WARRINGTON Town chairman Toby Macormac has pleaded with supporters attending games to adhere to social distancing guidelines.

After a minority of visiting fans created a disturbance during Saturday’s game against Radcliffe, the club have been forced to enact tougher new measures in order to keep their doors open to spectators.

Starting with tonight’s home game against Nantwich Town, the matchday bar at Cantilever Park will be closed and extra stewards will be in place to make sure supporters are keeping their distance.

None of these are measures Macormac wanted to impose, but the chairman insists he has had to do what is right to keep the doors open.

“We are pretty much on our last chance,” he told the Guardian.

“We’ve tried to do it not in a heavy-handed fashion and allowed people to use their common sense with the social distancing.

“It’s unfortunate that there was a minority group in on Saturday as we have had no issues before then.

“We can’t take the gamble on it. We have to have better social distancing in the ground.

“It was an unfortunate incident as a minority of fans converged on the social club and moved tables. With the rule of six, you can’t do that.

“Unfortunately, they moved it and were a bit of a handful and caused an altercation where the police had to be called.

“That brought a bit of attention to a lack of social distancing from the same group once we had ejected them from the club.

“The upshot of that is we were quite proactive with it. We’ve spoken with the council and a few other agencies and we’ve put some changes in place at the ground, which people will see this evening.

“We have closed the bar and there will be more stewarding from an outside company. It’s just to put a bit of a message out that we will close sections of the ground if you don’t social distance.

“If fans don’t socially distance, they will be ejected from the ground. We need that buy-in from the fans to keep grounds open.

“With Manchester now going into a Tier 3 lockdown and Liverpool already going that way, it won’t take much for us to be the same with us being stuck in the middle.

“That could lead to behind-closed-doors matches, which nobody wants. The social distancing is of major importance.

“There’s a financial impact to it as an income stream has been shut off with the bar and there’s an extra invoice until further notice to pay for extra staff.

“If people do adhere to it, we’ll reopen the bar. I don’t want it closed but I have to do what’s right to conform.”