Hi Eatyourgreens.Originally Posted by ForeForeToo
I love my veg but I am not the user you seem to think I am.
If it amuses you to believe this I am all for it.
As a football nerd generally, and an IL fan specifically, I also take an interest in our nearest neighbour, since we have a number of things in common, crossovers and a shared history etc.
And I didn't need Larne v Shams to tell me that playing standards are higher in the LOI than the IL, including in Europe, or that the LOI has greater depth etc. This is hardly surprising, since for one reason you embraced f-t professionalism a lot earlier than us, while also having greater resources than us in a number of respects. Consequently there is a lot that the IL can - and should - learn from the LOI. (That clear enough for ya?).
But there are also a few things which the LOI could learn from the IL. For one thing, our pyramid has allowed us to raise standards, increase competitiveness within our game and expand senior football to just about every part of the country.
While for all the (many) failings of the IFA/NIFL, I think even you must agree that our governance is better than that of the LOI. Consequently, even if many are modest operations, NI can support 24 sustainable, Senior clubs, as opposed to ROI's 20. (Arguably 17 or 18, when you discount UCD and Derry, even Kerry?). Which is why we so rarely see clubs getting into the sort of financial difficulties currently being suffered by Dundalk, as happens fairly regularly in the LOI. This reflects a much better Licensing system in the IL, where we are not so desperate for clubs that we will pass applications which often turn out to be rather more fanciful than substantive.
While I suspect that our stadia, more of which are actually owned by the clubs, are generally in better nick than the LOI's, at least compared to the size of our respective clubs, maybe even in absolute terms? Which to get us back to the thread topic(!), all contributes to the number of paying* spectators being indisputably higher on a per capita basis in our Premiership than your Premier Division.
* - Notwithstanding the clear disparity in wealth and disposable income between NI and ROI.
Haha! That's genuinely not me. And nor is he/she wrong either
(Replying as myself here, to placate the conspiracy theorists).
Has NI seen fewer financial issues than the LOI because of better governance? Or because of the simple fact that there has been way less money put into NI football? A club doesn't have to indulge in a financial arms race if few of its competitors are doing so. It can still compete with regular resources, so it doesn;t put its financial stability at risk. I honestly think you're giving too much credence to 'governance' in the IL here. We'll see what happens when the owner of Glentoran gets bored and looks to move on, for example.
But so what? You're obsessed with this notion. But there are many variables wich contribute towards support for football clubs. Catchment population is only one of them - particularly in places where football has to compete against quite a few other alternatives for spectators sponsorship, players, media attention etc. You just refuse to accept this.
Better governance is certainly one reason. I expect there may be others. Either way, clubs getting into financial trouble occurs much more frequently in the LOI than in the IL. Or are you going to dispute that, too?
P.S. Is it that you've forgotten a certain John Delaney, or that you've never heard of him in the first place?
Less money makes it harder to manage your financial affairs, not easier, no?
"Keeping up with the Joneses" is all relative.
Besides which, a few years back a number of IL clubs such as Coleraine, Glentoran, Portadown and Newry did fall foul of an "arms race" (paying unsustainable wages and transfer fees etc). This took a long time to work through, but fortunately with no major casualties. The point being that it hasn't really been happening since, because both the clubs themselves and the IFA learnt the lessons.
Which process was helped by an element of "moral hazard" i.e. if any given club did go bust, the IL should be able to find a replacement* easily enough. And be honest, this is hardly the case in the LOI - or do you imagine the league won't do everything they possibly can eg to save Dundalk?
* - Portadown were once famously denied a Premiership Licence during a league reorganisation because their application arrived 14 minutes after the deadline: http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/foot...sh/7396174.stm
Fair question. And one which might equally be directed eg to Derry City, Shamrock Rovers, Galway Utd etc.
Your "obsessed" is my "keenly interested". And considering this thread is 55 pages strong, I'm hardly alone in my interest.
Anyhow, your chief reason for explaining the (small) disparity between IL and LOI crowds was that with football being an urban sport, then NI's greater population density gives us an advantage. Which is demonstrable nonsense.
So next time you make vague claims about "competition" and "alternatives" etc, you might be advised to provide some statistical evidence if you're to retain your credibility in the debate.
Over to you.
Rovers website saying all season tickets now sold out for south stand and there are just under 3000 2025 season tickets sold already. Thats despite us being **** poor in the league up to and including getting thumped at home by Pats. WOW.
Here's a few interesting stats for you:So next time you make vague claims about "competition" and "alternatives" etc, you might be advised to provide some statistical evidence if you're to retain your credibility in the debate.
Over to you.
1) Attendances in the Irish League are actually on the decline currently.
2) BOTH Drogheda and Derry brought enough fans to the Aviva on Sunday to individually fill Windsor Park on their own. Something that no Irish League club is even close to being capable of doing.
3) That was despite Drogheda having a population which is much smaller than IL towns like Bangor and Lisburn in the north.
4) NI's population is 30 times smaller than England's. By your logic, therefore, clubs like Linfield attracting approx 3,000 fans is a better performance than England, where no club attracts 90,000 to games.
There's lies, damned lies, and then there's statistics.
Last edited by EatYerGreens; 13/11/2024 at 11:59 PM.
Surprised wasnt posted here
A total of 1,001,630 fans went to games in the SSE Airtricity Men's Premier Division, First Division, SSE Airtricity Women’s Premier Division, men's and women's FAI Cups, the All-Island Cup and European matches involving LOI clubs.
The headline last year was almost a million.
Still one game to go as well!
What attendance is expected for the promotion relegation playoff?
A few Drogheda fans said on here last week that if they won the cup they’d sell out Tallaght, so according to them it’ll be just under 10,000 (assuming Bray don’t sell their 2 small blocks of the West stand). In reality I’d say it’ll be somewhere between 4-6k at a guess if a good number of neutrals show up, which is possible given the lack of other football on tv on Saturday daytime
Paaatrick's Agletic
Ha! That quotation is invariably used by people who don't have any statistics to back their own claims.
Anyhow, my point was a simple one, namely that when it comes to the percentage of people who pay to watch top flight football in Ireland, the figure for NI/IL is a little higher than that of ROI/LOI. That much is indisputable.
So that when faced with this, you have tried to come up with some explanations for NI being somehow "advantaged" in this respect. Of course, even if your reasoning was correct - it isn't, see the following - it still wouldn't rebut the above basic premise.
And as for those "explanations", your chief one of these - NI is much more urbanised than ROI - is plain wrong, there's very little difference. Your second is that there is somehow more "competition" for football in ROI than in NI. You have produced no evidence for this claim. Nor have you even distinguished between participation in the two countries, and actual paying spectators, which is the point under debate. Therefore such a claim is worthless.
Meanwhile, on this question of punters actually paying to watch football, you studiously ignore two factors whereby football in NI might be said to be disadvantaged. First, the population of ROI is somewhat wealthier than that of NI, meaning we might expect to have less disposable income for watching sport. Second, football matches in NI attract 20% VAT, meaning clubs either have to increase ticket prices to generate the same revenues, or keep prices down, thereby reducing revenues.
Add to that the fact that football in ROI never had to operate during 30 years of severe civil strife, the legacy of which still prevails in terms of sectarianism and division etc; as well as the IL losing the Senior club in its second city to the LOI. Or the fact that the IL Prem comprises 12 clubs, versus the LOI's 9 + Derry City.
Of course, in my post #1,074 which prompted this debate, I merely laid out a simple observation about relative attendances. While it is you who has sought to develop it into some sort of "playground mickey-measuring contest", not I. Which is all the more amusing when you are the one who is, er, coming up short!
Dunno where you get that from. Last season the IL average was 1,591. So far this season it is 1,631, i.e. before the boost that Boxing Day/New Year and the post-split games usually bring.
Even if boosted hugely by spectators from outside NI
But the seasonal one-off of a Cup Final shouldn't be allowed to deflect from the subject under discussion, even if it suits you to try, for we are debating the "bread and butter" of league attendances.
So we're into "cherry picking" now? What was it you said about "Lies, damned lies etc"?
But hey, if you want to play that game, I'll see your Drogheda (population 44k, ave. league crowd 2,023) and raise you my Loughgall (pop.300, ave.att. 691).
Good game this, isn't it?
Wow! And I thought your previous comparison of crowds in NI with those in the USA was fatuous!
Anyhow, even if such a comparison were valid, and it clearly isn't, that is not my "logic" at all. All I am merely pointing out is that the the IL manages to attract a (slightly) higher proportion of its population to attend top flight football than the LOI from its population, no more, no less.
While it is you who seems to be taking this so personally that you are resorting to this sort of garbage.
P.S. Should Man U decide to build a new stadium to replace OT, it will likely have a capacity of 100k, which I have no doubt they would fill every week. Which would make your above Linfield/England "comparison" laughable in every single respect.
You are the epitome of dragging a discussion down to the level of pointless tedium and boring the other person into submissionHa! That quotation is invariably used by people who don't have any statistics to back their own claims.
Anyhow, my point was a simple one, namely that when it comes to the percentage of people who pay to watch top flight football in Ireland, the figure for NI/IL is a little higher than that of ROI/LOI. That much is indisputable.
So that when faced with this, you have tried to come up with some explanations for NI being somehow "advantaged" in this respect. Of course, even if your reasoning was correct - it isn't, see the following - it still wouldn't rebut the above basic premise.
And as for those "explanations", your chief one of these - NI is much more urbanised than ROI - is plain wrong, there's very little difference. Your second is that there is somehow more "competition" for football in ROI than in NI. You have produced no evidence for this claim. Nor have you even distinguished between participation in the two countries, and actual paying spectators, which is the point under debate. Therefore such a claim is worthless.
Meanwhile, on this question of punters actually paying to watch football, you studiously ignore two factors whereby football in NI might be said to be disadvantaged. First, the population of ROI is somewhat wealthier than that of NI, meaning we might expect to have less disposable income for watching sport. Second, football matches in NI attract 20% VAT, meaning clubs either have to increase ticket prices to generate the same revenues, or keep prices down, thereby reducing revenues.
Add to that the fact that football in ROI never had to operate during 30 years of severe civil strife, the legacy of which still prevails in terms of sectarianism and division etc; as well as the IL losing the Senior club in its second city to the LOI. Or the fact that the IL Prem comprises 12 clubs, versus the LOI's 9 + Derry City.
Of course, in my post #1,074 which prompted this debate, I merely laid out a simple observation about relative attendances. While it is you who has sought to develop it into some sort of "playground mickey-measuring contest", not I. Which is all the more amusing when you are the one who is, er, coming up short!
Dunno where you get that from. Last season the IL average was 1,591. So far this season it is 1,631, i.e. before the boost that Boxing Day/New Year and the post-split games usually bring.
Even if boosted hugely by spectators from outside NI
But the seasonal one-off of a Cup Final shouldn't be allowed to deflect from the subject under discussion, even if it suits you to try, for we are debating the "bread and butter" of league attendances.
So we're into "cherry picking" now? What was it you said about "Lies, damned lies etc"?
But hey, if you want to play that game, I'll see your Drogheda (population 44k, ave. league crowd 2,023) and raise you my Loughgall (pop.300, ave.att. 691).
Good game this, isn't it?
Wow! And I thought your previous comparison of crowds in NI with those in the USA was fatuous!
Anyhow, even if such a comparison were valid, and it clearly isn't, that is not my "logic" at all. All I am merely pointing out is that the the IL manages to attract a (slightly) higher proportion of its population to attend top flight football than the LOI from its population, no more, no less.
While it is you who seems to be taking this so personally that you are resorting to this sort of garbage.
P.S. Should Man U decide to build a new stadium to replace OT, it will likely have a capacity of 100k, which I have no doubt they would fill every week. Which would make your above Linfield/England "comparison" laughable in every single respect.
The Irish league attendances decline is from Marshall Gillespie, who as you know is the recognised stats guru in northern football. His figures in the below tweet show a slight increase across the IL at the stage of last weekend versus the previous year - up a total of 20 punters (and lower than the increase you're claiming). However - two-thirds of the league's clubs have declining attendances, and it's only a big increase in crowds at Ballymena this season (up over 500 on average) that is preventing the total league being in the red. (And that's also before you factor in that Portadown being promoted and Newry being relegated has had a large positive net impact upon the league average). I'm not sure a drop in attendances at two-thirds of the league's clubs is something to be either brushed off (as you're doing) or celebrated (as Marshall is doing) - especially when the back-to-back champions are down 17%, and the team currently top of the IL are down 5%.
You may take it up with the Marshal is you're not happy with his stats here = https://x.com/NIStats/status/1854851786537910482
Last edited by EatYerGreens; 15/11/2024 at 6:28 PM.
Take it to private messages lads. It's getting tiring at this stage, seeing every thread descend into the same argument.
https://kesslereffect.bandcamp.com/album/kepler - New music. It's not that bad.
I originally noted in passing that a slightly higher percentage of the population of NI pays to watch top flight IL football than that of the ROI for top flight LOI football (post #1,074) - nothing more, nothing less.
At which point it was you, post #1,077 onwards, who dragged the discussion down with witless claims about "urbanisation", "competition" and "less money meaning fewer financial problems" etc, in a desperate attempt to somehow rebut my original simple, indisputable observation.
Dear God.
You stated in post #1,088 that: "Attendances in the Irish League are actually on the decline currently."
And now, to support your case, you quote a tweet by my friend Marshall which states:
"To date, the average per game this season is 1,611, which is up on last season's average of 1.591"
Embarrassing.
They are in decline. It's only one club, Ballymena,that is propping the whole league up, as two-thirds of its clubs are suffering lower attendances. There is nothing to celebrate in that fact.
It will be interesting to see to what extent that decline increases over the cold winter months.
With the exception of Larne, it has been less than 4-5% in those clubs which have shown a decline. (Coleraine's has been less than 1%, for instance). And with such a small sample size i.e. 5 - 9 home games so far, with the highest (Glenavon on 9) showing an increase, it takes very little to boost or depress such fine margins at individual clubs at this stage. Whereas the larger aggregate sample must give a better picture.
As for Larne (just 5 home IL games), they have had a particularly topsy turvey season thanks to Europe, with games having to be postponed or moved to Sunday etc, while at the same time featuring more than any other club on live TV.
Unless we get a blizzard and postponements etc, I predict that the Boxing Day derbies alone at eg Coleraine, Crues and Glentoran will wipe out the deficit which those clubs are currently showing. (Boxing Day/New Year draws the highest crowds in the calendar, season in, season out).
Now what was it you were wittering on about earlier? Oh yes, something about Statistics, wasn't it?
Boys….you are a hard read…
This has become two bald men fighting over a comb with a few bristles in it.
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