Woking's operations director, Peter Jordan, has defended his handling of the situation on Easter Monday when the start of the game against Oxford was delayed by an hour, but admits lessons had been learned.

The Conference have begun an inquiry after kick-off was held up as stewards and police were unable to get a section of U’s fans behind a crush barrier on the away terrace.

Jordansaid: “We did not underestimate the crowd. I printed up 250 seated tickets for Oxford to sell in advance and the information I got back was that there would be 800 to 1,200 travelling fans.

“The numbers weren’t a problem. If we had 1,200 or 2,000, or 3,000, we would have had the same procedure and we could cope.”

Jordan admitted problems arose at 2.45pm when he told stewards to move United fans back from the perimeter fencing to behind a crush barrier further back.

He said: “In hindsight, the stewards should have started getting them back at 2pm, but I leave that to my safety officer.

“Safety is paramount and I said they must get back behind the crush barrier before I can allow kick-off.”

Jordan said the referee agreed to put kick-off back to 3.15pm and then 3.30pm. He said it was the offical’s own decision to eventually start at 4pm.

He claimed Oxford fans near the halfway line “flatly refused” to move behind the barrier, which is when he decided to open part of the covered terracing to away fans.

“The fans were great and duly obliged to move. At no time did we have any aggravation from Oxford or Woking fans.”

Responding to fans’ claims they could not hear stadium announcements.

“I take that on board and will rectify that if there’s a problem, but we specifically walked over there and told people to move.

“The capacity of the away stand is 1,400, but when we’ve had Aldershot in there with 1,400 it has been uncomfortable so that’s why I put only 1,200 tickets on the turnstiles.

“When it got to 1,180 at 2.40pm I closed the gates. There was an Oxford steward there who can verify that. All the excess were then directed to the main stand.

“I estimated the figure of 2,100 away fans..

“That main stand can hold 2,200 and I estimated there were about 1,600 or 1,700 in there. On a normal matchday we don’t get more than 300 or 400 in there so there was roughly another 1,000.

“When we found that people weren’t moving behind the barriers on the away terrace I allowed disabled people and young children into the main stand at no extra cost.”

Jordan said he would co-operate fully with the inquiry.