On TUI the merits of attendances at St Mary's never abate.

There are those on the message board who seek to trivialise the discussions on Saints attendances, they say that they mean nothing.

They couldnt be further from the truth, for any football Club its average attendance is not only a measure of how well its currently doing, but of its standing in the footballing world, that is why we grudgingly accept that Man Utd are the biggest football club in England, because of their massive support.

That continues throughout the divisions, Bradford are considered the big guns of league 2, not because of anything they have done in the past 100 years, in fact that really amounts to little more than 2 years in the Premier a dozen years ago plus a cup win in the early part of the last century, but for their ability to pull in a five figure crowd in a division where some clubs struggle to get 2 k through the turnstiles.

In the early 90's Saints were considered the smallest club in the top flight, their on field prowess with an exciting team of youngsters was overlooked because we had just about the smallest crowd in the smallest stadium, at the same time Wimbledon even after winning the FA Cup were not taken seriously merely because they had few supporters, ironically once they had reformed after the disgrace that was Franchise FC, there self same hardcore of supporters made them the biggest non league club.

So attendances are everything to a football club, outside of the premiership they are firstly your primary source of income but secondly the yardstick on how others jusge you.

Those that say that no one is interested in attendances should take a look at the results columns in any newspaper over the past 50 years, they give you just basic information, result scorers and guesss what else, yes the attendance.

For any fotball club its a barometer of how well the club is doing, football clubs exist solely due to their supporters, those supporters generate income, not just through the turnstiles, but in the club shops and other areas of income raising, advertising for example, advertisers will pay more money for space at a club with a lot of supporters, purely because it will get out to more people be it at the game or on TV, indeed a big factor to a TV company on selecting live games is the potential audience, and that is why the big clubs are on so often, partly because of the large supporter base who will watch it on TV.

The average attendance should be to a football club the yadstick that it,itself judges how well its doing, is it getting more through the gate than it should do at that time, or is it getting fewer through than before at a similar time, yes there are many factors to this, not least the way the team is performing on the pitch, but in general its afairly accurate way of showing whether your doing things right and your supporters are behind you, or whether you are getting it wrong in attracting them to the club.

So this is why attendances are important, this is why most football fans look at them and why in the pub, one of the  things discussed is how big the crowd is going to be today, OK at some clubs like United its an obsolete question, but at 95% of the others its completely relevant, its not just home support either, again a major topic is how many clubs take away as well.

So dont dismiss attendances as boring or irrelevant, they are very much the opposite,, well OK some might find them boring, but certainly not the latter.      

Photo: Action Images

mg2104 added 09:34 - Aug 5 I have never found attendance boring nor irrelevant. All Saints fans I know are obsessed with attendances. It's an important comparable gauge of our progress.
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Jesus_02 added 09:46 - Aug 5 Everyone wants to be in that number... the bigger the number the better
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