Thetownend.com

There's been a few comments in various threads over the last few weeks about the shit attendances that we get, and there seems to be a prevailing view that the 7-7500 average that we've managed over the last few seasons is in some way under what we should be getting.

Now I know that back in Reg's day we could pull in 25,000 plus for a big game, but since I've been going, with a few exceptional years, it struck me that what were getting at the moment is about par for the course.

I started going in 83/84 in Ken Beamishes nightmare season when we had little quality in the side and narrowly avoided exiting the league. I'm pretty sure we were lucky to get more than about 4,000 that season. Now that's not suprising because we were shit and the club was seriously in the duldrums.

However, the season after we got a new sponsor, a new manager, there was supposed to be a new mood of optimism, and I'm bloody sure the crowds didn't improve much at all. I think we finished top ten that year.

The next season we won the championship, with a record points score and goal record. Basically the best season you could hope to have in the basement division.  Attendance?  Averaged about 6,500!

86/87, we were on a real roll, playing well all season, finished 3rd and won the play offs to get promotion in our first season up from the depths. Attendance - about 7,500 maybe a bit more.

The Hoddle promotion winning side? About 10,500. Even in the Prem season, when we had a capacity of 18,000 or so, and a lot of big clubs were bringing 3,000 odd away fans, we only averaged about 15,000.

A good chunk of those crowd increases can be put down to just playing bigger clubs who bring more away fans. Oldham in the Prem, who brought  a few hundred, I don't think we broke 9,000.

It's depressed me a bit, which is annoying as my intention was to demonstrate that historically our crowds aren't that bad.

All I've done is convince myself that actually we're quite a small club that had a few lucky seasons punching above our weight.

Bollocks!

Swindon is a lot bigger now than it was 20 minutes ago... If the club was well marketed we could pull in a lot bigger crowds than we do now.

Also, in the prem season - Chelsea were only getting crowds of 19,000 odd.. Crowds were generally smaller back then.

20 Minutes Tails?, fuck me Swindon really must be a boom town then.  :wink:

Ooops  :oops:

20 years, obviously :D

Possibly my favourite statistic in the world (and pinched from Reg to whom I apologise) is that there was a bigger attendance at the County Ground for Swindon vs Chelsea than there was at Stamford Bridge for Chelsea vs Swindon the year we were in the Premier League.

They're a massive club though, obviously.

I have no doubt in my mind that the attendances should be higher than they are. I put this down to factors.
We are in a more competetive league than last season. ie rather than being in the top 3, we are maybe in the middle.
Second, the way the board / owners have continually had a go at the supporters, has taken it's toll. Many now just go to away games.
A resaonable yardstick is Brissle Wovers, who last season before the play offs had a lower average crowd than we did. Now their average is higher.

I think last seasons average was a little lower than maybe it could have been.  This year, we are again probably a little under par, especially as the Town has grown in size since the 86/87 season if we use that as a comparison.

Judging by the amount of eastern europeans and somalians arriving in Swindon I think you were right the first time Tails

:Ride On Fatbury's Lovestick:

Worth remembering that Bristol Rovers average includes home games against both Forest and Leeds, neither of whom we have yet played, so that comparison is not really valid.

However, I certainly do agree with the general view that our gates are shite.

The point was made that we basically get the same attendance as we did in the mid-80s and that is correct. The problem is most other clubs get a lot more through the gate than they did 20 years ago, Chelsea being a case in point.

The bottom line is, we have stood still, whilst others have moved onwards and upwards.

Not to mention the fact that Bristol is 5 times the size of Swindon!

However, we don't have another club in the town a division above us.

Hmmm, not the same though, even half of Bristol is over twice the size of Swindon.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7136087.stm


this may be of some use

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oops!

I hope Birdy's not reading this.....

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Lumps....crowd size and its decline at STFC, cannot be separated from the social context of the town and surrounds.   Also when taking crowd sizes into account for teh midish 80's, it needs to be remembered that crowd sizes were systematically downgraded as a way of tax avoidance., so the data is unreliable.

  Further the club had a long and distinguished history in cup competitions up to the mid 90's....since when we've had a terrible record.   This was the sort of thing that acted as a stimulus....

  Up until teh 70's Swindon was essentially a northern town in the south...working class men, having a traditional Saturday....finish teh shift at lunchtime, go and have a few beers and go to the match.  As the traditional industry ie railways Vickers and Pressed Steel declined so did the crowds.

  Allied to this was the link to out lying areas, which although still strong has been weakened by the embourgeoisement of the countryside.and small towns like Calne and Chippenham.

  So....say in 71 we could muster a higher average than  Sunderland and Shef Wed from a similar league postion. Higher than Bristol City and twice to three times that of Reading.

  Key to this was having a decentish side, made up of players teh fans could relate to and having pride in the club......any time in the subsequent years, when we've had a bit of success crowds have risen.....only to drop off again as success has not been sustained.....the same  story more or less applies at all clubs.

the crowds are shit because they are less than last season.....

Your knowledge is immense

ok, on the back of a promotion season, moving up a division started the season well.....attendences shouldnt drop after that. Infact quite the opposite...

Im joking dv but thanks for the info  :D

you were not joking, my knowledge really is immense....

Fuck me, I can't compete with that. Even neville might struggle....

Now, what the hell does it mean????

Posh cunts taking over the countryside  :D

Not exactly quoting Karl Marx word for word there are you Al  :D

surely posh cunts were already in the countryside?! or have posh cunts replaced the not so posh cunts?!

I'd take it to mean (in that context) the dilution of the levels of "working class" as people moved away from tied agricultural type occupations to a more blue/white collar existence, coupled with the increased independence in the housing market.

However, I'd also add access to live televised football as being one of the main factors in falling attendances.  "when I were a lad" you got Match of the day, The Big Match/Soccer Sunday and Sportsnight and the FA Cup final was the only live footy.

It soon became easier to align oneself with one of the 'top' teams, especially with the introduction of merchandising (or "rosettes" as it was called in my day) - Easy to 'support' a team that could regularly win things

Once that Faustian pact was struck, a paradigm shift in the demographic of the 'small town' football fan base was only a matter of time.

Does that help Pumbaa ?

Posh cunts have moved out there, less and less people are farmers, people who would have been farmers now have qualifications and are employed in service sector jobs...so yeh you were kinda right!

Fuck me! Am I meant to take from that that Calne has been gentrified?

I remember it being like a dodgy council estate in the middle of nowhere acommodating the workers from the local pork pie factory.

Actually that's a fair point - perhaps it should be not so posh cunts who are now replacing the posh cunts as they've mortgaged their property as security against loans to football clubs.  Either way it sounds more vivid than cracking on about middle-class white collar sprawl

I wouldn't say gentrified! It's got some ok ares in it now though. For housing. Not much else though!

Or you could flat out be wrong.

1) As pointed out earlier, we've only had one large away following (Rovers) so far

2) Last season's average was boosted by a number of high profile end of season games as promotion beckoned

3) A likely high attendance game (Yeovil) televised - lower crowd

4) General disgruntlement at the off field activities compared to a relatively (after Wise left) trouble free season

5) A steady rather that spectacular start this season (Last season's unbeaten start under high profile management would have boosted things, as would Ince's brief appearance)

As I said Nev....average gates have tended to rise for most clubs during the TV boom time....we might be an exception to the rule.

    Even teh scum who have dropped from the second tier to non league, probabaly had a higher average last season than they did in 91.

   Some clubs have increased quite spectacularly during that time with a bit of success.

   Our gates under Macari are not reliable...it used to be a standing joke, when the crowd was announced, as most felt there were more there.

I think there may be a whiff of urban myth about this.  Take the Chester promotion game as an example, for years I'd subscribed to the "12,500? you're taking the piss, 18,000 more like" view.....but unfortunately the telly pictures don't lie, unless thousands nipped off for a wagon wheel at the same time.  

Same as the outrage for the youth cup game against Newcastle this year.  Crooks!  If you really think there were more than 2,500 there, look at the highlights and the vast empty areas of the Arkells....

I'm certain that the Pox do quite the opposite: inflate the numbers as part of their 'giants of obscure mediocrity' complex.

Whatever, I do sometimes lie awake wondering whether the supposed 14,000 v Bournemouth in 87 was simply plucked out of the air.

strange man.

my suggestion would be that football is now more accessible for families, whereas once you might just get a middle-aged man attending games on his own it's now far more likely that they might take children along (preferably their own, but you never know).

oh and them womens watch football now, so that's a possible 50% increase

My suggestion would be that you're talking arse, but that might be difficult to prove.

Indeed, as Rogan Taylor hilariously wrote in his essay 'Walking alone together: football supporters and their relationship with the game'...

"it is easier to discover the conditions of the drains in Oldham in the late nineteenth century than to find out who went to football matches then."

:shrug:

That's my final contribution to this thread. Although I have learned something today, so all is well.

I still think my point about Brissle Wovers stands. The size of the two places is immaterial as the comparison is made against last seasons gates. I know they have had two high profile games, but we have also had the Yeovil & Wovers games. (Granted not the same as Forest & Leeds).
My main contention is though that the current incompetency in the board room,  has had a real impact on the crowd size this season. Certainly there is anecdotal proof of this just on this message board.
If the board are costing us a thousand on each home gate, that equates to approx £450,000 in a season.
Then there is the other income to consider. Certainly thos enot attending are not buying food & programmes, but in addition a good number of those who DO attend, don't either.
Finally there is the fall in sponsorship, etc. How many fans have stopped spending extra on sponsorship packages ? What is the fall in corporate sponsorship. ? You only have to look around the ground to get an idea of the answer to the lats one.
Would it be going too far to say that this current bunch of incompetents are costing the club approx £1,000,000 per season in lost revenue. (That's in addition to the fact that they don't correctly manage the money they DO get. (Admin = £1.5 million)

The biggest "gate fiddle" of all time was the promotion showdown v Bournemouth in April 1987. The official gate was 14,000 but most people regard the true gate as around 25,000. Which had been the CG's capacity prior a few years before. I was there that day, and it was close to being dangerously overcrowded in the Town End. As in other parts of the ground including the away end.

A few weeks later we played Gillingham in the playoffs when the gate was again 14,000 but as this game was all-ticket it really was about 14,000.

And you could see on TV as well as if you were there, it was nowhere near as packed.

I assume Hillier was fiddling the figures for tax purposes. Either that or else, post-Hysel he was afraid of punishment for exceeding the new restricted capacity.

At one home match that I atteneded, the "Announced" attendance was: 10,561.

Well a friend and I both counted 10,761.

Scamming gits.

 Although I appreciate the sentiment, factually you're wide of the mark, insofar as the crowd was nowhere near 25,000.  Perhaps 16,000 the regime then would never underestimate by so much, just too risky.

 The last crowd of 25,000+ at the CG was for the Wolves game Jan 80....when the TE was just old school TE.  A similar figure was out for the Spurs game at the beginning of the month .  I've posted up a pic before now of what a crowd like that  resembled

good thread, i too remember that bournemouth game, it was stupidly busy. i used to stand in the shrivvy road and those was always laughter when the attendance was announced.

I think part of the problem in swindon is the population shift since the early eighties espescially in west swindon. Many young families moved into town who did not traditionally support swindon. kids growing up here tend to support their dads team which was mainly London based clubs. however a few slip throught the net like myself who is the only stfc fan in a family of QPR supporters. My family have no ties with swindon, so it looked for all likelyhood i would end up supporting qpr, fuck knows what happened there.

as a young boy you would generally look up to your father hence lots of chelsea tottenham arsenal etc fans in swindon.

Hence my fucking Hibernian/Scotland miserable life of doom and gloom.   :beers:

The Bournemouth game that season along with the Gillingham play off and Leeds cup games had gates of over 20,000. My source was an ex director of the club now long gone.
I started going regularly in the 70's when one of the turnstiles was affectionately known as XXXXX turnstile in memory of an old STFC stalwart who alleggedly pocketed the cash.
STFC have been acknowledged experts at crowd diddling over the years. The Slave Traders caught on when we stopped them getting the play offs by under declaring the crowd by the best part of 10k.

I was at the Bournemouth game too.. Great memories of that day. I dread to think what would've happened to us had they declared the real attendance. Bournemouth fans say they had 6,000 there that day.. I'd say the crowd was 23 - 24,000.

You could tell it was over 18,000 from getting that crowd in the Prem. No game that season  (or since) was as packed as Bournemouth.