SAFETY ANNOUNCEMENT

Due to individual pitch incursions onto the pitch in the last few minutes of Monday nights match against St Albans City, the following steps have already been taken;

A full site and stewarding investigation has been implemented. A full safety meeting has already been had with all senior club officials in attendance, complete with our two safety officers and with our security company.

Already we feel that lessons have been learned, as this was our first ever full house and those lessons will be implemented as part of our match day operations going forward. We accept, as every attending football supporter who attends games already knows, that if an idiot decides to run onto the pitch, it is nigh on impossible to police 100%, hence why we will now make our stadium and facility usage bans severe.

Two people have already been named and been issued with complete Stadium, Astro Pitch, Bar, Function and facility usage bans and both the police and schools have been notified of our actions. Our investigation into the third person who went onto the pitch but who evaded our stewards is still ongoing.

We now turn to those moronic few who completely spoiled what should have been a deserved St Albans City’s fans celebration with their own players, and also spoiled a fabulous chance for our loyal supporters to celebrate with our very own Luke Garrard and our players. It was embarrassing to witness some of our fans goad and look to get a reaction from the travelling St Albans City fans and it was completely unacceptable.

We are still going through all of the ITV footage and the readily available internet clips and make no mistake about it, further bans to some of these idiots will follow. Due to our new state of the art ticketing system and because we took a more phased approach to ticket sales, most people are now on our system.

However, we must not concentrate on those few idiots, because if we do then they win. Let’s just ban them and get rid of them for good. Let’s instead concentrate on the 99% of fantastically loud and proud Wood fans and equally those incredible travelling St Albans City supporters. Because you both created an incredible atmosphere, you were all such a credit to both of our football clubs and, you created an atmosphere that will most likely never be repeated at Meadow Park.

We finish by saying to St Albans City, we wish you all the luck in the world with your promotion campaign and we sincerely hope you manage to join us in the National League for next season. Monday night showed the whole of Hertfordshire that football in our County is thriving and with that record attendance, it was possibly the greatest night ever seen at Meadow Park. It was certainly the biggest Hertfordshire non league Derby in history – so a huge, huge thank you must go to both clubs and both sets of supporters.

OUR CLUB. OUR TOWN. OUR COMMUNITY.