Attendances 1985/86

All sorts of stuff to ponder there!

(from @Groundtastic)

Looks like Playfair to me.

Wimbledon never did get much support did they? I think they hold the record for the lowest ever Premier League attendance - about 3,000 against Everton in the early 90s.

What was Argyle's average that year?

I think 85/86 is considered to be the lowest ebb in the history of English football. Bradford and Hysel had happened at the end of the previous season and the European ban had just started.

85/86 was my first season watching the greens. Most of the time getting let in for free at half time (No jumped up jobs worth's in them days) with my Dad and standing on the steps going up to the grandstand. Great times as an 8 year old !
Some great games that year, Cardiff 4 - 4 springs to mind when Crudgie went off injured. Went straight home and listened to the commentary I'd recorded off the radio.
Blackpool at home when I knew we were all but up, Derby at home when we must have had a months worth of rain in 45 minutes and Ian Ormondroyd being the tallest man I had ever seen !
All topped off with that game against City.
Season after was pretty special as well.

Football might well have been at it's lowest ebb with violence and crumbling stadiums but for a kid, I'd take that over the happy clappy 'experience' they get these days.

green438 wrote:

85/86 was my first season watching the greens. Most of the time getting let in for free at half time (No jumped up jobs worth's in them days) with my Dad and standing on the steps going up to the grandstand. Great times as an 8 year old !
Some great games that year, Cardiff 4 - 4 springs to mind when Crudgie went off injured. Went straight home and listened to the commentary I'd recorded off the radio.
Blackpool at home when I knew we were all but up, Derby at home when we must have had a months worth of rain in 45 minutes and Ian Ormondroyd being the tallest man I had ever seen !
All topped off with that game against City.
Season after was pretty special as well.

Football might well have been at it's lowest ebb with violence and crumbling stadiums but for a kid, I'd take that over the happy clappy 'experience' they get these days.

Exciting times indeed, yes the experience was very 'raw' compared to todays highly manicured offering and for many teenagers and young men of that era it imprinted a lifelong love and yearning for a small return to how things once were, yes the facilities were second rate and in many cases abysmal, it was risky, dangerous even but the adrenaline rush for those who went to the football during the 70's and 80's is sadly long gone and something the yoof of today struggle to comprehend. Going to an away match with a crew of mates back then was a massive adventure, you often never knew how, when or even if you'd return home.

Frank Bullitt wrote:

I think 85/86 is considered to be the lowest ebb in the history of English football. Bradford and Hysel had happened at the end of the previous season and the European ban had just started.

Who remembers the TV blackout which lasted up until December when the Football League capitulated and accepted the paltry money on offer by BBC and ITV cartel. Different times then!

I love the posts on this thread. All of them.

The thing about those figures that strikes me is how low they are compared to today's equivalents. There really was the hope and, if you were lucky, opportunity to zoom up the divisions and compete. Even clubs like us, Carlisle, Southend, Port Vale to pluck a few out if thin air could expect to get the sort of attendances necessary to compete. The playing field was far more level. Now the TV money and, especially, the parachute money puts the PL in a world of its own and the money pouring into CCC is pretty huge too.

We struggled to keep up last time we were in the CCC but next time it'll be even harder.

I really didn't feel it was that far away in '86. Now it seems as though we are falling ever further behind with every passing year.

What was once almost within reach now seems to be almost unattainable.

Easily outnumbering Cardiff on their patch is the saddest measure of what we've missed out on subsequent years

This post does not condone running the welsh bullies out of their own stand in any way shape or form.

green_genie wrote:

Easily outnumbering Cardiff on their patch is the saddest measure of what we've missed out on subsequent years

This post does not condone running the welsh bullies out of their own stand in any way shape or form.

Sweet memories there. It was an evening game if I remember rightly they put us in the main stand - 2,500 of us in a crowd of about 4,000.

85/86 was a defining season for me, and that night at Ninian was where my hatred of Cardiff was born. Total scum.

Leaving school and actually earning money to fund all the away trips. So many memories of that season.  That game at Elm Park, 0-3 up and coasting before losing 4-3. The 4-4 on new years day with a steaming hangover, where they let the Cardiff fans move into a segregated area in the Lyndhurst because it was pissing it down with rain. The infamous 2-1 win at Ninian and having our coach window put through with a house brick from a nutter Cardiff fan while we were doing about 70 on the motorway, and having our Argyle flags flying through the smashed window across the Severn Bridge before the old bill pulled us over at Gordano and made us wait for a replacement coach. The 3-1 win at Bournemouth where they tried to keep us in at the end but the shear force of the surge against the locked gates burst them open and all running amok outside. Wigan away, taking The Springfield pub outside Springfield Park as our own, before sliding down the grassbank away end. Argyle fans doing a 'Pompey '83' - in every part of the  ground and outnumbering the home fans once more before having our coach windows put through (again). The 4-0 finale against Bristol City.

Far and away my favourite season ever.

Happy days indeed.

Football was a totally different game then.

Don't know about that, apart from a few tweaks like the back pass rule, offside rule, 3 points for a win, the amount of substitutes, the playoffs etc etc etc but actually going to the matches is a totally different ballgame.

Apart from 1985/86 being an absolutely brilliant time to be young and an to be Argyle fan, the interesting thing about those figures is the revenue that would have been generated from such crowds.

I know the season before the admission at HP was £1 for juniors (my season ticket was £10 and meant a whopping 13 free games) and I'm pretty sure adult admission was £2 (the general rule seemed to be kids/oaps were half price). I'm not sure POTD increased in 85/86 but I think my season ticket did.

IIRC you didn't pay a whole lot more for division one football - £3 adults, maybe pushing £5 in London and this was the principle source of income for clubs. It truly was a different time.

Recall looking at aston villa away programme from 1987-88 and our average as gate similar to middlesboro and leicester !

Pleasant memories

Sir Francis Drake wrote:

I love the posts on this thread. All of them.

The thing about those figures that strikes me is how low they are compared to today's equivalents. There really was the hope and, if you were lucky, opportunity to zoom up the divisions and compete. Even clubs like us, Carlisle, Southend, Port Vale to pluck a few out if thin air could expect to get the sort of attendances necessary to compete. The playing field was far more level. Now the TV money and, especially, the parachute money puts the PL in a world of its own and the money pouring into CCC is pretty huge too.

We struggled to keep up last time we were in the CCC but next time it'll be even harder.

I really didn't feel it was that far away in '86. Now it seems as though we are falling ever further behind with every passing year.

What was once almost within reach now seems to be almost unattainable.

Agree with that. The £10k a week we spend on Mpenza's wages would probably only buy you a squad player these days.

Looking at these figures from the Championship, the smallest wage bill was Peterborough, who paid £6.2m over the 2012-13 (so well over £5k a week for a team that was comprehensively outgunned). When a team like Sheffield Wednesday (who haven't been anywhere near the Premier League for 15 years) can afford to spend £5m on players at the start of this season, it gives you an idea of just how out of our depth we would be.

Sir Francis Drake wrote:

I love the posts on this thread. All of them.

The thing about those figures that strikes me is how low they are compared to today's equivalents. There really was the hope and, if you were lucky, opportunity to zoom up the divisions and compete. Even clubs like us, Carlisle, Southend, Port Vale to pluck a few out if thin air could expect to get the sort of attendances necessary to compete. The playing field was far more level. Now the TV money and, especially, the parachute money puts the PL in a world of its own and the money pouring into CCC is pretty huge too.

We struggled to keep up last time we were in the CCC but next time it'll be even harder.

I really didn't feel it was that far away in '86. Now it seems as though we are falling ever further behind with every passing year.

What was once almost within reach now seems to be almost unattainable.

The parachute payments have not really been that relevant in influencing results in the championship. In fact, many of the clubs in receipt of them have actually declined or stagnated rather than prospered, Sheffield United, Wigan and Blackpool being cases in point for the former ,Fulham, Bolton and Blackburn for the latter. Many of the clubs who have attained promotion in recent seasons have either been upstarts such as Swansea and Bournemouth [whose gates by no means matched those of some of their allegedly bigger rivals] or long established championship clubs such as Leicester, Palace and Watford. For sure there have been one or two examples of immediate bounce backs but they would seem to be the exception rather than the rule and there is no reason why Argyle ,with some additional financing and an attitude to match, shouldn't make an impact in the second tier-maybe the "almost given up already" tone of your post is indicative of the negativity that has seeped unconsciously into the minds of many supporters via the conspicuous absence of money and ambition at the right level in the past. That would include season 1986/87-it would be interesting if an attendance table was provided for that year. From memory, Argyle had the 6th biggest gates in the division that year but unfortunately the investment in the team at a crucial stage of the season did not match the high crowd placing, as Dave Smith stated in his interviews in the local press not so long ago-maybe the top flight was in reality just as far away as ever, exactly the same as it was in the 1950's,1960,1970's...........

When were parachute payments introduced? It would be interesting to look at who has gone down from the PL and how they have done.

The thing about them is that they are getting ever larger. One year of current parachute payment alone would probably be 2x our current gross income, possibly more.

I do feel that we have missed the boat though. Going back along Newcastle appointed Keegan at about the same time we appointed Keegan. At the time we were head-to-head in a relegation fight from Division 2. They stayed up; we went down. Next up the PL was formed, Newcastle had the big mo and got themselves into it: the gravy train was waiting at the station. Since then we have gone from genuine rivals to living in different worlds.

Apart from the differing legacies of each club on the pitch since then off the pitch is where the difference matters: training facilities; coaching; scouting; youth development; community engagement; stadium... Once upon a time were very close but we aren't now and there's no quick fix. We would need 2 decades of huge investment to just catch up to where they are now in which time they'd have moved on again.

Everything about the modern game has been developed to ringfence the prospects of the clubs at the top and make it hard for those underneath to break through. That's just the way it is. That doesn't mean it can't be done just that it probably won't be. Defeatist? I don't think so. Realistic? Yes.

Lies, damn lies and statistics, those crowd figures are all about tax evasion. I used to follow the Hammers in the eighties, two pound to get in or three with one through the turnstile and one over it, the first all ticket game I saw over there was the cup quarter final against the Villa, I thought there was a fire drill on, they would regularly report crowds in the 20ks against a cap of 38k when the ground was rammed.

I would echo those who yearn for those times, the experience of visiting Barnet last Saturday will send me off to non league for a breathe of fresh air, 89 at the Trophy replay at Brentwood Tuesday, go Town.