A PETITION calling for football fans to be allowed back into stadiums across all levels of the game has passed the number of signatures needed to be discussed in parliament - just one day after going live.
Launched on the government's petitions page - part of parliament.uk - the signatories are calling for a return of supporters to grounds across the country.
It has since been shared nationwide and, at time of writing, has garnered more than 140,500 signatures.
This has risen from around 17,000 in one day.
100,000 are required to take the petition to parliament.
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The petition has been set up by an Ashley Greenwood, who said: "Football is a powerful tool of which allows a range of benefits such as employment, and other important aspects of life. "Football can be associated with passion, emotion, excitement and dedication across the community.
"With fans attending football games a range of economic benefits are there too.
"Due to the current issues around Covid, places such as France and Germany now allow a percentage of fans to return to football games.
"I ask for the support of this petition as I fear that smaller clubs in particular will go out of business leading to a devastating effect on people.
"This petition is to ask the government to reconsider their judgement on not letting football fans back into the stadiums and reconsider doing this with the right safety measures in place surrounding the Covid-19."
This graphic shows the distribution of petition signatures across the UK today (right) - Newport East (198 signatories - up from 17 yesterday) is highlighted - compared to a similar time yesterday.
The government paused its plans for the partial return of fans to stadiums - originally scheduled for October 1 - because of the rapid spike in Covid-19 cases.
There are growing fears that clubs could go out of business due to lack of gate receipts for potentially months more to come.
The sooner that fans return to Rodney Parade the better according to Newport County boss Michael Flynn.
Teams at the bottom of the football pyramid have been hit hardest by the lack of fans coming through the turnstiles on matchday.
"The longer it drags on, the harder it’s going to be," he said.
"For us, we’ve put plans in to have fans before January.
"At one stage it was going to look positive for October.
"That’s not looking too great at the minute.
"It’s tough, we need these fans in."
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