That was always going to happen once the novelty wore off. The real challenge will be maintaining their current figures and season ticket sales. Granted, come Europe time or if they go on a title run, I'm sure the crowds will flood back. The thing about Tallaght is the remarkable potential for a bandwagon.
"If you don't work harder I'll pull you off at halftime,"
“Crikey, at Manchester City all we get is an orange and a cup of tea,"
The average is down 13. That's not anywhere near enough to be talking about a decline in crowds. That's probably more than the difference between UCD/Fingal and Derry/Cork away support, for example.
And in any event, their figures this year aren't official, so the decrease can also just be estimate differences; it's way too small to make sweeping statements about like the one above.
Last edited by pineapple stu; 10/06/2010 at 10:56 AM.
It's a 0.3% decline. Anyone who thinks that's statistically relevent on the back of 8 games is innumerate.
PD decline is down to Derry/Cork not being there. While the FD upturn is because of the same thing.
Attendances neither up nor down. Happy days.
I think the league average will drop a good bit before the end of the season. Wouldn't be surprised to see it below 1100; pushing an 8-10% drop on last year.
Why do you think so negatively? How about this, crowds push up towards the end of the year for the few clubs in europe.
The accepted wisdom seems to be that the overall average peaks early and declines over the season.Originally Posted by Riddickcule
Pineapple, you may have the numbers handy: could you plot the running average at the end of each week for last year, and for the year before, just to confirm this?
Eh - I'll get back to you on that. I don't keep running weekly details on the Excel sheet, so I'd have to go through all the previous years' threads. I may start keeping a sheet of it though.
But for this year, you've got the World Cup for the next two weeks of the season, which will kill crowds even deader than they are now. Drogheda v UCD, for example, will clash with the second quarter-final - potentially England v France. Fingal v UCD will clash directly with Chile v Spain/Switzerland v Honduras. There's two weeks killed, and there's still two more rounds of midweek games and one round of Saturday games (clash with Armenia v Ireland) to come.
Fair enough. I previously checked this for maybe the first round of games of two seasons ago, and if I recall correctly, they started high and slid steadily towards the end of season total.
That doesn't mean it'll be set in stone.
Thats not true at all. Pats league crowds actually dipped during our european run.
I've no doubt that challenging for league titles helped Bohs crowd more than playing in Europe (and the requisite messing about with game days/kick offs)
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No, it absolutely doesn't. I'd just sooner put money on Pineapple's pessimism being right in this instance than your optimism.
Hopefully if the league stays as open as it is towards the end of the season, that should boost rovers bohs pats fingal and dundalk's crowds
Ahhh
I'm fairly sure that's a solid trend alright. I know the average has been slipping all this season, to the point where we're now below last year. It'll rise again towards the end, but not by more than it'll fall in the meantime.
Surely the FAI will have to take a look at the league. 4 Months is way to much of a break. Start the league a month earlier. Not having as much midweek games woud boost crowds. Plus for the majority of teams it would help with the small squads. Teams with 17/18/19 players struggle with these games as there playing 6/7 games a month which is unfair.
We've been through this though. Adding four weeks to the season adds four weeks' wages. So if your weekly budget is E3k, and if by having four midweek games you lose 200 people off each gate, then you're saving E12k while losing out on E8k.
It's very different for each club though. One club may lose 200. Others may lose 4/5/600. We had 1000 at our Derry game, 400 at the midweek Athlone. It's a situation that has to be looked into to remain fair to all clubs. Teams may find themselves having extra players in the squad to accomodate for the midweek games thus more wages.
It is different for each club. But I'd say it probably does make financial sense for most clubs. We've maybe lost 100 on each gate? So E4k gone to save E12k. I don't think clubs would bring in players just for the spate of games; that's why you've U-20 and A teams, which are presumably largely amateur.
(That's assuming that 8/18 home games on Fridays, as we're looking at this season at best, has no effect on trying to make regulars out of people).
but dont players get paid for the term of their contract and not for the amount of weeks in a season?
Only pros.
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