Given the injury issues and the fact that Simons and Slater will probably start I don't give us much hope. If Luton score first heads will drop and it could get messy (pun not intended) I fear the worst today and Walter getting his cards.
You’re right with this, but 12k is too small. They get that now and they’ve had their worst season in 20 years. They should be looking at around 16k, the cost of building slightly bigger terraces is nothing in the scheme of things and the extra revenue they would get from the derby would more than cover it.
You'd still be looking at over £90 million I'd have thought. The cost sinces the pandemic have skyrocketed
It gradually lost its appeal once they added the Super League Grand Final then Magic weekend . Not a lot gonna pay out for 3 weekends away
I know there's a perception that RL fans are fat ****s, but signing a marquee ... The views expressed in my posts are not necessarily mine.
We are talking about an athlete who has looked after his body not some tub of lard who can't see his toes. The likes of Gareth Ellis spring to mind as the perfect professional.
Thankyou for supporting City back in the day . What sort of crowds did Fc get in the mid 70 's though.
From memory, because the RL websites only go back ten years on crowd averages, they never seemed to get crowds like City did. City and football always got the bigger crowds in this city, way beyond anything either of the RL clubs could get. We had the bigger ground for a reason and it wasn't because we were the worse supported club. Of course City at the start of the 70's and the Terry Neill era, 70/71 were averaging over 20,000 for that season and we attracted several crowds way over that for the FA Cup and a few league games too. Our crowds did tail off through the 70's on the back of the team failing on the pitch and by the start of the new decade we were in trouble. I remember RL being two divisions in those days and both Hull clubs seemed to locked together at the bottom of one of them. FC were in the second division about 1976? and went one season undefeated when of course crowds went up for them, good for them was anything around the 10,000 mark. I worked in the Sports Dept at HDM at the start of the 70's which was the height of the Sports Mail era. City were always the main headline game on a Saturday because football was seen as the biggest sport, and it was, there was no question of that. RL even switched from a Saturday afternoon game to a Sunday afternoon to avoid clashing with football, a move which saw an increase in gates on the back of the old licensing laws, because if you went to a RL game you could drink all day on a Sunday. I remember one article in the Hull Times at that time about a Mail employee, Ted Baldam, being the only FC fan present at an away game at the Shay home of Halifax RL, who shared it with Halifax Town FC.. As a lad during the 60's and into the mid 70's before RL switched days, it was popular to go to a RL game when City were away. My memory of the boulevard was it was always a bit of a laugh for a young lad. The ends were mud for a start and the seats were wooden planks. Security was very lapse meaning you could simply hop over the wall behind the threepenny stand and crowds usually were around the 3,000 mark with no away fans. They also had a bit of a 'Kop' in the threepenny stand which compared to City's at that time was laughable, but they had two good songs, 'Old Faithful' and one about the referee's little wooden whistle. I saw RL as a poor mans football in game, crowds and stadium because they seemed to copy everything football did. The old Craven Park was really a greyhound stadium with a RL pitch in the middle of the track. The popular stand had old railway carriages at the back which doubled up as offices and a snack bar. I was there one Saturday when they played Featherstone in the Cup and the crowd was over 10,000, it was jammed and the attendance figure made more headlines than the match.
Hull were getting around 11-12000 a game in the late 70s/ early 1980s, which would go up to around 17-18 for the derby. It was the Bunting era, which peaked with the cup final when around 100000 Wigan and Hull fans were at Wembley. Around 1986, the attendances halved and carried on being around 4-5000 until the mid-1990s, with the all time low being around Hull Sharks creation when attendances were around 3000. I was 'stewarding' in the late 1980s, so remember the gates dropping each season. So really, if just these figures are just looked at in isolation, rugby league and city weren't really competing for supporters as both sports were experiencing record low attendance at the same time, and this season, experiencing record high attendances.
Ted would be the only Hull FC fan at the Shay, Halifax RLFC played their home games at Thrum Hall. The views expressed in my posts are not necessarily mine.
What record attendances did Hull FC get for the season that has just finished when they finished joint bottom of the league? Also Fc's record low attendance was 880 v Huyton at the boulevard well before the Hull Sharks creation.
And Hull KR v Hull in the Challenge Cup at Wembley attracted a crowd of 95000 - none of these stats prove anything - live and let live - I used to go away in the seventies with both City and Rovers - City would sometimes be lucky if they had one coach going other times there would be a train load if one had been laid on - conversely there would be a good following at Rovers games - I wouldn't like to guess but significantly more than CIty
Just a few quotes from Richard Gardham's excellent book, The Decade, written and published in 2019 on this subject. Gareth Roberts: Speaking about 1980 and the all Hull RL Final....'There was about 4,000 there ( City v Southend May 3rd 1980) and we did feel as though we were under the radar locally at that point, but it didn't take us long to turn that around and within a year or two we were top dogs. At that point maybe Hull did feel like a rugby town when City were in the doldrums and Fc and HKR were at the top of their game. You had maybe 30,000 sports lovers in the city and who'd get the support depended on who was top dog. if we were doing well we could get 12,000 or 13,000 plus, and the rugby clubs would be getting 6,000. Whoever was winning or entertaining would get the bigger crowds'. Now some facts from Richard Gardham; Historically ( and written in 2019 don't forget) Hull City have bettered Hull Fc's record home attendance of 28,798 more than 100 times and HKR's record 22,282 more than 300 times. Hull City's average home attendance since moving to the new stadium up and including 2017/18 has been 15,600 at its lowest to 24,800 at its highest, although that figure was likely to drop for the 2018/19 season. Hull Fc's figures are 10,600 ( lowest) and 14,600 (highest). Conclusion; According to Richard, 'Hull undoubtedly has a passion for RL but this has not necessarily been at the expense of football, Hull, to its credit is simply a sporting city'.
Good excerpt .... except that last sentence plainly just isn't true! RL has materially affected football (City). It's just a debate over to what extent.
