Agree with your general points but surely you're forgetting the Stoke FA Cup game, the Man Utd Watney Cup and the Man Utd 2nd Division game in 1973/4, all 30k plus. Also wasn't the Oxford game after the Battle of Bramall Lane (that we typically lost) over 26k?
We were on about league games in Div 2. Man Utd game in Div 2 was only 23,867. Yes, Oxford was, 26,677. Never been exceeded for a league game since. And never will be unless they extend the MKM.
That Man Utd league league game felt like a big attendance but just checked and you're right, only 23k. However you did say the 1966 Huddersfield game was our last 30k attendance ever but the Watney Cup and Stoke games (as well as the West Ham game you mentioned) were both north of that.
No, I was referring to league games as the discussion was about crowds in .Div 2. Brady had asked why it was such a poor crowd, 4,000 against Portsmouth in Div 2 for a mid table game and said a few decades earlier we would have been getting 30,000 + gates for those sort of games. I was just showing we weren’t.
Hate to be a pedant but you did expand your point to all attendances which is why I mentioned the other cup games. You said: "The 35,600 against Huddersfield on Boxing Day was our last 30,000 crowd ever. (Apart from the West Ham Cup game in 1973.)"
Yes, I didn’t put it properly. Unlike some people on here I don’t call people being accurate pedantic. At least at my age I was lucky enough to be in those 30,000+ crowds which younger ones won’t be unless, as I said, the MKM is expanded. Which I don’t think I will be around to see.
I was lucky enough to be in those crowds too. I think my first ever game was the 1965 Boxing Day Millwall game which I think set the record for the highest ever third tier attendance (45k?) before Villa topped it a few years later. I do agree on the soft-focus mythology of our past attendances though.
It was the highest since the they altered it to the Third Division and the Fourth Division in 1958. It was 40,231. I remember when I got home my dad saying they sounded gobsmacked on Grandstand when they announced the attendance and said “ and that is in the Third Division. I wouldn’t put money on it but I think it may have been the highest crowd anywhere that day. Villa got 48,000 against Bournemouth. Some say the Fowls v the Blunts got a larger crowd but not seen confirmation. The all time record for the Third tier was Cardiff in the Third Division North and South Days 52,000. Though we sold 55,000 (got over 70,000 applications) for a Christmas Day game against Rotherham but “only” 49,000 turned up because of a bus strike. Imagine that many walking or cycling to a game now. Especially on a Christmas Day. And there won’t, unlike now, have been people streaming out before the final whistle.
All true but its a bit unfair when the capacity of the ground was cut dramatically in the 90's, so to say it was the last 30,000 crowd is a bit unfair, although the record books show it was. I think we would have got way over that figure for the FA Cup game v Liverpool in the mid 80's for example if we could have got them into the ground. Also the Div 4 dog fight against Scarboro could well have reached a 30k gate. The facts are that any average over 20k is about our limit, except for the Carter days just after WW2 when crowds for everything went through the roof. I've always said our crowds are built on decades of serious under achievement, because we didn't have a sniff of anything from winning Div 3 in 1966 for a couple of generations, and a couple more before that. When we did eventually reach the Premier League our capacity was stuck at 24,500 and I'm sure we could have topped the 30k mark on several occasions during the Phil Brown and Steve Bruce days. Sadly we are not a Sunderland, but then again we haven't got the history behind us like they have.
How much did the rugby clubs ruin hull citys attendances over the vast decades Sunderland never had that
1980/81 was a particularly bad season, and yes I was there and never missed a home game that season, as you probably never. But the crowds were dismally poor following an awful season, plus it was the height of rugby league in Hull, the all Hull Wembley final etc. City were probably at there lowest point ever with the Mike Smith appointment seriously backfiring and leaving the club on the verge of bankruptcy. Our fanbase did desert us too. Not a great time to be a Hull City fan.
Debatable for us and true in Sunderland's case. The facts are you can reach a Wembley Cup Final in rugby league by winning three games, and the first round would probably be against a pub team. City could never do that and for years the argument with the RL lot was that City have never won anything and it was true but there is no comparison between RL and football. I've wasted far too much time explaining to them that if City could get to Wembley for winning three games of the bounce we'd have been to Wembley more times than FC and HKR put together, but people do follow the silverware, they won some and we didn't so yes being in competition with another sport in the same city does effect our attendances.
After that game HDM published City’s lowest 10 attendances. Realised I had been in 9 of them. You were probably same as the missing one was Newport County a couple of years before we both started going to City. Think it is down to 7 now as missed a couple which have since come into the bottom 10.
No, they just had a few other professional football clubs within 20 miles to compete with. It's cultural in the north east. Industry held on a little longer meaning the habit of football on a Saturday afternoon for thousands of workers following an early shift became more ingrained for longer, and is still in a lot of peoples living memory. That and the clubs relative successes means it's still more ingrained in the regional identity - that, and in the case of Newcastle specifically post industrial regeneration has probably led to there being a bit more cash about than in hull.
Someone has exhibited a severe case of mistaken identity I'd suggest ! Specsavers (a ref's best friend ) appointment due!
