The Scotsman reports

The rise in attendance last season to a record 8,800 persuaded Glasgow to seek to increase the capacity at Firhill, to 10,764 for this week's first leg of the Magners League derby double. Kenny Baillie, the Glasgow chief executive, accepted yesterday that confusion reined in some quarters as the game kicked off with mix-ups over reserved seats. One supporter told The Scotsman: "There was a big crowd of people p***ed off, huge queues to get in, shambolic stewarding, a mess of seat allocation and one stand shut. It wasn't good. I got in ten minutes before kick-off but people were still trying to find seats 25 minutes later."

Baillie responded yesterday by stating: "We were pleased with the crowd the game attracted (7,062), considering the bad weather of late, but we tried a reserved seating policy for the first time to try and allow for more supporters. Capacity is higher for games with reserved seating than unreserved, as with unreserved people tend to sit in groups and leave seats spare.

"I'm led to believe that some of the problems that occurred may have been the result of turnstile operators allowing people with Main Stand tickets to enter the Jackie Husband Stand, where their tickets would obviously not correspond with the seats there. We opened more turnstiles for this game than usual so had more new operators.

"I am also led to believe that people with a seat in the Jackie Husband Stand wanted to sit with friends and so sat in parts of the stand not related to their tickets, which may have been due to being familiar with the unreserved seating policy. We always debrief after every match and this will be no different. We will be looking at what happened, take a review of that and determine whether the reserved seating policy is something we want to continue with, or go back to free seating." Baillie added that the North Stand was not closed, but that tickets for the other stands were being sold first, while the 'Anygame' vouchers were not valid for the 1872 Cup matches and so they should not have been admitted. Only Edinburgh season-ticket holders will be given reserved tickets for the return match, in their usual West Stand blocks, with Glasgow supporters encouraged to buy tickets for the East Stand.

This article was originally posted on 29-Dec-2010, 10:58 by Hugh Barrow.
Last updated by Hugh Barrow on 29-Dec-2010, 11:04.