Cambridge’s low crowd got me googling low second tier/Football League crowds which led me to this: https://talksport.com/football/efl-cup/122663/24936/#:~:text=Some reports suggest that the,had a capacity of 100,000! Anyone going in 1962?
Ten years before that match Cambridge were in the Southern League, they rarely got 2,000 in that league. The 80s were the decade when crowds dropped dramatically, mainly through crowd trouble. Looking at all those gates our average this season beats most of them, 8,000 for the Scum and 11,000 for the Massive are a joke...
I went to a few games at White City. I remember going there when we beat Hinckley Town 7-2 in the FA cup.
I find that late 80s/early 90s period post-Hillsborough/early Premier League of football most interesting when you had guys who started in the 70s and played with really old school players from the 60s competing with the new age when football rapidly modernised. Premier League Years 92/93 is good. It’s like watching players from entirely different eras against each other. Guys born in the 50s against the flash cocky newbies on their six-figure salaries.
It was only the late nineties, with more foreign players and coaches, especially Wenger, that players of all ages took a much more professional approach to fitness, diet etc. I’ve seen Roy Keane and Scholes talking about the drinking culture and how it changed when they felt they couldn’t compete with the younger players.
I think that gets exaggerated tbh. Wenger definitely had an impact on diet more than anything but they weren’t complete Luddites before. Players start to look like footballers today far more around ‘94 and the old guard naturally die out by the end of the 90s.
