Hatters CEO rues missed opportunity to allow fans back in

Luton chief executive Gary Sweet was left to rue the missed opportunity to welcome a crowd back to Kenilworth Road for the first time since February at the weekend.

Town's Championship fixture with Derby County had been chosen as one of the 10 pilot games to allow 1,000 spectators into the ground, announced by the EFL at 1pm.

However, the news came just after the club had exclusively revealed to the Luton News, that they had already withdrawn their application, citing not being given enough time to prepare to stage the game.

Speaking to the Jim White show on Talksport this morning, Sweet agreed it had been a missed opportunity for the club, while also going into detail about just why they wouldn't be reayd in time.

He said: "We're absolutely desperate to get supporters back, we're a football club here that's well connected to our support base and our supporters keep our club alive.

"Their charity with us and their season ticket purchases over the last six months or so have actually given us the cash to be able to survive.

“So first of all it's no disrespect to our support base in making this decision, one thing here is what we have to do is put first and foremost the health and safety of not just our supporters, our staff and players, but also the immediate environment around the football ground.

“While there are other clubs who are able to proceed on that, it takes an awful lot of time and effort to be able to put on a game, the first game allowing supporters back under this situation.

"Every club's different, stadium design, we've got a lack of parking here, everybody's going to have to walk or get here through different modes of transport.

“We were midday Tuesday asked if we wanted to volunteer, we had a meeting on that and said 'yes let's go for it, we're desperate to do this, we owe it to our supporters to be able to do this.'

"So we decided we would, on that basis we had to get support from our safety advisory group, the sports ground safety authority, the police, so it's not just the simple process of us saying, 'right we'll open doors.'

"Then what we had to do is effectively establish, we've got a generic plan on how we would do this, but then there's a specific plan on what ends of the ground do we open up?

"Who do we invite? Who are those 1,000 people?

"So we devised that plan and we were happy to go with it, we went back to the Football League and said 'we need to know immediately if we are on, if we’re going to be selected.'

"I understand the Football League has got to the DCMS (Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport) to handle and ultimately they get the jurisdiction from the DCMS to allow this to happen, so I'm not having a pop at the Footbal League here at all.

"I think their communication could have been better as we kept chasing them and yesterday morning I wrote an email saying unless we know now, we have to withdraw.

"I didn't get a reply and the next thing I heard from them was we were announced as one of those games when we'd actually already withdrawn

"I understand everyone, including the Football League, were operating with a skeleton staff, us too, so there's no daggers drawn here or anything like that.

"It is (a missed opportunity), because we'd have known straight away, we would have been on the case.

"We have actually started to do a load of the work anyway, because I’m hopeful that our next league home game against Wycombe we’ll be allowed to let people in.

“We’re doing some of this work anyway, even if its cleaning seats, putting signage out.

"The bit that's going to take the actual time is the selection of 1,000 people, how do you do that?

"And then the communication with them and making sure they are all fully briefed and have their health screening checks and their temperature checks when they come up.

"All of those processes takes an awful lot pf time, the planning was there, but to implement it was going to be hard.”

Sweet also admitted he felt bad for letting Town's fans down who thought they were in with a chance of watching their side live for the first time in over six months, while also confirming that when they can open up the ground again, season ticket members will get priority.

However, as long as there are reduced capacities, the club still won't make any revenue on ticket sales, as Sweet added: "I really feel sorry for our supporters as what we did not want to do was raise expectations and then let them down which is what sadly has happened.

"What we want to do is when we say we can let fans in, we absolutely know we can do it safely with them in good health and they can leave in good health.

"We've got 7,000 season ticket holders out of a 10,000 capacity, so unless we can let 8,000 people in, we're not going to get revenue anyway, as season tickets will get those first 7,000 seats, as they should do, maybe some sponsors as well.

"When we said we will do this, it was only on the basis that we got an immediate response to allow us to start the planning work.

"I understand that the Football League have got to the DCMS to get that approval too, I've got a good relationship with everyone at the Football League, but in this particular case they didn’t communicate with us."