Here's a map of how much we suck as a football supporting nation. (Apologies if this has turned up before - I failed to find it in a search.)
You can't spell failure without FAI
Interesting... Turkey seem to be worse than us - and they have good crowds, I believe. Despite their much larger population, still seems a bit odd.
But yes, we suck big time.
The egg chasing is the only sport in the country that gets decent regular crowds, our support is poor and the gaa is full of day trippers.The mentality about supporting a team is to slap on a shirt and go to the boozer.
Would have thought the GAA got more overall in general. Egg chasing is the 4 provinces so must larger support base.
The GAA would still be ahead of rugby, but crowds for the league especially outside div 1 have declined. For example Offaly v Waterford football match in Tullamore last Sunday week had reports of just 250 at it. Cork footballers would be behind the soccer club down there in terms of getting fans in the gate.
Yet I was at a hurling game on Sunday with a attendance of over 6k; Galway v Clare, a derby I know but still better than the average Connacht egg chasers get.
No doubt about it soccer crowds here are disappointing and well behind Scotland for example.
So we're lower midtable for attendance in a league thats ranked nearer the bottom in Europe. We certainly have higher average attendance at league games, per capita, than much of Eastern Europe and some of Western Europe.
In terms of actually playing the game we have one of the highest percentages of registered players in the entire world.... this despite the ubiquity of the GAA and the fact that football is run in an utterly incompetent way. Even without counting the thousands and thousands of unregistered players playing regular 5-a-side soccer is the largest participation sport in the country, well ahead of Gaelic football.
We're not as bad as we like to think sometimes
Worth noting the Welsh figure presumably excludes the teams in the English pyramid - Swansea, Cardiff, Wrexham, Newport County, etc. That'd bump them right up.
Surprised Finland is so low.
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