[maccawozzagod]

I thought Stanley were worth a point today. Shrewsbury had some good attacking play but we still had chances and hit the inside of the post twice. Both times the ball nearly got forced over the line but they somehow manged to clear it. The referee was reasonably bad in the way that he favoured the home side on every decision but the linesman was worse, the basic understanding of the offside rule seemed absent apart from the goal we had disallowed (must have been the other liner).

The biggest issue of the day has to be the safety organisation. We were put into the stand because they wanted to fill their allocation - understandable (I hope we all paid the same), but, there was only a three foot high fence between the two sets of fans and just one steward to keep us apart. There was an incident earlier in the game that resulted in numerous stewards having to intervene, at that point you would have expected a large amount of stewards to have been stationed there permanently to ensure no further incidents. They weren't and consequently there was. At the other side of the away fans was an empty space and whole host of stewards and police. THEY SHOULD HAVE FORMED A LINE BETWEEN THE FANS.

Secondly, as home fans we cannot get to the bar at half time because we were informed that League rules state that the four areas of the ground must be segregated and fenced with no passage between. We accept that and nobody tries to bend the rules. Why then DID AROUND 400 FANS WALK FROM ONE GOAL END TO THE OTHER TO SWAP ENDS AT HALF TIME?

At one point there was a little tension between the fans and people from BOTH ends were gesturing to one another. For the stewards to allow hundreds more people to enter that end was ridiculous and as far as we are told 'illegal'. I would be interested to know the official and Stanley stewards line on what happened today.

For the first time ever I took my kids to an away match. It wont happen again for quite some time.

On a positive note, I walked in the ground five miutes after kick-off and as I walked under the stand I thought I had walked in the home end. The noise levels today were fantastic in the first half. I sat a good few rows down from the lads today and couldn't hear the kids talking to me. It was like being at a 'real' match. Previously I have only ever been amongst the noise so you cant really gauge how loud it is. But today was excellent - well done lads.