Rovers aside, it would appear LOI is just not improving in the capital looking at the last 5 years attendance figures.Originally Posted by ger121
Also it's worth noting Rovers too have seen a drop off in crowds, granted they should improve this season, but overall the appetitive for fans within the city appears to be slipping for most clubs. This is a real shame as there is a huge market to draw from.
#DundalkFC - First Irish club to win an away game in Europe (1963), only Irish club to win a game / points in Europa League Group Stage (2016).
Counted 7 Buses in the away car park after the game...
I'd of out the attendance at about 1300.
Stand looked half full with about 80 in the "famous section o".
It's just 'Section O', Ted. Glad the lads are famous now all the same
Those other two buses were for the CIA and UN forces!
It's not a great sign if fans won't come out for the first home game after many years in the wilderness.
A couple of lads from Dundalk went over to the game to see what Rovers were like. While they didn't mention numbers to me, they just said the home crowd was very poor.
As previously stated a lot of people would of stayed away because of previous trouble from Rovers fans. And because the Town are mainly a family friendly club parents would of been unwilling to bring their kids to this particular game. But in fairness to the Rovers fans, on their last two visits they have been well behaved.
On another note I don't know what other league clubs think the size of Longford is but we have the second smallest population in Ireland county wise. Our county population is 39,000 compared to Louth's 122,000. So the defending league champions opening up with a crowd of 3,300 compared to our 1,700 we ain't doing too bad in that regard.
Last edited by Town Legend; 15/03/2015 at 10:15 AM.
Last season's average attendance was 550 odd, only bumped up by the last match, in reality it was a fair bit lower, so for our home game to be a good 300-400% or more higher than last season's average, I think it's not too bad lads, we got crowds of just about 1,000 when we went down, and closer to 1.5k when things were going really well a few years ago. Longford was a much more densely populated town at the time or at least certainly less of a hole. We've brought it up before, but there's a fairly big number of people who would have gone to town games a decade ago, who don't live near the place any more.
I doubt anyone from within Longford expects our average attendance for the season to exceed 1,000, I'd imagine closer to the 800 mark if we do badly, more if we do relatively well obviously. We don't have the population as Town Legend mentioned for sustained support week in week out, everyone has the potential to draw a crowd for the one big game a year or whatever in a cup.
edit: if anyone's interested, 2011 census has the Longford Town population at 9,601. A metropolis if you will.
Last edited by Acornvilla; 15/03/2015 at 10:09 AM.
Louth has two teams.
Louth has one team and share another with Meath! And even with two, their population still is a lot more than Longford's. 122,000 split between 2, would give you 61,000 compared to 39,000.
Last edited by Town Legend; 15/03/2015 at 2:53 PM.
Using census figures to justify ****e crowds.
One of the things that made this the #greatestleagueintheworld.
Any official figure from Longford yet?
It just takes a bit of cop on to realise you won't pull in big crowds if you don't have a big population. But I wouldn't expect you to understand that!
Last edited by Town Legend; 15/03/2015 at 4:18 PM.
And yet Sligo has a smaller urban area population than Bray, Tralee, Carlow, Athlone, Wexford and Letterkenny amongst others yet averages 2nd or 3rd in attendances over the last couple of years.
Waterford and Finn Harps both averaging in the 400's the last couple of years despite Waterford having 45,000 on Ballybofey-Stranorlar.
But you have to take in other perspectives. Donegal probably has a bigger population than Co Waterford and Harps have larger than normal rural support across the county.
While I'd say Sligo's support is probably helped by it being a successful soccer club in a county which is poor at both GAA codes?
Last edited by toffeejay; 15/03/2015 at 5:29 PM.
Donegal is a poor example really. A lot of north Donegal are Derry fans and a lot of South Donegal are Sligo fans due to the sheer size of the county and proximity to the other clubs.
Define "a lot"?
A leading authority on League of Ireland football since 2003. You're probably wrong.
Very many, a large number; also, very much. For example, "A lot of people think the economy is declining", or "Sad movies always made her cry a lot". It is sometimes put as a whole lot for greater emphasis, as in "I learned a whole lot in his class". It may also emphasize a comparative indication of amount, as in "We need a whole lot more pizza to feed everyone", or "Mary had a lot less nerve than I expected".
for us the killer is the ground is three miles out of town. out of all the loi clubs we are probably the furthest out of town. its not an excuse but you have to face the reality.
we were down on heads in section o as a few of them have gone to a match in Germany probably booked from ages ago.. All of our massive attendances of over 5k were in the early noughties when Stephen Kenny was in charge and it was winter football and there was nothing clashing. Summer soccer has killed the loi for Longford Town thats for sure!
Gary Cronin is he the right man to manage Longford Town?
I'd say Wexford is more remote. But grounds so far from the town will always cause problems getting crowds out for games.
Ferrycarraig Park is definitely further out of Wexford and more difficult to get to than CCS is out of Longford. Terryland Park isn't exactly city centre either.
I'm not sure if that was a typo Marty but we've never, ever gotten 5k out there for a Town game! In the Kenny days we got 1,500 or so for a few league games, since then we've had maybe 3k for various cup games and just over 4,000 for the league cup final in 2004.
Nigel Terryland is a ten minute walk from the centre of Galway.
Went up to Saratoga, where my horse naturally won.
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