Quote:
Originally Posted by Revived Red
Agree entirely. Many of my local friends, and fans from other clubs that I meet on the trains on Saturday, find it difficult to understand that we can produce such good football from a seemingly shambolic background over the last few years.
Disagree entirely. We simply cannot go on blaming the proximity of other teams for our abysmal attendances.
How can Stockport County manage an average attendance of over 3000 when the Etihad and Old Trafford are only about 7 miles away?
And let's remember that the average attendance at Ewood Park fell from 25,000 in 2010 to under 15,000 in 2012. That's 10,000 disillusioned football fans. Surely some of them could/should have been attracted to the Crown Ground or whatever name it had during those years.
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It's easier to keep a support in adversity than try and attract fans from other teams when they are playing. Why do you thing Rangers had 50000 crowds in the fourth tier of Scottish football?
There will always be fans lost when teams get relegated from the Premiership but how many go to lower league clubs. The Premiership is so hyped that some people would go to any Premiership game just to say they have been to one. Kids are more inclined to be drawn to bigger teams to see players they have heard of than a league two side where you only read about it in the Accy Observer.
Also football is a habit, break that habit and often you don't miss it because there are plenty of other things a person can find to do. Once you get on a run of not missing a game in a season you are more inclined to go to keep it running but break that run and it's easy not to put yourself out. Just because you stop watching Blackburn doesn't mean you want to watch another team. Some do but most don't.
It is difficult now to build a fan base because there are so many other options to kids on a Saturday and that is the only way we will ever do it. We lost more than one generation by folding. If we had reformed right away as other clubs do now then we might be in a better position but that didn't happen.
We need to do something but I'm at a loss to think what. We couldn't fill the stadium when we let people in for nothing so I don't think cutting the price by a fiver will do much in terms of income or the attendances we would need. I will do my bit chalking up the miles each season but when I'm down you wouldn't know there was a game on when drinking in the town most matchdays. Advertising is one thing but it only works when you promote the "product". Get rid of the tinpot image and joke club and that might help. If I had a pound for every time I heard "who are they" I could get in for free each game and that's up here in Scotland.