You are right I having checked though we had a great start I was relying on an old tiger mag which had a whole page devoted to bemoaning the attendance at reserve games which was ' where have the 35,000 gone' as the stiffs were only attracting crowds of 8,000 !!
The away game at White Hart Lane that season was the largest crowd, just under 67,000, that a City team ever played in frontof until the play-off final.
That's right Indeed it was. Interestingly for anoraks though our average hate for the 1949-50 season ended up being 'only' 37,000 I suspect had we gone up it would have been at least 45.000. Incidentally that figure of 37,000 is only slightly behind the best average of Sheffield Wednesday and Leeds both achieved whilst they were in the first division whilst ours of course was in the league below, also that figure is higher than the highest average achieved by Sheffield United City at the time in anticipation of promotion had real plans to increase the capacity of Boothferry Park to 80,000 . Though of course Hull is and always will be a Rugby stronghold
Fantastic idea. Build it and they will come if you set the prices accordingly. Who wouldn't want to be part of an 80,000 crowd? PS Maybe not at Boothferry Park now!
The plans to increase BP to 80,000 were drawn up before then. It was to attract internationanals. The East Stand was the bottom level of what would have been a three tier stand, the largest in the country. However any thought of this was abandoned before the season in question as the FA took over Wembley Stadium in 1948 and signed an agreement to play all future England internationals at Wembley. There were plans to build 70,000 stadiums at Derby and Port Vale which were abandoned for the same reason. The Derby one had towers at each corner which were reputedly where the architect of the San Siro got his inspiration from.At Port Vale's ground a start had been made on building up one side which was why for years teams emerged from a tunnel half way up the side and players went down steps to the pitch. Having been in 2,000 and 3,000 crowds at BP it is perhaps a good thing n 80,000 stadium wsn't built. Even most of our better crods from the early 1960s would have looked lost.
I've seen sketches of the 80,000 capacity BP if it was envisaged the ground would have become an international venue it was also felt at the time that such was the support that city were getting at the time 80,000 was the kind of capacity we might need were city to become an established top flight team Of course that never happened however the fact that we could even entertain such a concept should remind younger supporters that we could become more than a middling yo yo team
What happened to all the easy image upload websites? After several attempts to rotate the picture and re-post it, I'll leave it to someone else. http://postimg.org/image/4vz0wn8a3/
Yeah sorry about the posting its from the Tiger Mag promotion souvenir celebrating City winning the 1948-49 division 3 north title. Again to put things in perspective City's average (h) gate that season of just over 36,000 made them the best supported team in Yorkshire and that average attendance is easily the largest ever by any club in the 3rd tier.
In the City v Sheff Utd. programme for Saturday 24/10/1970, on the inside back cover, we were indeed top of Division 2. Table reads:- P W D L F A Pts HULL CITY 13 9 2 2 18 8 20 Luton T 13 8 3 2 25 7 19 Leicester C 13 7 4 2 21 11 18 Sheffield U 13 6 5 2 22 15 17 Oxford U 13 6 4 3 19 15 16 The Sheff U match was a 1-1 draw, then we went and lost 1-5 away to Cardiff and 0-2 away to Luton, thus falling back to 4th. We improved approaching Christmas with 3-0 victories of over Oxford and Leicester and a particularly memorable 4-4 draw against Sheff Wed on Boxing Day. This was followed up with a 4-0 tonking of Sunderland on January 9th 1971 which saw us once more return to the top of the division, which is how it stood on 23/1 when we faced Blackpool in the 4th round of the cup, a tie we won 2-0. The league table on 13th February, the day we faced Brentford in the 5th round of the cup was:- P W D L F A Pts HULL CITY 27 14 7 6 39 25 35 Sheff Utd 27 13 9 5 47 32 35 Cardiff C 26 13 8 5 43 23 34 Leicester C 26 13 7 6 39 25 33 Luton T 25 12 8 5 39 19 32 I think the table was decided on games won rather than Goal Diff. at the time. Anyway, as a lot of the older guys will remember, City fell away, what with the Cup run to the 6th round, games getting crammed in because of postponed games due to the weather and the usual assumptions! Let's hope we can stay were we are right through the long winter and beyond.
Very tight as it is now but what's impressed me more than anything is the defence, I don't remember a City team having 5 straight clean sheets in the league.. we all know these results but it's satisfying reading.. 3-0 Boro 2-0 Brentford 2-0 MK Dons 2-0 Brum 3-0 Ipswich that's 512 mins since Forestieri of the Wendies netted against us.. and unbeaten in 10 in the league Brilliant!
My Division headings seem to have been autocorrected to the beginning but you get the gist. And to add, City were level on 40 points at the top with Cardiff and Leicester as late as 13.3.71. Of further interest, City played a pre-season friendly before the 1971/72 season on 4.8.1971 against Japan, which they won 5-0!
