Amer­i­ca Fi­nal along with 82,000 oth­ers.

Now that we have qual­i­fied for the HEX, here are a few hum­ble rec­om­men­da­tions for our next five (and po­ten­tial­ly six) home match­es:

I. Prop­er­ly zone the re­spec­tive sec­tions of the HCS, in­clud­ing hav­ing num­bered seats. For ex­am­ple, a per­son could pur­chase a pre-as­signed seat e.g. Zone A, Row H, Seat 14.

II. Of­fer a "sea­son pass" to be pur­chased in ad­vance for spec­i­fied seats–both in the cov­ered and un­cov­ered sec­tions.

III. Al­low these "sea­son Pass" tick­et hold­ers to pur­chase a lim­it­ed num­ber of ad­di­tion­al tick­ets in a pre-sale pe­ri­od be­fore tick­ets go on sale to the gen­er­al pub­lic for a par­tic­u­lar match.

IV. Work with the traf­fic au­thor­i­ties and pro­tec­tive ser­vices on a com­pre­hen­sive traf­fic man­age­ment plan for the Wood­brook, Mu­cu­rapo and In­vaders Bay area on the day (be­fore and af­ter the game).

V. Con­sid­er im­ple­ment­ing shut­tles from pre-des­ig­nat­ed park­ing lots around the city, and al­low pri­or­i­ty ac­cess ac­cord­ing to the pre-agreed traf­fic man­age­ment plan.

VI. En­sure there are mul­ti­ple en­trances util­is­ing the full ge­o­graph­ic space around the HCS, where pre-screen­ing and se­cu­ri­ty checks are car­ried out.

VII. En­sure enough well-iden­ti­fied LOC staffers are sta­tioned as far as Ari­api­ta Av­enue, Mu­cu­rapo Road and Wright­son road to as­sist pa­trons in find­ing their zone.

VI­II. Utilise ropes or long bar­ri­ers along the streets lead­ing in­to the venue, so that per­sons can start get­ting in­to their re­spec­tive zones, along with ap­pro­pri­ate sig­nage.

IX. Con­sid­er al­ter­na­tive en­trances for the phys­i­cal­ly chal­lenged, el­der­ly or pa­trons with young chil­dren.

X. Once in­side pa­trons must be able to ful­ly utilise the al­ready avail­able mul­ti­ple turn­stiles in­to the HCS to ac­cess their re­spec­tive zone.

XI. There must be suf­fi­cient staff and se­cu­ri­ty pres­ence with­in the sta­di­um to en­force seat­ing des­ig­na­tions.

XII. En­sure all con­ces­sion­aire booths are utilised and en­cour­age pa­trons to form lines.

XI­II. Open all the bar­ri­ers, gates and turn­stiles im­me­di­ate­ly af­ter the match.

As a long stand­ing die-hard sup­port­er I am vol­un­teer­ing to help. And I am sure there are al­so many oth­er com­pe­tent na­tion­als who want our sport­ing events to be ex­e­cut­ed safe­ly and at very high stan­dards. Get us in­volved, ask for feed­back and the fan-base will come for­ward to sup­port.

Vikash Su­per­sad

Ch­agua­nas