It's almost exactly 100 miles between Finn Park and Bishopsgate in Longford, Harps closest trip this season coming.Originally Posted by oriel
https://kesslereffect.bandcamp.com/album/kepler - New music. It's not that bad.
What's driving Glentoran to have higher attendances than Linfield?
They hosted the St Stephen's Day game against Linfield this year - that could skew it?
Well it's got Cork, Derry, Sligo, Dundalk and Drogheda, so all four provinces are involved. Choose your preferred nomenclature for it, but a Dublin District League it clearly isn't.
Re Linfield, although they're up to 3rd in the Prem now, they had a poor first 3 or 4 months of the season in the league and also had a lot of Cup games, including Europe and the Scottish Challenge Cup.
So my guess is it's a combination of their fans picking and choosing their games, plus typical bloody entitlement. We'll know more if they keep winning games and the crowds increase accordingly.
Linfield's average attendance last season was 2,914 though, versus 2,852 so far this year. So not a huge difference. And they won the league last year, so you'd have expected a poor run of results this year etc etc to have seen crowds fall a bit more really.
How big were the crowds at their European matches ?
Last edited by EatYerGreens; 13/02/2023 at 12:56 PM.
Boosted by their opening game of the season, at home to Linfield on a Sunday, where they won 1-0 before a crowd of 2,029. (Linfield don't take a huge away support btw - Glens and Coleraine bigger this season).
More generally, I'd guess Newry may have benefited from a "promotion bounce" during the milder early season weather, while results haven't been too bad for a newly promoted team? However on the basis that they'll be in the bottom half after the Split, they'll do well to maintain reasonable crowds through to the end of the season.
All that said, imo crowds haven't been that bad overall, considering what the club has been through in recent years - something to build on?
Maybe, but this season overall IL crowds are up by 9.9% from last season. While the other top teams have seen the following figures: Cliftonville +8.1%, Coleraine +22.2%, Crues +6.8%, Glens 22.9% and Larne -4.0%, so even a 2.2% drop for LFC is pretty poor (imo).
Either way, you should expect them to draw more than Glentoran and Coleraine (esp), whatever the circumstances. Maybe they'll recover as the season progresses?
Dunno.
Linfield won that game 3-1, and had a decent travelling support (was at the match myself). From memory I'd say they had 500 or so there, across two sides of the ground ?
Either way you'd expect the most successful team on the island playing in the second-largest city on the island in the best club stadium on the island with essentially limitless capacity to do a lot better than the kind of crowds Linfield have been getting - either this year or last. They literally have everything gong for them, and now even have Kyle Lafferty to act as a further draw.
You're quite right - dunno where I got 1-0 from
Is 500 really that "decent"? Glens and Coleraine have both been taking more away than that to games.
I thought that that was what I was saying - i.e. that their crowds this season have been poor.
Btw, some of their fans "blame" the IFA/Windsor for poor crowds - something about 3k rattling around in an 18k stadium making it hard to create an atmosphere etc.
Not quite so quick to blame the IFA for all the huge sums they've received from them down the decades, mind.
Brilliant stuff,hopefully a good opening night for Kerry!
Irish by birth ,Harps by the grace of god.
Fair play to Kerry, especially given the pricing. Let's hope it turns out to be a great evening for all concerned, and the crowds come back again,
If Institute were in the NIFL surely that would be the longest trip?
Gary Cronin is he the right man to manage Longford Town?
If everyone thought Kerry were highly priced and now they are sold out, does this mean other clubs are underselling their product??
Institute to Warrenpoint in the Championship is the longest trip in the NIFL league system as far as I can tell, even then it's shorter than Harps to Longford this season
https://kesslereffect.bandcamp.com/album/kepler - New music. It's not that bad.
They're in the Championship (2nd tier) but mid-table, so not going to get promoted this season (or relegated).
The promotion race is currently between 3 provincial sides, Loughgall, Annagh Utd (both Co.Armagh) and Warrenpoint Tn, top going up automatically and second into a P&R play-off with the 11th team in the Prem:
https://www.nifootballleague.com/cha...023/standings/
With Portadown seemingly certain to get relegated automatically, the relegation play-off spot is looking like Dungannon or Newry, but could conceivably be Glenavon or Carrick should either suffer a slump to the end of the season:
https://www.nifootballleague.com/pre...023/standings/
Whatever happens, it won't help attendances for next season, but nor should it do too much harm either, I suspect.
Last edited by EalingGreen; 13/02/2023 at 9:43 PM.
It's easy to sell out your first ever senior match - particularly in a fairly small stadium. It' basically an historical event on Friday, with quite a lot of local media attention behind it too.
Let's see if they're still selling games out when they host Wexford in October before jumping to conclusions.
Posting Permissions
Quote
Bookmarks