G Guest wrote: January 5th, 2024, 5:14 pm

Stan A. Einstein wrote: January 5th, 2024, 3:21 pm

G Guest wrote: January 5th, 2024, 3:10 pm The Dragons issued 4,670 tickets for their Christmas match v Scarlets. So on a good day they are doing no better than County. Even if there is little overlap between the football and rugby crowds there are only about 10,000 people attending matches at RP for both codes added together even for popular games. So having a population of 160,000 is not having an affect.

Why do you think that is? If it is because the people of Newport are different from people everywhere else, then there is nothing we can do. If it is because of another reason then something can be done. I refuse to believe that Newportonians are less than others. I don't believe we should accept being losers. I don't understand the hopeless defeatism of some on this board. How about you George?

As someone suggested I think that the reasons are probably complex and that the common assumption that population is the major factor , although obviously important, oversimplifies the argument. We think that Newport under-performs yet consider the city of Worcester which with a population of over 100 thousand has lost it's professional football of any senior standard and it's professional rugby altogether. And yet the city possesses a modern field sport stadium, Sixways, which is larger than Rodney Parade. Oh, how we could do with Sixways. Newport has professional teams struggling with inadequate stadiums. Worcester has a good stadium and no professional teams.

All I can add is that for years after WW2 the people of Newport did provide 5 figure crowds for football and I guess rugby as well. In 1945/6 County V Wolves at Somerton Park was watched by a crowd in excess of 15 thousand. 10 years later in 1955/56 the best we could muster was 9,000 watching County play Torquay. I watched County play Oldham on a Friday night in 1962 as part of a crowd of 11,000 in an ordinary D4 game, People just seem to have something better to do these days.

lowandhard wrote: January 5th, 2024, 3:47 pm This is an interesting debate about a perplexingly persistent problem that I think affects both codes and for related but slightly different reasons.
It wasn’t an accident that the club‘s founders included “ County “ in our name, we represented league football in the whole of Monmouthshire and they must have hoped that the surrounding areas would have provided a fair number of spectators over the years. The truth is we did draw people from the Eastern Valley because as a boy I remember coaches leaving the Clarence at Pontypool bound for both the County and our bluebird rivals down the road. What is certainly the case is that transport now is much more problematic now than when I was that 5 year old boy. The Eastern Valley line is gone effectively with Pontypool Station sited nowhere near the town and in any case no service up the valley north to Blaenavon. If you want a drink with your mates then you can’t drive and as for the buses from anywhere to anywhere else, the least said the better. Communications are crap intra and extra city.
Then there’s what I think is the major problem and that sadly is of course money. Add together the cost of tickets, transport, food and drinks and it’s an expensive couple of hours. When you have factored in an often disappointing season with nothing as enticing as what the neutral can experience on his live stream at home then it all adds up to a major no show on a Saturday at RP.
I’m sure ( or rather I imagine ) Mr Jenkins will have lots of good ideas to tempt the pennies out of the pockets of the recalcitrant would be football watchers but I doubt it will add up to a terrace full of new support until we are more successful.
In his quest to advance our position I think he is quite right to concentrate on improving our commercial performance from which success all football bounty will undoubtedly flow. As mentioned elsewhere, once you climb the leagues the rewards are more worthwhile and that’s when the support may ( or may not ) take off. Until that wonderful crock of support at the end of the pyramid rainbow UTC CTID

Fu Ming wrote: January 6th, 2024, 9:58 am

lowandhard wrote: January 5th, 2024, 3:47 pm This is an interesting debate about a perplexingly persistent problem that I think affects both codes and for related but slightly different reasons.
It wasn’t an accident that the club‘s founders included “ County “ in our name, we represented league football in the whole of Monmouthshire and they must have hoped that the surrounding areas would have provided a fair number of spectators over the years. The truth is we did draw people from the Eastern Valley because as a boy I remember coaches leaving the Clarence at Pontypool bound for both the County and our bluebird rivals down the road. What is certainly the case is that transport now is much more problematic now than when I was that 5 year old boy. The Eastern Valley line is gone effectively with Pontypool Station sited nowhere near the town and in any case no service up the valley north to Blaenavon. If you want a drink with your mates then you can’t drive and as for the buses from anywhere to anywhere else, the least said the better. Communications are crap intra and extra city.
Then there’s what I think is the major problem and that sadly is of course money. Add together the cost of tickets, transport, food and drinks and it’s an expensive couple of hours. When you have factored in an often disappointing season with nothing as enticing as what the neutral can experience on his live stream at home then it all adds up to a major no show on a Saturday at RP.
I’m sure ( or rather I imagine ) Mr Jenkins will have lots of good ideas to tempt the pennies out of the pockets of the recalcitrant would be football watchers but I doubt it will add up to a terrace full of new support until we are more successful.
In his quest to advance our position I think he is quite right to concentrate on improving our commercial performance from which success all football bounty will undoubtedly flow. As mentioned elsewhere, once you climb the leagues the rewards are more worthwhile and that’s when the support may ( or may not ) take off. Until that wonderful crock of support at the end of the pyramid rainbow UTC CTID

Not quite true regarding the buses coming down the Eastern Valley (from Blaenavon).
In the daytime the StageCoach X24 and the Phil Anslow 24X are every 15mins up and down.
StageCoach is every 1/2 hour in the evening after 19:20.
Also the X23 to Cwmbran.
I don't know about the buses coming from other directions.

I do agree with you on the trains, the least said about them the better.

aberexile wrote: January 5th, 2024, 4:11 pm

lowandhard wrote: January 5th, 2024, 3:47 pm This is an interesting debate about a perplexingly persistent problem that I think affects both codes and for related but slightly different reasons.
It wasn’t an accident that the club‘s founders included “ County “ in our name, we represented league football in the whole of Monmouthshire and they must have hoped that the surrounding areas would have provided a fair number of spectators over the years. The truth is we did draw people from the Eastern Valley because as a boy I remember coaches leaving the Clarence at Pontypool bound for both the County and our bluebird rivals down the road. What is certainly the case is that transport now is much more problematic now than when I was that 5 year old boy. The Eastern Valley line is gone effectively with Pontypool Station sited nowhere near the town and in any case no service up the valley north to Blaenavon. If you want a drink with your mates then you can’t drive and as for the buses from anywhere to anywhere else, the least said the better. Communications are crap intra and extra city.
Then there’s what I think is the major problem and that sadly is of course money. Add together the cost of tickets, transport, food and drinks and it’s an expensive couple of hours. When you have factored in an often disappointing season with nothing as enticing as what the neutral can experience on his live stream at home then it all adds up to a major no show on a Saturday at RP.
I’m sure ( or rather I imagine ) Mr Jenkins will have lots of good ideas to tempt the pennies out of the pockets of the recalcitrant would be football watchers but I doubt it will add up to a terrace full of new support until we are more successful.
In his quest to advance our position I think he is quite right to concentrate on improving our commercial performance from which success all football bounty will undoubtedly flow. As mentioned elsewhere, once you climb the leagues the rewards are more worthwhile and that’s when the support may ( or may not ) take off. Until that wonderful crock of support at the end of the pyramid rainbow UTC CTID

I agree about the trains. Looked at the possibility of going by train for a recent county game. There's a train to Newport from Ebbw Vale, but it gets there via Cardiff and takes 1 hour and 25 minutes. So those from towns near Ebbw Vale would have to get there first. Perhaps locals in that area wouldn't mind going by train if we were a league or two higher?

Stan A. Einstein wrote: January 5th, 2024, 2:27 pm

County ranger wrote: January 5th, 2024, 2:10 pm




Stan as an example look at Portsmouth and Sunderland I would expect them to get 20,000 in the National League they are football towns, it is not negative it is fact Newport in my 50 plus years of support is just not wired for football. The near valley towns tend to support Cardiff (they did before we went out of the league and were in the same division as Cardiff), there are also the rugby fans may watch the occasional game but are not fans - I am a ST holder but have never watched a Dragons game and I am probably quite typical the two sport people are I suspect in the minority.
There are other towns /cities which are not football orientated Fleetwood, Burton lower average attendance than us in L1 a better stadium would help as it did for Cardiff and Swansea but I doubt County will ever be that well supported.

Fleetwood population 26,232
Burton population 76,270
Newport population 159,587.

Steeple Bumstead, population 1374, will never have a League team. A town of Newport's size, and the built up area including Cwmbran, Risca etc is over 300,000 can get bigger crowds than Fleetwood. Indeed Newport is six times as big as Fleetwood. So Fleetwood's average attendance of 3,497 equates to a County attendance of 20,982. Your argument that Fleetwood is not a football orientated town isn't correct. I think interest in football is pretty much the same everywhere. The bigger the town the higher league the town's representative football team should be playing in.

Edit Burton's average gate of 3,457 equates to a County attendance of 7,000.

SixtyYearFan wrote: January 6th, 2024, 5:15 pm

Stan A. Einstein wrote: January 5th, 2024, 2:27 pm

County ranger wrote: January 5th, 2024, 2:10 pm




Stan as an example look at Portsmouth and Sunderland I would expect them to get 20,000 in the National League they are football towns, it is not negative it is fact Newport in my 50 plus years of support is just not wired for football. The near valley towns tend to support Cardiff (they did before we went out of the league and were in the same division as Cardiff), there are also the rugby fans may watch the occasional game but are not fans - I am a ST holder but have never watched a Dragons game and I am probably quite typical the two sport people are I suspect in the minority.
There are other towns /cities which are not football orientated Fleetwood, Burton lower average attendance than us in L1 a better stadium would help as it did for Cardiff and Swansea but I doubt County will ever be that well supported.

Fleetwood population 26,232
Burton population 76,270
Newport population 159,587.

Steeple Bumstead, population 1374, will never have a League team. A town of Newport's size, and the built up area including Cwmbran, Risca etc is over 300,000 can get bigger crowds than Fleetwood. Indeed Newport is six times as big as Fleetwood. So Fleetwood's average attendance of 3,497 equates to a County attendance of 20,982. Your argument that Fleetwood is not a football orientated town isn't correct. I think interest in football is pretty much the same everywhere. The bigger the town the higher league the town's representative football team should be playing in.

Edit Burton's average gate of 3,457 equates to a County attendance of 7,000.

You seem to hold on quite strongly to the notion that the population and the local football club’s attendances are inextricably linked, and it just shows a lack of nuanced thinking.that matches your basic thinking regarding the business of football, and in particular you believing that football club’s do not lose money on masse.

Going by your population argument, the Bristol club’s should both be above Manchester Utd and Manchester City in the league, all the pro London clubs and Birmingham and Villa would monopolise the top half of the Premier League and Slough, Poole, Gloucester and Telford would all be way above Newport County in the pyramid.

Newport has never been a big football town/city, even prior to the resurgence in the last 15 years. It is however inching forward and will continue to do so. For you to blame the administration of the club for its L2 status, basically means every single person who has ever been involved in administering the club from day 1 is incompetent, which is a bit rich when you yourself showing such particularly poor levels of understanding and thinking.

Your point about surrounding areas like Risca, the Valleys etc is equally silly. Take Cardiff, which has always been a footballing town, and the support it garners. There will be more Cardiff City fans in Risca, Cwmbran and the Valleys than there will be County fans. In fact when Cardiff were in the Premier league, and back in the day when they were in Division 1, I would wager there were more Cardiff fans from Newport than County fans.

The reasons why some clubs get bigger crowds than others are incredibly nuanced and are the result of a lot of moving parts, lots of ebbs and flows, and as many things outside of a clubs control than there is inside of a clubs control. What will also help is a bit of on the field success over a sustained period of time.

lowandhard wrote: January 6th, 2024, 8:09 pm

SixtyYearFan wrote: January 6th, 2024, 5:15 pm

Stan A. Einstein wrote: January 5th, 2024, 2:27 pm

County ranger wrote: January 5th, 2024, 2:10 pm




Stan as an example look at Portsmouth and Sunderland I would expect them to get 20,000 in the National League they are football towns, it is not negative it is fact Newport in my 50 plus years of support is just not wired for football. The near valley towns tend to support Cardiff (they did before we went out of the league and were in the same division as Cardiff), there are also the rugby fans may watch the occasional game but are not fans - I am a ST holder but have never watched a Dragons game and I am probably quite typical the two sport people are I suspect in the minority.
There are other towns /cities which are not football orientated Fleetwood, Burton lower average attendance than us in L1 a better stadium would help as it did for Cardiff and Swansea but I doubt County will ever be that well supported.

Fleetwood population 26,232
Burton population 76,270
Newport population 159,587.

Steeple Bumstead, population 1374, will never have a League team. A town of Newport's size, and the built up area including Cwmbran, Risca etc is over 300,000 can get bigger crowds than Fleetwood. Indeed Newport is six times as big as Fleetwood. So Fleetwood's average attendance of 3,497 equates to a County attendance of 20,982. Your argument that Fleetwood is not a football orientated town isn't correct. I think interest in football is pretty much the same everywhere. The bigger the town the higher league the town's representative football team should be playing in.

Edit Burton's average gate of 3,457 equates to a County attendance of 7,000.

You seem to hold on quite strongly to the notion that the population and the local football club’s attendances are inextricably linked, and it just shows a lack of nuanced thinking.that matches your basic thinking regarding the business of football, and in particular you believing that football club’s do not lose money on masse.

Going by your population argument, the Bristol club’s should both be above Manchester Utd and Manchester City in the league, all the pro London clubs and Birmingham and Villa would monopolise the top half of the Premier League and Slough, Poole, Gloucester and Telford would all be way above Newport County in the pyramid.

Newport has never been a big football town/city, even prior to the resurgence in the last 15 years. It is however inching forward and will continue to do so. For you to blame the administration of the club for its L2 status, basically means every single person who has ever been involved in administering the club from day 1 is incompetent, which is a bit rich when you yourself showing such particularly poor levels of understanding and thinking.

Your point about surrounding areas like Risca, the Valleys etc is equally silly. Take Cardiff, which has always been a footballing town, and the support it garners. There will be more Cardiff City fans in Risca, Cwmbran and the Valleys than there will be County fans. In fact when Cardiff were in the Premier league, and back in the day when they were in Division 1, I would wager there were more Cardiff fans from Newport than County fans.

The reasons why some clubs get bigger crowds than others are incredibly nuanced and are the result of a lot of moving parts, lots of ebbs and flows, and as many things outside of a clubs control than there is inside of a clubs control. What will also help is a bit of on the field success over a sustained period of time.

Don’t dispute all of that but more Blueturd fans in Newport than County? You’re having a laugh!

SixtyYearFan wrote: January 6th, 2024, 5:15 pm There will be more Cardiff City fans in Risca, Cwmbran and the Valleys than there will be County fans.

Marky wrote: January 6th, 2024, 8:42 pm

SixtyYearFan wrote: January 6th, 2024, 5:15 pm There will be more Cardiff City fans in Risca, Cwmbran and the Valleys than there will be County fans.

No-one is disputing that, but it's something that can be changed.

mad norm wrote: January 6th, 2024, 9:42 pm I'd prefer if we'd beat ten men

Stan A. Einstein wrote: January 6th, 2024, 9:21 pm

Marky wrote: January 6th, 2024, 8:42 pm

SixtyYearFan wrote: January 6th, 2024, 5:15 pm There will be more Cardiff City fans in Risca, Cwmbran and the Valleys than there will be County fans.

No-one is disputing that, but it's something that can be changed.

Exactly. We have a choice. We can work to make the future better than the past or we can follow losers like SixtyYearFan and carry on squirming at the bottom.

I know which I'd prefer.

SixtyYearFan wrote: January 7th, 2024, 10:16 pm

Ah, so there it is, the famed Stan refusal to engage on any actual debating point when he gets exposed for his lack of clear thinking, and the obligatory insult to boot.

You, rather curiously, making up that I don’t want things to improve because I pointed out the futility of your population argument, is bizarre to say the least.

Stan A. Einstein wrote: January 7th, 2024, 10:48 pm

SixtyYearFan wrote: January 7th, 2024, 10:16 pm

Ah, so there it is, the famed Stan refusal to engage on any actual debating point when he gets exposed for his lack of clear thinking, and the obligatory insult to boot.

You, rather curiously, making up that I don’t want things to improve because I pointed out the futility of your population argument, is bizarre to say the least.

There is a direct coloration between size of town and success. In Europe the European Cup/ Champions League is the big competition. UK winners of said competition have come from London, Glasgow, Manchester ,Liverpool , Birmingham and Nottingham.
Which just happen to be the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th and 7th biggest cities in the UK. Bizarre in my view to even attempt to argue that there is a futility of the population argument?

I am not content for my home town to continually fail and I genuinely hope that the overwhelming majority of the good people of Newport agree. Winning isn't about coming first. Winners sometimes come last. But winners always give of their best. Winners get knocked down but they get back up. Winners don't make excuses.