Little ready to address fans’ problems with Sixways sound (From Worcester News)

Little ready to address fans’ problems with Sixways sound

11:00am Friday 26th October 2012 in Sport

ROOM FOR IMPROVEMENT: Managing director Charlie Little is planning to improve Sixways’ public address system after supporters spoke out.

‘PAINFULLY absent’, ‘pretty awful’, ‘precipitating anger’ or simply ‘poor audio’— all plausible suggestions for what ‘PA’ could stand for as far as the Sixways sound system is concerned.

Joking aside, the quality — or lack thereof — of Warriors’ public address system is a major bugbear for the club’s faithful fans.

Depending on where you sit for Worcester matches, the announcements made around the ground range from mumbled and incoherent to deafeningly loud but, unfortunately, the happy medium somewhere between the two is never quite found.

However, Sixways managing director Charlie Little recognises — and shares — supporters’ frustrations over this issue and insists steps are being made to improve the output.

He explained: “Being brutally honest, Sixways has developed so quickly in such a short space of time that we are coming round to certain things — such as the public address system — that haven’t been able to keep up.

“In the West Stand, it is effectively a system that wasn’t designed for event production, which is what we are now doing in the Premiership. However, when we built the East Stand in 2008 it was designed around music and events.

“One of the problems is people saying they can’t hear the announcements, but to create balance around the stadium we have to turn one up and the other down.

“We are looking at ways to improve both the West, South and North Stands so they are compatible with what is effectively an over-powering East Stand.”

Little added: “The reason people say they have an issue with the East Stand is because we still have a public address system in other areas of the ground.

“Certainly we are — and will be — making improvements in this department as much as we can.

“We have the facility to get decent feedback from the supporters and I think we are a very accessible management group — people can always stop me or anyone else around the ground to talk about things. From that feedback, we are able to try and address issues.

“I said at the start of the season that I wanted to improve the match-day experience and we are trying to do that. Unfortunately, we can’t simply go out and get everything done at once, but I hope people will see things being phased in over the season that will help to improve the event for everybody.”

As for the excruciatingly cringeworthy recorded chant of ‘Come on you Warriors’ that has been piped out of the speakers in a bid to enhance the atmosphere at times this season, let’s just hope it isn’t needed against Sale Sharks tonight.

Friday night’s games under the lights at Sixways are renowned for creating great atmospheres and that should be the case this evening, with the team hopefully giving the fans something to make a noise about.