Small increase to Home Park capacity

PLYMOUTH Argyle are working to raise the Home Park capacity above 17,000 by making more seats available for sale around the stadium.

- CHRIS ERRINGTON

It comes after the Pilgrims had home sell-outs for all 23 of their home Championship games last season, with the average attendance of 16,512 being the club's highest since 1960/61. There has long been talk of 'filling in the corners' at Home Park the open areas at either end of the Mayflower Grandstand but that would cost substantial sums of money.

For the time being, Argyle are working on two ways to make extra seats available for matches. One is a new segregation barrier between blocks 20 and 21 in the Barn Park Stand, which separates home and away supporters, and the other is a new set-up for TV gantries.

The segregation barrier will be used instead of netting, as Argyle's head of venue Christian Kent explained to Herald Sport: "A few years ago we adopted an approach that was to have quite a large segregation area.

"I think the atmosphere at Home Park has changed a lot in the last few years and we have been able to reduce that. Being in the Championship, we have also had the benefit of visiting a lot of other clubs and seeing how they operate, and one of the things that many clubs do now is that they have an approved segregation barrier between home and away fans.