Both Bolton Wanderers and Barnsley have made irritating error again ahead of play-off clash: View | OneFootball

For a second successive season, Bolton Wanderers and Barnsley will face off in the semi-finals of the League One play-offs after the two teams, once again, enjoyed relatively impressive campaigns.

There are plenty of similarities on the pitch but some major differences, too. One thing that has left many frustrated, though, is a similarity that has remained off the pitch as we prepare for the two-legged tie.

In what should be the highlight of the EFL season, the two clubs have once again undermined the spectacle by reducing the allocation of away supporters, failing to fulfil what the atmosphere and occasion could well be.

Unnecessary limitations

Last season, Bolton were the first to announce the away allocation with Barnsley receiving just 2,000 tickets for the first leg of the semi-final tie, which allowed the Yorkshire club to do the same.

It meant, as a result of Bolton not selling enough home tickets for the first leg, the opening leg of a play-off semi-final tie had the lower tier of Wanderers’ south stand entirely empty with at least 3,000 available seats that would have surely been snapped up by the travelling Yorkshiremen.

Back at Oakwell, in a stand that holds at least 6,000, Bolton had 2,000 supporters spread out. That meant it looked spare and the atmosphere dissipated – offering home advantage, for sure, but also reducing the overall atmosphere that can be created with two sets of supporters ‘going at’ each other.

This time around, Barnsley allocated Bolton 2,163 tickets and Wanderers therefore returned the same amount of tickets for Barnsley’s travelling support ahead of the second leg.

With both games taking place on a weekday evening, albeit the first leg a Friday night, the ability to ram home fans into the respective grounds is also tougher so the likelihood of yet another underwhelming atmosphere, or at least an atmosphere not at full potential, has grown.

‘Football is for the fans’ is a phrase that has slowly lost its meaning and this is a further example. With the two teams once again set to do battle for a place back in the Championship, there will be a feeling that something is missing.

As has been mentioned, the play-offs at the end of the EFL season have produced some of the most remarkable and dramatic sporting moments in English history – it feels a crying shame for a part of that, the hostility between two sets of supporters, to be watered down for the sake of what does appear to be simply pettiness.

A case for the defence

Now then, that aforementioned phrase ‘football is for the fans’ and the idea it has lost all meaning may not necessarily be fair in this instance because prices are capped at £20 so it isn’t necessarily a money-making scheme but rather trying to achieve any sort of sporting advantage over the opponent.

Having a full stand of travelling supporters sucking the ball into the net in a second half has often been a detriment to Bolton in particular, as shown by successive 4-0 defeats at home to local rivals Wigan Athletic in front of a packed away end.

Another argument to dissuade all of the fairly justified negativity and reaction from the decision would be that, at least this time, the south stand of Bolton’s Toughsheet Community Stadium has been opened to home fans so it won’t simply be an empty stand behind one of the goals.

Either way, though, for what is a highlight spectacle for many, it has been let down by some fairly poultry and intentionally reduced allocations entirely made by the respective clubs and feels like a completely unforced error from both.