Attendances are they up or Down?

Simple question, are they up or down on winter football?

Is this the 5th or 6th season of summer football? So whatever it is i suppose the best way to look at it is take the last 5 or 6 years of winter football.

Picked up the paper today and Gormley , Keely and Gill are all saying that crowds are down regardless of what the FAI are telling us. Also Cronin came out last week and said the exact same thing that crowds are down in the league. So what is it? :confused:

Maybe we could have a poll on this?

two different points rovers manic they are not up dont know if they are down also linking winter v summer football is not the reason for any increase or decrease.
p.s. think giller and keely were spot on.
if there is to be a poll there should be to questions
a. are attendances up or down
b. is summer football whooly responsible for this

im sick of hearing keely blab on and on about how we should all go back to part time football. fck off keely if u want to stay in the dark ages. and as for whether crowds are up on winter football or not who cares. summer football is a must, who want to play on a **** pitch in the sleet in mid december. madness.

while i agree its hard listening to keily at the best of times and further agree that summer football is far better than winter football but his point about the sustainability of full time football is a fair point i think some clubs are starting to find this out.

Our crowds are way down on last season and I'd guess it's the same at a lot of clubs. The CPOs seemed to boost attendances initially but I'd worry that clubs are now using the CPOs as spare office hands instead of allowing them to focus on promoting the games. I'd like to see Noel Mooney and the CPOs being more proactive. Clubs have to careful not to overprice match tickets, anything over €15 admission fee does not represent value for money. I dont think summer/winter comes into it.
Managers have to take some responsibility, too many clubs are playing a defensive or unattractive style of football. The emphasis should be on entertainment and value for money. Get that right and attendances will improve.

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Originally Posted by Duggie

im sick of hearing keely blab on and on about how we should all go back to part time football. fck off keely if u want to stay in the dark ages.

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How can you make a post like this when your own club is struggling financially?

Whether it was a success or not should be investigated. As ever, it was something done on a whim, not based on proper proposed benefits. The two main selling points were said to be attendances and europe. Europe's been a mixed bag and only effects 4 teams a season anyway. It's debatable whether there's any gain for the league in total for success. Attendances certainly haven't benefitted, and would in a lot of clubs opinion actually have fallen.

I personally think that people got the reason wrong as to who we're competiting with - it's not really televised football, it's other social activities. And there's simply more things to do in the summer, even with our crap weather.

Us being a different season to the Irish League limits things like expansion of the Setanta Cup in some respects. And we also appear to get more TV coverage at the parts of the season that clash with UK football, as Irish tv is obsessed with the GAA during the summer.

Full time football is not viable without a sugar daddy. It's ridiculous that clubs are trying to keep up the likes of Pat's on attendances of 1000-2000. If the current situations at Galway and Sligo teach us anything it's that it's impossible to maintain a full time set up if you are not challenging for the title. And without someone like Kellegher pumping money into your club you haven't a hope.

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Originally Posted by superfrank

How can you make a post like this when your own club is struggling financially?

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if rovers go back to part time, all there good players will leave. prob be a locally based team next season, will get relegated and float in obscurity in the 1st division for how long. whats the point. part time football is a hobby not a option if u ask me. clubs like bray or ucd or whoever, where are they going really ??

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Originally Posted by Duggie

if rovers go back to part time, all there good players will leave. prob be a locally based team next season, will get relegated and float in obscurity in the 1st division for how long. whats the point. part time football is a hobby not a option if u ask me. clubs like bray or ucd or whoever, where are they going really ??

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The Alternative is to go out of business ? :eek: Listen there is nothing wrong with a mix of FT and PT players nobody has said that we will go back to an all local policy.

Anyway this treads is about Attendances being up or Down

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Originally Posted by Rovers Maniac

The Alternative is to go out of business ? :eek: Listen there is nothing wrong with a mix of FT and PT players nobody has said that we will go back to an all local policy.

Anyway this treads is about Attendances being up or Down

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pointless exercise

I'm only back in Ireland 2 years and haven't seen a summer yet so summer v winter isn't much of a comparison if you ask me it seems to be winter all year round with scattered sunshine in April. I do think its madness going head to head with the GAA in July/August press coverage is poor also a lot of people have more things happening in these months than they would in November/December . How about running season from September to June with a winter break in January.

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Originally Posted by Duggie

pointless exercise

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What excercise? it is as question i was asking not an excercise :confused:

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Originally Posted by Rovers Maniac

What excercise? it is as question i was asking not an excercise :confused:

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pointless question then

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Originally Posted by Duggie

if rovers go back to part time, all there good players will leave. prob be a locally based team next season, will get relegated and float in obscurity in the 1st division for how long. whats the point. part time football is a hobby not a option if u ask me. clubs like bray or ucd or whoever, where are they going really ??

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Full-time isn't exactly working for yez as it stands. Your only a few points ahead of us and you haven't challeneged for Europe since you were promoted.

Full-time football is draining your club of it's resources and the club is in desperate need of money. Would you rather your club go bankrupt instead of having a part-time team?

Bray and UCD have a made a good shot of living within their means. We are currently enjoying our longest spell in the Premier. UCD seem to do enough to stay in the top flight. Both these clubs have played in Europe before so it's not as if you have to break the bank to make it into Europe.

You seem to have fallen for the "full-time is the only way to go" argument. The fact is a full-time league is not sustainable in this country.

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Originally Posted by londonred

I do think its madness going head to head with the GAA in July/August press coverage is poor also a lot of people have more things happening in these months than they would in November/December . How about running season from September to June with a winter break in January.

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The problem is the waether during the winter. It's sllightly worse than the summer weather and there a load of cancelled games being re-scheduled at short notice.

Also, eircom League performances in Europe have improved since the move to summer football so that's one bonus.

what the hell? the weather isn't bad here, and especially since the guy who is saying its bad was living in London.

In Dublin at least we get less rainfall than Rome does per annum.

And mostly weather picks up in the evening for some reason when matches are being played.

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Originally Posted by Duggie

if rovers go back to part time, all there good players will leave. prob be a locally based team next season, will get relegated and float in obscurity in the 1st division for how long. whats the point. part time football is a hobby not a option if u ask me. clubs like bray or ucd or whoever, where are they going really ??

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Nobody chooses to go part-time when they have the resources to run a full-time team.

You can only stay full time if youy have the money to do so. That money generally comes from big crowds, sponsorship and / or somebody pumping money into the club.

If a club doesn't have any of those things, then full-time football is not possible.

In such a situation, what do you suggest a club do, if you say that part-time football is not an option?

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Originally Posted by osarusan

Nobody chooses to go part-time when they have the resources to run a full-time team.

You can only stay full time if youy have the money to do so. That money generally comes from big crowds and / or somebody pumping money into the club.

If a club doesn't have either of those things, then full-time football is not possible.

In such a situation, what do you suggest a club do, if you say that part-time football is not an option?

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well the point im tring to make is whats the future in part time football other than existing IMO.

There are certainly two sides to the arguement.

• I personally would prefer winter football. I don't know why but I do. I love floodlit games. The cold, rain and freezing your balls in Oriel which can be the coldest place on the planet. Football people would then say that pitches are better and a better standard of football can be played.

• Crowds- Summer football is always going to be second best to the GAA All-Irelands. The FAI/ELOI is going against the biggest sporting organisation in the country and they are losing big time. This does affect crowds as not all of us are purely soccer heads. We cast an eye to see how are county is doing and also you have the various county championships to contend with. For a sports mad fella this can be very costly.

I don't think crowd attendences can give a proper indication of how popular which season is. Really the most diehard will attend games no matter what time of year it is.
A Galway fella was on earlier talkin about how their attendences dropped from last season. Last season was a whole novelty to Galway and of course their attendences would increase because of their involvement in the premier. However this season attendences have dropped because of increase in ticket prices and that the novelty of premier football has worn off. Also Galway is a pure hurling county and Galway are still involved in the all-Ireland.

I don't know how the FAI are going to get around this but I think summer hasn't really done anything for Irish Football. Is Summer soccer the reason why Drogheda, Pats and Bohs got major investment? It's probably not
On a final note Summer Soccer or Winter Football won't determine if we get better support or not. It is probably all about the stadia. A major revamp is need in all ground and they probably need to be made more family orientated more than anything else. The unfortuneate thing is that probably nobody involved in the league wants to know that