Yesterday, approaching Wembley stadium, soaking up the atmosphere of a rugby league Challenge Cup final, fully enjoying the experience, I was stopped by a marshal and told, "You can't bring that bag into the stadium! You'll have to take it to the bag drop off and leave it there. It'll cost you £10!"

My son and I had travelled by nearly 150 miles by coach. The small rucksack in question was the same rucksack I had used to travel down to the Challenge Cup in 2018. It wasn't excessively large: just big enough for a couple of bottles of water, a couple of snacks and somewhere for a couple of pack-a-macs in case it should start raining (I'm sure it never rains in London but it does in the North).

The bag drop off, poorly sign-posted initially, was beyond the other side of the stadium. It was an excessively long walk away and we ended up missing the first half of the Women's final which we had wanted to watch. It very much soured the start of our Wembley experience.

I believe this is an overly excessive policy and penalises those people travelling from further away or those with small children. It is also extremely environmentally unfriendly, as it is a barrier to people bringing their own bag and their own re-usable water bottles, encouraging the use of single use plastics.

I used this same piece of luggage when attending matches at Old Trafford, Headingly and many others with nothing more than a swift bag search.

Please sign this petition to encourage Wembley National Stadium Limited to reverse this policy and allow members of the crowd to attend matches with reasonable sized pieces of luggage.