London 2012: Olympic organisers at City of Coventry Stadium 'learn a lot' from test event

Anthony Mundy said there were "no security issues in terms of who was coming into the stadium"

Organisers at the City of Coventry Stadium have said they "learnt a lot" following the Olympic football test event.

Some people who attended the Olympic qualifier game between Senegal and Oman expressed their concerns over security, which included children being frisked.

Turnstile security was then dropped 15 minutes before the game.

Facilities director Anthony Mundy said: "It was a test to see how we could cope and we learned a huge amount."

Senegal beat Oman 2-0 in front of 11,611 people to qualify for the men's Olympic football finals for the first time.

Some supporters arrived shortly before the game and were allowed in without being checked.

Mr Mundy said he came to that decision in conjunction with the safety officer and that it was all "about testing" ahead of the Olympics.

'Under pressure'

He said: "We got to a point where we knew the test wasn't good enough in terms of getting people in in the speed we needed to, so it was always part of our procedure to lift it if we couldn't get people through fast enough.

"We learnt a lot of things around the amount of personnel that need to be doing the turnstile checks, the way we do the bag checks and the late walk up by supporters, which caught us out."

Mr Mundy has encouraged people to arrive early for the 12 Olympic football matches in the summer.

"This was all about testing our operations and procedures, so we purposely only opened a third of the turnstiles because we knew we would get about a third of the capacity crowd.

"There was no point in having every turnstile open because it would be really easy and we would never see it under pressure."

Mr Mundy said stadium officials had "expressed concerns" to Olympic organisers Locog and the Olympic committee over children being frisked, but said that it was part of the operations and testing to see what worked.

He said: "We can't drop the security at Games time, so we've got to make sure it's right beforehand."

During the London 2012 Games the stadium - usually known as the Ricoh Arena and the home of Coventry City Football Club - will host 12 matches, including the women's bronze medal play-off.