Sorry meant to include finn harps for having a very good support base too.
My point was, for most first div teams, the avg away support is very very limited.
Personally speaking I dont agree with CTID's doom and gloom merchantry. Waterford's attendances despite the almighty horrendous season we have had hasnt at all collapsed. We are hovering around the 1000-1100 mark constantly for the last 3-4 months and for a side routed at the foot of the PD playing some woefull football at times thats not bad, especially taken into account that we practically get few away fans.
Last edited by Partizan; 22/11/2006 at 1:37 PM.
WhyOriginally Posted by Raheny Red
That was free in as well
I have not got a clue but I read somewhere over the weekend that it was free admission. Could any Limerick fans clarify this?Why
Who Cares?!
There's a thread in the Limerick forum saying it was free in.
Having watched el weekly, I find that hard to believe!
Have you got a source
There was more or less the same crowd as the home game v Derry, though with no away support I reckon thats a fair guess. Remember the majority of the home support will be on the Cross Lanes terrace under the TV gantry!
Re-read your own words!
and TV always gives a few on that side on replays.
We've found out b4 that guess attendances like that are often over estimated.
exiled gufc fan
Re-read your own words!
Two swallows don't make a summer.
If Shamrock Rovers, with their fanatical loyal support can lose an average of 500 punters per game in a successful season what chance do the other clubs have? This is probably largely due to a drop in visiting supporters explainable by a lack of Dublin Derbies.
Partizan
Middle of last summer( 2005) when your clubs financial situation was touch and go only 400 bothered to attend one of your home games. That is serious! The club was balanced on a knife edged and only that number could be arsed to support the team.
NY Hoop
I don't hate summer football, the benefits on European performances are there to be seen. However there has been no trickle down effect. The successful clubs are struggling financially, we have almost lost two clubs in the top four from last year in 2006. One club has already folded and another in the First Division is teetering on the brink of going out of business.
I don't enjoy being a doomsday merchant but looking at it without rose tinted glasses you have to admit we have been sold a pup on the attendances front. Whatever figures you look at and I re-read the thread and saw Pineapples stats a couple of pages ahead of my posting. Crowds are down. People do not go to games in large numbers in June July and August. 1/3 of the entire season!
They never did in August, we knew that from the old winter season. We have now compounded that with two other months where it happens.
We have had summer football now in 2003 , 2004, 2005 and 2006, and crowds drop dramatically during those three months there is no getting away from it.
Real football is a much better spectacle,than GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH but for whatever reason the ignorant masses do not see the improvements in the League on the park at all . If they do they cannot be arsed that it is better.
Why is this? I have a theory about it . Supporting a club in a serious League involves going to see them 15-20 times a season miminum and that's just attending home games and local derbies away, as I said elsewhere, Ireland is a commitment phobe society, and that's a level of commitment nobody is prepared to do any more in any aspect of their lives.
There are other factors too which may explain it.
A lot of people have had to move to the extreme perimeters of the commuter belt to such places as South COunty Wicklow, East Laois, North Carlow , North Meath and South Cavan to get affordable housing. These places are so far from EL grounds that percentage of the support cannot go to watch Dublin clubs for one any more.
Diehards like you and I are very thin on the ground these days. Your lot have more of them than the ordinary average club, but your club's very existence is nothing short of miraculous given all the troubles that have plagued you over the past 20 years. Welcome back to the Premier by the way.
That is unless the FAI move the goalposts again
P.S. With the number of clubs suffering financial problems this season that we know about, and the one or two that we don't. In an admittedly worst case scenario, we could theoretically lose up to 3 clubs during the winter, leaving a 18 team League.
Last edited by CollegeTillIDie; 23/11/2006 at 6:37 AM.
Clubs in this league would struggle financially no matter when the season is.
KOH
CTID - if your moan is more about the collective Irish psyche than Summer football (an assertion that I don't buy into anyway) then the big question is - what is the solution ? Are you just saying that football in Ireland is fcuked ? If it is fcuked and there's nothing we can do about it because of the Irish psyche, then what should we all do - moan about it? Just accept it ? Or see if there are ways to tackle it anyway ?
I don't for one second buy into this wannabe-Oprah style analysis of the ills of the Irish nation when it comes to commitment. Frackly it's just bullsh!t. Irish people have no problems loyally following English or Scottish football clubs all their lives. I bet you more people leave the island each week to watch foreign football than leave their homes on a Friday night to watch the domestic game. Irish people also have no problem swith turning out in large crowds to watch Ulster, Munster and Leinster in rugby. They'll flock in their thousands to watch One Horse Town Emmets play Ballyno-one Nonces in a south county minor women's final. They'll pour into horse tracks up and down the country, not to mention facilities like the Greyhound track in Lifford.
That shoWs what is actually the problem with our game. The Emmet Malone article was absolutely spot on - we have a good product, but a woeful image. Therefore, most people neither know nor accept that we have a good product. The way to adddress that, therefore, is not to consatruct a back-of-fag-packet thesis on post-Celtic Tiger Irish society. It's to work to address that image problem.
One of the key ways to tackle the poor image of our league will undoubtedly be European results. And as we've seen over the last few seasons, Summer football makes a direct contribution towards improvement in this area. When the general public stops being surprised by results agaist Swedish or Scottish teams and starts to assume that our clubs will beat decent teams, then the battle of opening minds (and thereby turnstiles) is half-won.
If you thought Summer football was the magic wand to cure Irish football's ills, then that says more about your expectations than it does about our league. No-one said it would be the one thing that would have them flocking to our game in droves. No-one "sold us a pup" - though you may have elected to buy one anyway.
Finally - your assertion re attendances is completely wrong anyway, and I note with interest that you have failed to address the post where I tackled this in some detail. When Pineapple gets round to posting the final final attendance figures, any overall drop versus last season will most likely be very marginal - which in a World Cup year isn't bloody bad at all. Therefore - if you are correct that attendnaces plummet mid-Summer, then they must also be rocketing in Spring and Autumn to broadly maintain the averages. But again - you only look at where the glass is half empty, because that suits your arguement.
Pineapple - please can you update the table with the last few attendnaces so we can at least have our guestimated figures as reflective of the true situation as they're ever likely to be. Thanks.
estimate for the playoff last night in dundalk are coming in between 1650 and 2500 at the moment, since the playoffs are official more league games.
1,650 was the figure The Star gave, and 2,000 from The Indo.
Those fans who were in attendance are suggesting a figure that is averaged at about 2,500 (see separate foot.ie thread on this, or the thread on the Dundalk forum).
As Pineapple usually takes the lowest figure given, he'd be a third out if he took The Star stat over the fan's one.
I'll post an update this evening. Indications are, however, that the overall average will be down 10-12% on last year. Obviously the World Cup would account for a fair bit, but probably not all, of that.
I don't put the play-off games in the averages. But feel free to post them. Obviously the range of figures does indicate the problem with this thread. However, it's helped somewhat by the fact that I ignore what the Star says.
You're still ignoring your claim that Rovers' average was the best "by a mile". It wasn't, as Galway's was ahead, and even Dundalk's wasn't too far behind. I don't think the above does anything at all to back up your claim, which was clearly wrong.
Rovers' support, it should be noted, was the most consistent of the above three.
Last edited by pineapple stu; 23/11/2006 at 12:50 PM.
Another update. 2005 and 2004 in brackets. FD and PD indicate average crowd got in a different division to current year. 1 and 2 refer to first round and second round of matches.
Have filled in quite a few gaps since as follows -
Bray v Longford - 600
Cork v St Pat's - 2000
Derry v Sligo - 3000
Longford v Pat's - 400
Sligo v Drogheda - 1500
Sligo v Shels - 1000
Harps v Dundalk - 500
Limerick v Athlone - 150
Limerick v Rovers - 570
Cobh v Rovers - 800
PREMIER DIVISION
Bohs - 1463 (1976; 2340)
Bray - 1027 (1550; 818 FD)
Cork - 2941 (3644; 4033)
Derry - 3200 (2698; 1672)
Drogheda - 1751 (1682; 1554)
Dublin City - 488 (175 FD; 592)
Longford - 702 (1004; 1131) (missing Bohs 2)
Pat's - 1342 (1599; 1882)
Shels - 1690 (1949; 2158)
Sligo - 1806 (1794 FD; 781 FD)
UCD - 546 (653; 306 FD)
Waterford - 915 (1513; 1753)
FIRST DIVISION
Athlone - 421 (316; 291)
Cobh - 368 (403; 240) (missing Finn Harps (both) and Limerick 1)
Dundalk - 1078 (474; 591)
Harps - 428 (1347 PD; 1106)
Galway - 1148 (566; 571)
Kildare - 265 (186; 298) (missing Harps 2)
Kilkenny - 122 (185; 110) (missing Cobh (both) and Kildare (both))
Limerick - 364 (669; 188)
Monaghan - 204 (183; 182) (missing Harps 2, Kildare 2 and Limerick 2)
Rovers - 1089 (1539 PD; 1349 PD)
Premier Division average - 1539 (1759)
First Division average - 570 (520)
Overall average - 1071 (1195)
Couple of changes in the top draw rankings. The list is still sorted according to clubs' final ranking in the average crowd stakes.
Code:Team Top PREMIER DIVISION Derry City 6,800 v Cork Cork City 5,500 v Shels Sligo Rovers 2,900 v Shels Drogheda United 2,800 v Shels Shelbourne 4,000 v Bohs Bohemians 3,104 v Shels St Pat's Ath 2,145 v Shels Bray Wanderers 2,800 v Shels Waterford Utd 1,250 v Derry Longford Town 1,421 v Sligo UCD 1,250 v Shels Dublin City 1,900 v Bohs FIRST DIVISION Galway United 3,092 v Rovers Shamrock Rovers 2,000 v Dundalk Dundalk 3,500 v Rovers Finn Harps 700 v Rovers Athlone Town 2,000 v Monaghan Cobh Ramblers 800 v Rovers Limerick FC 1,100 v Rovers Kildare County 1,100 v Rovers Monaghan United 800 v Rovers Kilkenny City 278 v Dundalk
Percentage change in the last thre seasons -
The columns from left to right are % change from 2004 to 2006, from 2004 to 2005 and from 2005 to 2006. Figures in bold indicate a season in a new division.Code:Club Overall 2006 2005 Athlone Town 44.83% 33.21% 8.72% Bohemians -37.49% -25.97% -15.56% Bray Wanderers 25.56% -33.76% 89.57% Cobh Ramblers 53.19% -8.49% 67.40% Cork City -27.09% -19.31% -9.64% Derry City 91.34% 18.60% 61.33% Drogheda United 12.66% 4.08% 8.24% Dublin City -17.55% 179.64% -70.52% Dundalk 82.31% 127.38% -19.82% Finn Harps -61.33% -68.23% 21.73% Galway United 101.11% 102.77% -0.82% Kildare County -10.83% 42.47% -37.41% Kilkenny City 10.78% -34.05% 67.96% Limerick FC 93.38% -45.52% 254.95% Longford Town -37.95% -30.14% -11.18% Monaghan United 11.70% 11.09% 0.55% St Pat's Ath -28.70% -16.06% -15.06% Shamrock Rovers -19.24% -29.19% 14.05% Shelbourne -21.70% -13.27% -9.72% Sligo Rovers 131.11% 0.63% 129.67% UCD 78.20% -16.43% 113.24% Waterford Utd -47.82% -39.52% -13.72% Premier -16.94% -12.53% -5.04% First 11.25% 9.57% 1.54% Overall average -12.10% -10.36% -1.94%
2,500 at the Dundalk vs. Waterford Utd playoff game is the consensus among Dundalk fans.
Yeah 2,500 sounds about right. decent turn out as less than 50 were away fans, awful night, champs lge etc
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