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Why can't a city the size of Dublin get the crowds? They all struggle to get over 2000 at every match.
If I was a Dubliner and was just starting out as an Eircom League supporter I would support St. Pats. There a great set of supporters and its a great atmosphere there.
In fairness there are a lot of clubs for everybody to go round.
There's probably about 20,000 eL fans in Dublin with six eL clubs. Whereas Cork may have say 10,000 but with only one club to follow. If you catch my drift.
Ahh come on...Quote:
Originally posted by UCD_4_Life
In fairness there are a lot of clubs for everybody to go round.
There's probably about 20,000 eL fans in Dublin with six eL clubs. Whereas Cork may have say 10,000 but with only one club to follow. If you catch my drift.
Dublin has a population of over 1,000,000.
Even if $hels, Pats, Bohs, Scum, UCD, D. City and Bray were all playing on the same night, that would mean attracting only 35,000 fans out of the whole City. It's not a lot, is it?
City should be getting a lot more than we do, but I reckon if we can win a league and be in contention all the time, we would get an average of about 8,000+.
I was surprised to get the gate we did for the Waterford game, but then again, we should be able to attract at least that amount of punters out of a population of around 200,000.
Very true but you remember we have 200,000 + the county (the biggest county in Ireland!)...Many supporters come from East/West/North cork tooQuote:
I was surprised to get the gate we did for the Waterford game, but then again, we should be able to attract at least that amount of punters out of a population of around 200,000.
The interest just isn't there. I know a fella claiming to be a Bohs fan who always knows the results but never goes to the games. Bohs have to give away thousands of free tickets to kids to get a decent crowd.
Shels don't have a fan base to build from where they are in Drumcondra. They don't even see a big increase when they are playing well and winning stuff.
UCD never had any fans.
St. Pats have a good support in their area but they are out there on their own unlike Bohs and Shels who are very close.
People support Bray when they are doing well.
It's hard to know why they don't get crowds but I can't see how they are going to increase them either. Bohs were still only gettin 5000 at big games when they were winning the league and they were still giving away tickets for the games.
When was the last time a club other than Cork City had a sell out? Pat Dolan must love seeing a crowd.
It should be around 20,000.Quote:
Originally posted by oddboy
City should be getting a lot more than we do, but I reckon if we can win a league and be in contention all the time, we would get an average of about 8,000+.
137,000 in the CityQuote:
I was surprised to get the gate we did for the Waterford game, but then again, we should be able to attract at least that amount of punters out of a population of around 200,000.
Nearly another 70-90,000 when you count Carrigaline, Ballincolling, Blarney, Glanmire (all the towns on the outskirts)
And then the towns in the county, Fermoy, Midleton etc.
It should be 20,000.
Dublin clubs have no excuse. 1,000,000 people and they can get 10,000. Very poor. :ball:
In defence of some dublin teams not getting a crowd for example lets say....shams... its because most of their their 'fans' as they call themselves are drunken thugs and cannot afford tickets for a match but i have come up with a solution... kick all the premier division teams from Dublin except maybe st.pats out of the league and then the premier and first division teams left can make up their own league.this would also bring more money to smaller teams like kilkenny or athlone when teams like Cork City play there.So wouldn't a joint league without the Dublin teams except maybe st. pats be much better for everyone?
you are right we should be getting big crowds as dublin is a big city with 1.5million people but irish football is just not popular in dublin although when rovers move to tallaght i suspect they will get good crowds if not better crowds than cork.the problem is england is too near dublin and most dubs prefer english football like when bohs played spurs last february we got around 10,000
the first game of the season we got 3,000 and then you have celtic who irish people just love are there as well. i like them but would not pick them over any irish team.
but irish football is growing in the city and maybe in july when bohs knock newcastle out of the champions league the crowds could flock back
Why?Quote:
Originally posted by Nags
In defence of some dublin teams not getting a crowd for example lets say....shams... its because most of their their 'fans' as they call themselves are drunken thugs and cannot afford tickets for a match but i have come up with a solution... kick all the premier division teams from Dublin except maybe st.pats out of the league and then the premier and first division teams left can make up their own league.this would also bring more money to smaller teams like kilkenny or athlone when teams like Cork City play there.So wouldn't a joint league without the Dublin teams except maybe st. pats be much better for everyone?
"Most" of our fans are drunken thugs? There's a very small minority, maybe 3 or 400 people (being generous) who go to games in order to cause trouble. The vast majority (as in the other 19,000) go to games because they love their clubs and want to see football.
Besides throwing them out being grossly unfair it would as good as kill the league. Do you think TV3 (or any other TV station) would touch the eL if it was Cork winning it every year (if you threw out Shels and Bohs etc. this is what would essentially happen), do you think the newspapers would touch the eL for the same reasons as before?
"So wouldn't a joint league without the Dublin teams except maybe st. pats be much better for everyone?"
If "better for anyone" means sticking your finger up at the thousands of people in Dublin who have supported the league through thick and thin then go on ahead...
Main problem is that Dublin, much much more than anywhere else in the country, has its head stuck firmly up Britain and America's @rse culturally. I know a lad who's a Villa fan, and goes over there once or twice a season, and has said that he hates the eL and has no problem with that. People associate more with English teams and American popular culture than Irish teams and culture, and so Bohs/Pat's/UCD mean nothing to them - the situation is better (if not by a huge amount) down the country.
Dublin is TV country - I'd say the percentage of people with Sky Sports is higher here than enywhere else in the country - and it's hard to pursuade people to leave the telly to go out and watch Irish football when Sky Sports are yelling at them so much louder not to do so. Sad but true.
Course Dublin teams should be getting higher crowds (although I will point out that UCD's attendances are up about 20% in each of the last two seasons, so we're getting better anyway), but the status quo is very very hard to change, especially with TV dictating to you what is and is not cool.
Maybe with summer soccer and no Premiership against which to compete, things will pick up, but I can't see it being as dramatic as some might think.
Stu a large City is always going to have a more globalised culture.
Please do kick the Dublin clubs out. I'm pretty confident that a 10 team Co.Dublin League would have a better standard than a 10 team Rest of the Country league.
Say Rovers,Bohs,Shels,Pats, Farm,UCD, The Gate, Malahide United, Glebe North, TEK United.
And Cork,Kildare,Drogs,Harps,Sligo,Waterford,Cobh,Galw ay,Athlone, Dundalk.
Derry having also been thrown out for refusing to fly the tricolour :D
Thats a totally brainless idea..:rolleyes:Quote:
Originally posted by Nags
In defence of some dublin teams not getting a crowd for example lets say....shams... its because most of their their 'fans' as they call themselves are drunken thugs and cannot afford tickets for a match but i have come up with a solution... kick all the premier division teams from Dublin except maybe st.pats out of the league and then the premier and first division teams left can make up their own league.this would also bring more money to smaller teams like kilkenny or athlone when teams like Cork City play there.So wouldn't a joint league without the Dublin teams except maybe st. pats be much better for everyone?
I have really slagged of SR a lot, but I know that the problem is only a certain section of the crowd.
I don't really think that is the main factor in keeping people away from the eL in Dublin.
Dublin teams get low crowds, but a hell of a lot better than Kilkenny or Athlone.
What are you suggesting..that City somehow subsidise the rest of the teams?
B*lls!
Look, the biggest media empire in the world staked it's entire future on English soccer. It needed to generate huge revenue from the premiership for it to continue, so it hyped it out of all proportion to make it seem that you HAD to see the premiership, the GREATEST players were there, and that message is constantly hammered home by EVERY TV and Radio station on these islands.
If you beat it into peoples heads that the premiership is the be-all and end-all of soccer for long enough, it becomes self-fulfilling.
How many people really stop and think about the premiership?
There are 4 or 5 clubs who can win anything and provide the really important games, and the rest are there to make up the required number of games and try to avoid relegation.
The advertising of matches makes it out that they are a huge "event", when in reality, Aston Villa versus Middlesborough , for example, would never come near to matching the intensity or passion and LIVE experience of being at a City v Bohs game (for example).
Yet there is no way that we can get that through to people who are being hammered morning, noon and night with the message that the premiership is the only show in town.
It's a catch-22: How can you get the media interested without the crowds, who will only show up if the media is interested.
Yeah, but there's being more globalised and there's being a different culture. Dublin in particular has been taken in by the American culture of TV is God, and TV is telling people that English football is the only league to watch, therefore the eL isn't going to do as well in Dublin as in the country.Quote:
Originally posted by TommyT
Stu a large City is always going to have a more globalised culture.
Maybe some of the country people can correct me on this, but I reckon that that has some influence at least?
poor excuse tommy in fairness- globalised doesn't mean british. If dublin people were supporting real madrid, barcelona, ac milan etc then maybe i'd accept that, but the simple act of sniffing across the water does not make someone "globalised".Quote:
Originally posted by TommyT
Stu a large City is always going to have a more globalised culture.
Of course we can't have dublin teams booted out of the league, its up to other teams to get stronger and get promoted. I still think the 10 team premier was a dreadful mistake, because the league just isn't national anymore, but the non-Dublin clubs have to quit whinging and move positively. Longford have done, it City have done it, Waterford are in the process of doing it- less excuses, more action.
I think the biggest difference is that there's one team in Cork so it has a community type feel to it. So everyone in Cork supports (to whatever degree) Cork City because they feel the club represents them in some way. This simply isn't the case in Dublin. Having 4 big clubs means that someone from Dublin who has no connection to any of those teams is far less likely to care about any of them. Even people who live beside a club are less likely to see the club as representing them than the likes of the Dublin bogball team would.
come now.
a global community still enjoys football.
it is the most enjoyed sport in the world, right?
A few points:
1. Dublin has a population of 1 million+, but how many actually come from Dublin originally? A huge proportion of the population are "blow-ins" from the rest of the country, or indeed from abroad. That's not really the case elsewhere in Ireland. Anyone who is inclined to follow EL football will most probably have supported a team since childhood, so living in Dublin doesn't necessarily mean you would follow a Dublin team. My Dad, for example follows Harps despite having lived in Dublin since the 70s.
2. The "comminuity spirit" factor is very important - teams like Cork, Derry, Longford etc are seen as representing a whole county, so when they're doing well the whole county start to support them. Dublin teams aren't really seen as representing a specific area, never mind the whole city or county, so they can't really capitalise on that. The fact that there are invariably at least 2 Dublin clubs at the top of the pile makes it even harder to drum up that kind of local pride support - if it was Bohs battling it out with Cork every season there might be some people who would latch on to Bohs because they see them as representing Dublin, but if we're battling out with Shels then that's not gonna happen.
3. None of the regional clubs get good crowds unless the team is doing well (Derry get decent crowds no matter what, but they have a massive bandwagon element). Cork's hardcore support is fairly pitiful, and they bring virtually nobody to away games. So don't get too carried away with yourselves.
I firmly believe that supporting eL teams is dependent on two factors - your da and whether or not you identify with the club. Now for most eL clubs, we all lost a whole generation of fans in the seventies and eighties so todays dads know bugger all about the league, and so have nothing to hand on to their kids. So we are all struggling to rebuild a fanbase that was huge in the fifties and sixties.
With regards to the fan-identification thingy, it ought to be easier for rural clubs to attract fans. Someone from Longford, say, ought to support Longford, and, the shop-floor talk on a Monday morning should be about Longford.
In Dublin however only Pats can claim to have a fan-base to identify with the club. Inchicore is a settled area, the inhabitants know there's a game on on Friday nights - people from Inchicore identify Pats as their side.
Shels in Drumcondra and Bohs in Phibsboro are both in the heart of flatland, in the midst of a transient population who don't particularly identify themselves with that club. Both these clubs draw support from all over Dublin, but the talk on the shopfloor in, say, Rathgar, on a Monday morning, is not going to be Bohs, or Shels.
Hopefully Rovers move to Tallaght will provide the local population with an outlet for their support, and they will be able to identify with the club.
All this talk about creating a Dublin League and on the other hand kicking out all the Dub teams is nonsense. There is a middle ground - Historically the biggest fan bases in the country are Cork (only when they are doing well but that it quiet often), Pats, Rovers, Derry and de Blues. All these clubs have potential to get 5,000 plus at Premier league games. Other clubs include Sligo, Bohs (when there not giving out free tickets) and Galway. Apart from this the rest are not worth a s***e.
Clubs like UCD are tearing the league down - ok there "gates are up 20" wopee do there are now getting 120 home supporters at a game. Clubs like this give a bad stigma to the league.
Bottom line el need Rovers out in Tallaght fightin the title out with de Blues, Cork, Pats and Derry. Kick Shels and UCD out of the league as they have absolutley no fan base whatsoever. Then TV will get off its ass as there will 30,000 fans turning up to watch el football everyweek
..you're just repeating the same old untruths that you've heard other people saying.
Shels, in fact, are getting bigger crowds than Rovers, Pats and Derry. Probably about the same as Waterford. Behind Bohs and Cork.