Why Careful Consideration Is Needed Over Our New Stadium

A massive tragedy occurred this week that was completely overshadowed by the current furore over the News of the World’s phone-hacking scandals. Amidst all blame-delegation and finger-pointing from Rupert Murdoch and David Cameron, right down to the newest feature writers and small-time politicians, FC Twente’s stadium roof collapsing – killing one and injuring many others – went almost unnoticed. However, to most Liverpool fans I can only imagine that the tragedy reminded us, even if only briefly, of similar tragedies which have befallen our own club and fans.

Whilst much of the talk since John Henry and his group took control of Liverpool has been over players and who we should sign next, a large part of our concerns have been whether or not we will move from Anfield and, perhaps more importantly, when in God’s name it is finally going to happen.

The incident at Enschede should bring us back to reality though and help us to realise that, even in these modern times, with all the greatest technologies, materials and tools at our disposal, there are still always things that can go wrong. Which is why, despite our desire to see our new or renovated stadium come to fruition, we have to understand that these decisions can not be taken lightly. Architecture is not just some arty-farty, pointless degree course; it’s a real and incredibly important ingredient when it comes to building our new ground.

The reason I mention both architecture and the incident at Twente is that, the reason the roof collapsed was that the support beams buckled under the weight of the roof. The Dutch authorities are still unsure as to the reason this happened but one thing is sure: all aspects of those support beams and roof will have been planned, measured and considered for hours and hours on end; everything from the dimensions of the roof to the solidity of the ground, to the strength of the beams and how much ‘give’ they had in them would have been laboured over by expert in the field yet, still, an accident occurred. I’m sure we’ll find out what actually happened soon enough, there will be an inquest, but it just shows that, no matter how much you plan, you can never plan enough.