The 8456 v Southampton , is that our lowest gate for a 1st team game post 70s ?.I cant think of any lower .
Six thousand-odd for Exeter in the League Cup that season.
I was one of the 8,456 against Southampton on 01/02/86 which was actually a Saturday afternoon game, mostly notable for Dave Ismay getting the bird from a sparsely populated Holte for his ‘get behind your team’ speech. Heaven knows what Tony Barton made of it who returned as part of Saints coaching team.10-12,000 was commonplace that season, including a 4-1 defeat to Arsenal watched by 10k for another Saturday 3pm game.Another few big sides had a few shockers:Spurs vs Blues, old div 1, 16/04/86 - 9,359Chelsea vs Walsall in old div 2, 04/10/88 - 6,747
Quote from: luke95 on February 10, 2019, 02:26:33 PMThe 8456 v Southampton , is that our lowest gate for a 1st team game post 70s ?.I cant think of any lower .I would say Simod Cup and ZDS cup games were lower. I think we might have got about five and a half thousand for the game against Bradford early in SGT's reign in whatever the chosen name of that Mickey Mouse competition was that year.
Quote from: Damo70 on February 10, 2019, 02:29:07 PMQuote from: luke95 on February 10, 2019, 02:26:33 PMThe 8456 v Southampton , is that our lowest gate for a 1st team game post 70s ?.I cant think of any lower .I would say Simod Cup and ZDS cup games were lower. I think we might have got about five and a half thousand for the game against Bradford early in SGT's reign in whatever the chosen name of that Mickey Mouse competition was that year.Yeah I thought possibly ZDSCup game but because the Southampton game always gets mentioned I thought that maybe been our lowest ever
Bradford in the Simod Cup was something like 4200, we also had Derby in the same competition the previous season and it was about 5200. 85/86 was the nadir for most clubs. Our highest home attendance in the league was 27,626 v Man Utd, sha was 26,694. Of the 42 league games we played that season only the away games at Man Utd and Everton had more than 30K, and only 10 of our 42 league games had more than 20K.
Going back to the original post, an Albion fan talking utter cobblers. Who’d have thought it?
what explains the severe downturn in attendances generally in the mid eighties? I've just trawled back through history and the lowest attendance I can find in 1970/71 was just over 16,000 so my memory was playing tricks. The following season home attendances were ridiculously high.