Where are the big population centres up north? Towns big than say 40-50,000 and hoe many teams are in those towns?
I just thinking if there are two many clubs up there for the population, i not suggesting anything radical or anything but its worth looking at just to know.
The SFAI are the governing body for grassroots football in Ireland, not the FAI. Its success or the lack of is all down to them.
2001 census results
There you go Face, some interesting figures. Attendances should really be higher in places like Coleraine e.t.c.
"The Derry fans were fantastic in both matches. They sang their hearts out all the time and created an even better atmosphere than the Cup Final. They were brilliant. - David Graham, Gretna striker
Breakdown of population stats here:
http://www.world-gazetteer.com/wg.ph...ohdq&geo=-1496
Craigavon, which includes Portadown and Lurgan, and has a population of 59,000 has Portadown and Glenavon football clubs.
Bangor, with a population of 60,000, has . . . Bangor.
It's not just about population
The problem about Bangor is there are to many people who wouldn't dare go to a football match if you know what I mean
There's that yes, but also, Bangor is full of people who moved from Belfast when the troubles broke out, so many living there are mainly Bluemen or to a slightly lesser, but none the less significant degree, Glenmen.
the population of Derry and Lidburn among a couple of others have/are rising dramatically.
newry city .. and its population is under 30,000. "city" how exactly?
the problem again is that Many boroughs have teams that have been around for years. Take Armagh Borough. Within this there is my club and Armagh City and some that support the Ports, Glenavon, Dungannon and Newry. The teams are there now and no-one is going to swap allegiance to one of the others so of course fan basis is small. Compare this to the like of Derry City who have only 2 senior teams to support or Cork for example.
Newry was granted City status at the milennium. Was a bidding process from a load of towns of similar size. The Queen decided AFAIK.
"The Derry fans were fantastic in both matches. They sang their hearts out all the time and created an even better atmosphere than the Cup Final. They were brilliant. - David Graham, Gretna striker
Originally Posted by Dassa
Is there ever talk of some clubs merging ?? To be honest, it seems like the logical thing to do.
The SFAI are the governing body for grassroots football in Ireland, not the FAI. Its success or the lack of is all down to them.
The Queen created 5 new cities to mark the millenium. The plan was to have 1 in each of the 4 'home nations'. The 3 cities created in Britain were : Swansea (Wales), Sunderland (England) and Inverness (Scotland). The obvious candidate for City status in NI was Newry (Armagh being the previous obvious one to be grantec status). However - Britain being Britain, they decided they couldn't risk offending either community with their choice of city status - so they hatched the rather daft idea of creating TWO new cities : Lisburn and Newry. One perceived as a nationalist area, the other perceived as protestant. As a result Northern Ireland, with a population of only c. 1.5m people, now officially has 5 cities, 4 of which are in the east of the province. Daftness.
REVIP - Criagavon doesn't really exist. If anything, it's merely a superb of Lurgan. It was a Stormont-induced scheme to join Portadown and Lurgan together and create a protestant-majority second city for Northern Ireland in-place of Derry. Thankfully it never really got off the ground. Portadown and Lurgan are still two separate towns. Craigavon is just a weird 1960's-style suburb in-between, and a name sometimes misleading used on 'official' documents.
so true about craigavon not existng, most people were happy about keeping the individual towns as far as I can tell. As for merged teams cant see it happening most small villages or towns ie 500-10,000 have their own identity and team its there, so this ideology will not disappear easily including teams like my own team which has a populations of 400 people yet we have an average of 300, This shows the interest in the area for football and that particular team , would it be right to take senior football away from us just cause we are small?
Last edited by Dassa; 17/03/2006 at 12:03 PM.
Not if you are a supporter of such a club it isn't.
Yeah. I know. I lived in the 'borough' from '83 to '86 - moved there from England - it was very weird in those days - first time I got off a train in the North was at Portadown in '81 - it had signs up saying 'Craigavon West' - there were whole estates completely empty.
Point I was trying to make was that there was no necessary correlation between population and a succesful football club.
My home team in England is Yeovil Town - admittedly not having a great season this season - but the town is maybe as small as one tenth of the size of some of the towns they are playing against
Sunderland received city status in 1992 as part of the Queen's 40th anniversary as monarch.
Newry was not the "obvious choice" - in fact it was well down the running behind Lisburn, Ballymena and Coleraine (there was one other - the name escapes me).
They both received city status for the reasons you correctly outlined.
The only Irish club to win a European trophy.
Franchise football may be alive and well in the EL (Drumcondra .... Dublin City). I hope I never see a similar situation arising in the IL.
The only Irish club to win a European trophy.
But sometimes it would make sense though, obviously i know that fans would freak out at it but if two clubs had no fans, little resources, not enough people on the ground to keep it going and two run down grounds both within five miles of each other ..... that to me makes complete sense to merge.
The SFAI are the governing body for grassroots football in Ireland, not the FAI. Its success or the lack of is all down to them.
Sorry Steve (and at a tangent) but you're slightly out there. Herself only created three new cities to mark the millennium - Brighton & Hove, Wolverhampton and Inverness. Swansea had been a city since its incorporation as such in 1969 (in celebration of the investiture of Charlie as Prince of Wales). Newport was the Welsh town granted city status by Brenda to mark her golden jubilee in 2002 along with Newry and Lisburn from NI, Stirling in Scotland and Preston in Ingerlund. Still, I bet none of their local authorities lent the Labour Party any money to fight the last election (cash for city status, anyone?) But I digress...
PP
Last edited by Plastic Paddy; 18/03/2006 at 6:31 AM.
Semper in faecibus sole profundum variat
My bad on the cities PP - that'll teach me not to post at 2am after a night on the town....Sorry Steve (and at a tangent) but you're slightly out there. Herself only created three new cities to mark the millennium - Brighton & Hove, Wolverhampton and Inverness. Swansea had been a city since its incorporation as such in 1969 (in celebration of the investiture of Charlie as Prince of Wales). Newport was the Welsh town granted city status by Brenda to mark her golden jubilee in 2002 along with Newry and Lisburn from NI, Stirling in Scotland and Preston in Ingerlund. Still, I bet none of their local authorities lent the Labour Party any money to fight the last election (cash for city status, anyone?) But I digress...
There is academic evidence to suggest the opposite REVIP.
A footballing academic (who's name escapes me, but he was covered in one of the Footie lectures I go to at University of London) did a comprehensive study of footballing success in England since the beginning of the football league.
He found that, by and large, the more successful a club was, the larger the population centre it tended to come from. Looking at the all-time most successful clubs in England, this makes sense. The only small conurbation to win the English Premiership is Blackburn (pop c 140,000 - roughly size of Cork city). Only two teams from smaller population centres have ever won the English First Division - Burnley and Ipswich - and neither of those have been since 1962. Conversely - 82% of all English Champions have been teams from 7 of the 8 key cities in the country (London, Birmingham, Manchester, Leeds, Liverpool, Newcastle, Sheffield and Bristol) - and as you can see form that list, we're only really talking about 4 cities of footballing note. Also - the vast majority of the reamaining 18% of English champions won their titles in the pre-War era.
The academic also found that, whilst there were the occassional exceptions that bucked the rule at any point in time - e.g. Sunderland, Huddersfield, Preston, Ipswich, Derby, Wimbledon, and more recently Leicester and Wigan - when looked at over the long-term such 'successful' stints proved to be merely a flash in the pan before those clubs returned to their 'true station' in the pecking order based upon population centres.
So there is imperical and academic evidence (in England at least) to assert strongly that success is correlated to the size of a team's population centre. Anecdotally, this would broadly be true for mt otehr countris n Europe - such as Spain, Italy, France, Germany, Portugal, Scotland, Holland etc. In an increasingly money-dominated game it makes total sense that the larger a teams potential fanbase is, the greater its potential to generate revenue, and therefore the more successful it is likely to be.
who are you trying to upset with that? of that list, I would have thought Bristol was the only one not of 'footballing note'.
A patriot is someone who knows how to hate his country properly.
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