Willthiswork wrote:

Stan A. Einstein wrote:
You brought up the subject of competing with rugby clubs.

You really must think things through before you post.

No I was talking about Newport, a rugby town, unlike Lincoln or Burnley.

I think you will find theres about 10 times more football teams in Newport than rugby and always has been and there's more football ball fans although not all home town supporters

So definitely not a egg chasing town/city

UPTHEPORT wrote:

Willthiswork wrote:

Stan A. Einstein wrote:
You brought up the subject of competing with rugby clubs.

You really must think things through before you post.

No I was talking about Newport, a rugby town, unlike Lincoln or Burnley.

I think you will find theres about 10 times more football teams in Newport than rugby and always has been and there's more football ball fans although not all home town supporters

So definitely not a egg chasing town/city

As a 'senior sport' rugby has always been bigger than football in Newport.

Willthiswork wrote:
As a 'senior sport' rugby has always been bigger than football in Newport.

And that's why I point out that Wigan is a far bigger rugby town than it is football town. You really must try to think through your arguments.

Stan A. Einstein wrote:

Willthiswork wrote:
As a 'senior sport' rugby has always been bigger than football in Newport.

And that's why I point out that Wigan is a far bigger rugby town than it is football town. You really must try to think through your arguments.

And Wigan's averages, compared like-to-like to ours, have been similar. Take the 90s for example, they averaged between 1800 - 7000 (which included a spell in Div 2 /Lge 1). https://www.wiganathletic.com/history/attendances/

[/quote]


Newport population 150,000
Lincoln population. 96,000

Conurbation of Newport 306,000
Conurbation of Lincoln. 136,000.



[/quote]

Having lived in both areas, Lincoln is quite remote as a city - the demographics are more widely spread - Nottingham is approx 45 minutes away and there are a lot of little towns stretching out to Boston and Skegness. Lincoln picks up a huge demographic area. The problem Newport has is that there are 3 clubs in a relatively small area (including Bristol City) that are (now) Championship
clubs and hoover up those in surrounding areas. Also, Welsh clubs tend to be more parochial in terms of allegiences. In Lincolnshire you have a large county with only really one football league team - Grimsby is about another 40 mins north.

There are always more reasons than one. I am not sure though that many people from Newport, Cwmbran, Pontypool, etc follow Bristol City. And Wigan have to compete with Manchester United, Manchester City, Liverpool and Everton within a short drive.

Whilst I see your point re Lincoln's remoteness I nonetheless think it is only a small part of the explanation.

Stan A. Einstein wrote:There are always more reasons than one. I am not sure though that many people from Newport, Cwmbran, Pontypool, etc follow Bristol City. And Wigan have to compete with Manchester United, Manchester City, Liverpool and Everton within a short drive.

Whilst I see your point re Lincoln's remoteness I nonetheless think it is only a small part of the explanation.

If you compare our support to that of Wigan, at least do it like for like Brend.
Edit: Not Their last 4 seasons as they came back down ..though averages then in League 2 were as follows:-

93/94 - 1,897
94/95 - 1,748
95/96 - 2,855
96/97 - 3,899 (went up as Champions)

[
I think you will find theres about 10 times more football teams in Newport than rugby and always has been and there's more football ball fans although not all home town supporters

So definitely not a egg chasing town/city[/quote]

As a 'senior sport' rugby has always been bigger than football in Newport.[/quote]

Sorry that's rubbish its only recently that rugby union has been playing league games prior to that all games where friendlies or cup games

Football is the main sport in UK Wales or Newport and the second sport is cricket

Exile 1976 wrote:

Stan A. Einstein wrote:There are always more reasons than one. I am not sure though that many people from Newport, Cwmbran, Pontypool, etc follow Bristol City. And Wigan have to compete with Manchester United, Manchester City, Liverpool and Everton within a short drive.

Whilst I see your point re Lincoln's remoteness I nonetheless think it is only a small part of the explanation.

If you compare our support to that of Wigan, at least do it like for like Brend.
Their last 4 seasons averages in League 2 are as follows:-

93/94 - 1,897
94/95 - 1,748
95/96 - 2,855
96/97 - 3,899 (went up as Champions)

And of course Wigan’s rise has nothing to do with the investment of Dave Whelan, putting in £10m pa at the time he sold up last year.
I wonder what we could achieve with the same level of investment. New stadium maybe, Premier League football maybe.

faerun exile wrote:

Exile 1976 wrote:

Stan A. Einstein wrote:There are always more reasons than one. I am not sure though that many people from Newport, Cwmbran, Pontypool, etc follow Bristol City. And Wigan have to compete with Manchester United, Manchester City, Liverpool and Everton within a short drive.

Whilst I see your point re Lincoln's remoteness I nonetheless think it is only a small part of the explanation.

If you compare our support to that of Wigan, at least do it like for like Brend.
Their last 4 seasons averages in League 2 are as follows:-

93/94 - 1,897
94/95 - 1,748
95/96 - 2,855
96/97 - 3,899 (went up as Champions)

And of course Wigan’s rise has nothing to do with the investment of Dave Whelan, putting in £10m pa at the time he sold up last year.
I wonder what we could achieve with the same level of investment. New stadium maybe, Premier League football maybe.

Of course it does. However Wigan's gates fell during a period when they were tumbling down the League.

Moving on. Our gates are disappointing, per capita only Crawley and Port Vale are worse. Now the question is what should we do to improve them?

Just by way of a comparison. I was watching some right wing commentator defending Israel this morning. He pointed out that Israel was more liberal than other Middle Eastern countries. And he is right. But the behaviour of the Israeli state towards Palestine is disgraceful. The defence that gangsters like the House of Saud are worse is truly pathetic. Israel should be better.

Now football is of course not nearly as serious but the principle remains. We shouldn't seek out excuses and find examples of others failing as badly, we should seek always to be better than we are.

The fact that more people play football or cricket than rugby in Newport and surrounding areas doesn't alter the fact that Newport was for many years a world renowned rugby club and has attracted more paying customers than it's football team, despite not playing within a league structure. Remember 'just club games' between Newport and Cardiff have attracted over 40,000 spectators. Even now with the Dragons having ditched the Newport name and their results being extremely poor they are still averaging higher gates than Newport County. That to me says rugby for is still the 'senior' game in town.
As a regular attender of County's home matches I am as disappointed as anyone at our low average attendances, but the reality is the majority of the local population have either no interest in, or even dislike the sport, and even with on field success it's my belief that attendances will always be low compared with other areas of similar populations.

OLDCROMWELLIAN wrote:The fact that more people play football or cricket than rugby in Newport and surrounding areas doesn't alter the fact that Newport was for many years a world renowned rugby club and has attracted more paying customers than it's football team, despite not playing within a league structure. Remember 'just club games' between Newport and Cardiff have attracted over 40,000 spectators. Even now with the Dragons having ditched the Newport name and their results being extremely poor they are still averaging higher gates than Newport County. That to me says rugby for is still the 'senior' game in town.
As a regular attender of County's home matches I am as disappointed as anyone at our low average attendances, but the reality is the majority of the local population have either no interest in, or even dislike the sport, and even with on field success it's my belief that attendances will always be low compared with other areas of similar populations.

Unfortunately I have to say that I agree with your last two sentences. Admittedly I haven't lived in the city for a few years now but my experience of Newpôrt is that rugby comes first. Our attendance figures are not very good historically.

May have said this in the past but my own father who took me to my first County game was of this persuasion. The standing joke with him when I asked him if he fancied 'going over the County' was ' why, they don't come and see me when I'm bad'. It's a Newpôrt thing. Every time we discuss this I am reminded that Brian Harris was bloody right. How sad.

To ignore this fact is to apply the 'ostrich syndrome'. It is a fact and it won't go away. What do we do about it? Keep plugging away and get the message out there. It needn't be the clubs fault. We can all do our part in getting the message across.

Every one of us on here has been influenced in some part by our peers in the past. We eventually went to our first County game and here we are - Wembley bound again. Keep spreading the County word. That's the way to do it.

A winning team - of any sport - will bring the crowds to Newport clubs.

Willthiswork wrote:A winning team - of any sport - will bring the crowds to Newport clubs.

I agree that a winning team will attract more supporters to Newport clubs as it would to any other Town/City/conurbation, but the notion that it should be able to attract similar numbers to any other area just because it has a similar population is IMO nonsense. Every area is unique, and people within each individual area will make different choices on how they spend their time and money and on what, no matter how well the club is run and presents itself to the public.

OLDCROMWELLIAN wrote:

Willthiswork wrote:A winning team - of any sport - will bring the crowds to Newport clubs.

I agree that a winning team will attract more supporters to Newport clubs as it would to any other Town/City/conurbation, but the notion that it should be able to attract similar numbers to any other area just because it has a similar population is IMO nonsense. Every area is unique, and people within each individual area will make different choices on how they spend their time and money and on what, no matter how well the club is run and presents itself to the public.

The uniqueness of an area may have had some credence years ago, but with the population much more transient these days I feel that this now has less effect. County’s problem is with their shockingly poor marketing and promotional activities, indeed it is easier to get a response from the Pope than it is to get an email reply from the Commercial Dept.