[JonB]

 mr. smith, on 29 May 2024 - 04:05 PM, said:

weather was shocking, gig was great, organisation was shambolic.

We were straight in with no queue and out after but did have the benefit of the fact my wife and her dad are Sunderland regulars so knew where to park, where to walk and how to get away after as we had the car so that helped. The stewarding appeared to be hired help rather than Sunderland football match day folk who know what?s what, stewards in the area we were sat in knew nothing about where things were. Wondered if it was a case of Sunderland hiring out the stadium and the promotors did the rest.

[mr. smith]

JonB, on 29 May 2024 - 05:35 PM, said:

We were straight in with no queue and out after but did have the benefit of the fact my wife and her dad are Sunderland regulars so knew where to park, where to walk and how to get away after as we had the car so that helped. The stewarding appeared to be hired help rather than Sunderland football match day folk who know what?s what, stewards in the area we were sat in knew nothing about where things were. Wondered if it was a case of Sunderland hiring out the stadium and the promotors did the rest.

parking & pubs pre match was fine, the problems arose around the ground, no signage for different stands & the stewards didnt know either. as you say the vast majority seemed to be on the night hire with a few sunderland regulars overseeing.
afterwards it was fine, stright out, back to the car park & away.

think every tour will be his last but as next year is 50th anniversary for uk i think weve got one more go at least.

[JonB]

 mr. smith, on 29 May 2024 - 07:00 PM, said:

parking & pubs pre match was fine, the problems arose around the ground, no signage for different stands & the stewards didnt know either. as you say the vast majority seemed to be on the night hire with a few sunderland regulars overseeing.
afterwards it was fine, stright out, back to the car park & away.

think every tour will be his last but as next year is 50th anniversary for uk i think weve got one more go at least.

For some reason despite it being a ground that regularly deals with crowds of a similar size they opted against using the turnstile numbering etc and had all the silly colour names gates and entrances which just complicated matters. We knew where we were going based on the turnstile number as we sat in a similar place for the Wednesday game the other Saturday but I can see why folk not familiar with the place had hard work getting in.