And you base your theory on what? Do you play in front of crowds like that often? Funny how players are always saying how the crowd helped them. Guess you know more though!
26000 against Barnsley last year. Operation Ewood, Operation Riverside, bigger attendance last year against palace.
Didnt we get beaten in the other football for a fiver game in front of a full house too ?
I think the issue is more about fans sensing that this game matters to the club as much as it matters to the fans. The club's overall behaviour has been the opposite recently.
The 2009 game where we had 21,000 in freezing cold weather, a division below, the side streets of Eltham looking like Siberia, was also an early kick off, I am pretty sure.
Whilst yesterday's attendance was disappointing, it's not surprising that the crowd for the game in December 2009 was higher. And the reasons have nothing to do with who does or doesn't think the game mattered.
We had made an excellent start to the '09/10 season and, before kick-off, were sitting second in the table, behind Leeds, with am impressive 45 points from 21 games. We'd also been playing some decent football, especially in the first ten games when Shelvey and Sam were impressing. Charlton were expected to win. Millwall were also playing well though and, whilst just outside the Play-Off zone at the time of the match, were eventually promoted.
Leaving aside the result (4-4 v 0-1), the game in 2009 provided much better entertainment. It was a pulsating affair between two good sides. Millwall, in particular, played some terrific passing football and it's no wonder that fans, both home and away, turned up in numbers to watch this kind of fayre. Yesterday's tedium was, sadly, entirely predictable. Charlton's home games under Chris Powell simply haven't been particulary entertaining in a pure, footballing sense, except when the opposition has opened the game up allowing us to sit and counter. With Millwall struggling that was never going to happen yesterday.
I'm afraid that crowds will continue to dwindle until the football improves. I'll keep going (until the men in white coats come for me) and so will many others, but the "marginals" will continue to lose interest. In the case of the game yesterday, last season's post match debacle won't have helped of course.
Mundell
the slight flaw in your argument is that before the game nobody actually knew in advance it would be 4-4. If you say we were still second at that point then my memory is playing tricks because I thought that by the time we got to this game the gloss was beginning to come off Parky's good start to the season. What is definitely true is that the weather was a serious issue. I almost didnt get there at all since Heathrow had started its emotinoal breakdown over 5cms of snow, and I finally I arrived at 01.00 the previous night in a black cab driven by a Spanner who edged up my Mums road at 5mph. Yet the next day people headed out to the game in impressive numbers - instead of going Christmas shopping btw
If, as JohnnyH2 says, it was a 3.00 then it just goes to show that the club last season should not have gone along with the police nonsense, and instead pointed out that the last time we met there had been no trouble and the crowd had been bigger then.
Of course recent form doesnt help. It does not however explain why less Charlton supporters turn up for a derby than for a routine game. That is in fact almost unprecedented in English football. Both on here, and in my own private dialogues, neutral fans from other clubs are asking "WTF" about this.
If, as JohnnyH2 says, it was a 3.00 then it just goes to show that the club last season should not have gone along with the police nonsense, and instead pointed out that the last time we met there had been no trouble and the crowd had been bigger then.
And you base your theory on what? Do you play in front of crowds like that often? Funny how players are always saying how the crowd helped them. Guess you know more though!
26000 against Barnsley last year. Operation Ewood, Operation Riverside, bigger attendance last year against palace.
Didnt we get beaten in the other football for a fiver game in front of a full house too ?
I think the issue is more about fans sensing that this game matters to the club as much as it matters to the fans. The club's overall behaviour has been the opposite recently.
The 2009 game where we had 21,000 in freezing cold weather, a division below, the side streets of Eltham looking like Siberia, was also an early kick off, I am pretty sure.
Whilst yesterday's attendance was disappointing, it's not surprising that the crowd for the game in December 2009 was higher. And the reasons have nothing to do with who does or doesn't think the game mattered.
We had made an excellent start to the '09/10 season and, before kick-off, were sitting second in the table, behind Leeds, with am impressive 45 points from 21 games. We'd also been playing some decent football, especially in the first ten games when Shelvey and Sam were impressing. Charlton were expected to win. Millwall were also playing well though and, whilst just outside the Play-Off zone at the time of the match, were eventually promoted.
Leaving aside the result (4-4 v 0-1), the game in 2009 provided much better entertainment. It was a pulsating affair between two good sides. Millwall, in particular, played some terrific passing football and it's no wonder that fans, both home and away, turned up in numbers to watch this kind of fayre. Yesterday's tedium was, sadly, entirely predictable. Charlton's home games under Chris Powell simply haven't been particulary entertaining in a pure, footballing sense, except when the opposition has opened the game up allowing us to sit and counter. With Millwall struggling that was never going to happen yesterday.
I'm afraid that crowds will continue to dwindle until the football improves. I'll keep going (until the men in white coats come for me) and so will many others, but the "marginals" will continue to lose interest. In the case of the game yesterday, last season's post match debacle won't have helped of course.
Mundell
the slight flaw in your argument is that before the game nobody actually knew in advance it would be 4-4. If you say we were still second at that point then my memory is playing tricks because I thought that by the time we got to this game the gloss was beginning to come off Parky's good start to the season. What is definitely true is that the weather was a serious issue. I almost didnt get there at all since Heathrow had started its emotinoal breakdown over 5cms of snow, and I finally I arrived at 01.00 the previous night in a black cab driven by a Spanner who edged up my Mums road at 5mph. Yet the next day people headed out to the game in impressive numbers - instead of going Christmas shopping btw
If, as JohnnyH2 says, it was a 3.00 then it just goes to show that the club last season should not have gone along with the police nonsense, and instead pointed out that the last time we met there had been no trouble and the crowd had been bigger then.
Of course recent form doesnt help. It does not however explain why less Charlton supporters turn up for a derby than for a routine game. That is in fact almost unprecedented in English football. Both on here, and in my own private dialogues, neutral fans from other clubs are asking "WTF" about this.
I'm sticking to my guns on this.
Not true fewer turn up than for a routine game (if you mean ticket purchasers as opposed to season ticket holders). I don't have thw numbers in front if me, but I think basic maths on the published details of games so far this season will show that. What there isn't is a significant uplift. But there is when we play Palace, which tells you all you should need to know.
The idea that the club has any discretion over following police advice / instructions is just fanciful, I'm afraid. The council would intervene as the licensing authority if they tried.
What I'm trying to get at, not very well, I guess, is what Alex Fynn tried to explain to the FA over twenty years ago. He wrote that football is successful when as many games as possible are seen as events. He argued that lower league football should be regionalised, because as he wrote :" Liverpool vs Charlton Athletic is not normally an Event, whereas Peterborough versus Cambridge United is" (because its a derby of course, regardless of where they are or how they are doing). What did the Club do to make this game seem like an Event? It held a joint anti-knife crime ceremony. Very good and worthy in itself, but if that is the only special thing you do, it isn't a very positive message to send out about the game is it? As for the policing, they might not have been able to prevent the police putting in ridiculous over the top measures, but they could be a damned sight more vocal about how unhappy they are on behalf of their paying customers. Indeed Airman I don't think your pessimism is entirely justified. @Addicted posted some minutes which showed that the police were given some fairly robust feedback about last March, and as a result it seems they weren't so stupid this time. But the damage was done last March, as a lot of people said at the time, and the pre-match noises from the Club were not reassuring that the same thing wasn't going to happen this year.
Of course it would have helped if we had started better on the pitch. But this other stuff is important, a lot of people on here have been saying it for ages.
Deluded? Ha! No, just old enough to remember. So you're just a kid. That's ok, football in this country was dying on it's feet in the late 80's and early 90's. Sky saved it. Fact. Locked on. End of chat.
That is the biggest pile of old shit i have ever read on here and its got some competition mate believe me.
I'd like to say I was pleased that I didn't go to this match, but I'm not.
I was still angry about the Huddersfield match on Tuesday night.
I'd taken a lieu day off at work to go, booked a hotel , and fell over in the bath whilst having a shower ( no shower mat) hurting my knee, bruising my foot and pulling the towel rail off the wall.
On the drive home from Huddersfield in a 50 mph drive zone, I had a foreign plated car transporter driver pull right up behind me, flash his lights then proceed to undertake me in the inside lane, then hitting the concrete barrier that was on his left hand side, bits of his lorry flew off, bounced in front of me , and flew over my windscreen.
After a crap drive home where I could barely stay awake, I then was off work the next day as I went down with the flu, which I've still got.
I decided to give the Millwall game a wide berth as I still felt crap, and watched it on tele , whilst waiting in for delivery of a new bed.
Well the bed turned up, just after the final whistle blew, and yes you've guessed it , the delivery driver was a Millwall fan.
My missus now has the lurgies, and my sons are put off going to the return fixture, i've never watched the movie 'falling down' but i think i can understand why Michael Douglass did what he did.
Players are responsible for the result, every time. Doesn't mean we can't do our bit as a fanbase though.
Do you think fans of Cardiff/Swansea , Pompey/Saints, Norwich/Ipswich etc come up with the same silly excuses when their derbies are early KO, on TV etc? No, they don't.
Don't expect the players to go into it with that full blooded derby mentality if the fanbase as a whole can't do the same.
We embarrassed ourselves as a club yesterday, at every level.
How depressing is it that MILLWALL had a bigger attendance for this fixture at The Den last season!?!?
I'd like to say I was pleased that I didn't go to this match, but I'm not.
I was still angry about the Huddersfield match on Tuesday night.
I'd taken a lieu day off at work to go, booked a hotel , and fell over in the bath whilst having a shower ( no shower mat) hurting my knee, bruising my foot and pulling the towel rail off the wall.
On the drive home from Huddersfield in a 50 mph drive zone, I had a foreign plated car transporter driver pull right up behind me, flash his lights then proceed to undertake me in the inside lane, then hitting the concrete barrier that was on his left hand side, bits of his lorry flew off, bounced in front of me , and flew over my windscreen.
After a crap drive home where I could barely stay awake, I then was off work the next day as I went down with the flu, which I've still got.
I decided to give the Millwall game a wide berth as I still felt crap, and watched it on tele , whilst waiting in for delivery of a new bed.
Well the bed turned up, just after the final whistle blew, and yes you've guessed it , the delivery driver was a Millwall fan.
My missus now has the lurgies, and my sons are put off going to the return fixture, i've never watched the movie 'falling down' but i think i can understand why Michael Douglass did what he did.
Aw bless, MIA !!! What a tale of woe ! Things can only get better....
I'd like to say I was pleased that I didn't go to this match, but I'm not.
I was still angry about the Huddersfield match on Tuesday night.
I'd taken a lieu day off at work to go, booked a hotel , and fell over in the bath whilst having a shower ( no shower mat) hurting my knee, bruising my foot and pulling the towel rail off the wall.
On the drive home from Huddersfield in a 50 mph drive zone, I had a foreign plated car transporter driver pull right up behind me, flash his lights then proceed to undertake me in the inside lane, then hitting the concrete barrier that was on his left hand side, bits of his lorry flew off, bounced in front of me , and flew over my windscreen.
After a crap drive home where I could barely stay awake, I then was off work the next day as I went down with the flu, which I've still got.
I decided to give the Millwall game a wide berth as I still felt crap, and watched it on tele , whilst waiting in for delivery of a new bed.
Well the bed turned up, just after the final whistle blew, and yes you've guessed it , the delivery driver was a Millwall fan.
My missus now has the lurgies, and my sons are put off going to the return fixture, i've never watched the movie 'falling down' but i think i can understand why Michael Douglass did what he did.
I'd like to say I was pleased that I didn't go to this match, but I'm not.
I was still angry about the Huddersfield match on Tuesday night.
I'd taken a lieu day off at work to go, booked a hotel , and fell over in the bath whilst having a shower ( no shower mat) hurting my knee, bruising my foot and pulling the towel rail off the wall.
On the drive home from Huddersfield in a 50 mph drive zone, I had a foreign plated car transporter driver pull right up behind me, flash his lights then proceed to undertake me in the inside lane, then hitting the concrete barrier that was on his left hand side, bits of his lorry flew off, bounced in front of me , and flew over my windscreen.
After a crap drive home where I could barely stay awake, I then was off work the next day as I went down with the flu, which I've still got.
I decided to give the Millwall game a wide berth as I still felt crap, and watched it on tele , whilst waiting in for delivery of a new bed.
Well the bed turned up, just after the final whistle blew, and yes you've guessed it , the delivery driver was a Millwall fan.
My missus now has the lurgies, and my sons are put off going to the return fixture, i've never watched the movie 'falling down' but i think i can understand why Michael Douglass did what he did.
I'm not sure how to prove this point, but plenty of evidence suggests that Millwall have the worst hooligan element in the country. If decent Charlton fans avoided the fixture because they feared trouble (especially if they take public transport to the game), then I wouldn't blame them one bit. I wouldn't have gone yesterday under any circumstances (especially given it was on Sky).
It's a bit pointless comparing with say Ipswich/Norwich given neither club has any bad reputation whatsoever.
If I went to a match and was the only person there I wouldn't give a crap where 20,000 strangers are. Why is it my business what other people are doing? As long as I'm there doing my bit. I wouldn't take the moral high ground and believe everyone else is a worse supporter than me.
Yup put me well down that list as the next two tues eve games I can't be bothered to go And like I said before never felt this way in 40 years and in that time the have been many more lows than highs! At the moment I just can put a finger on why though? Maybee I'm getting older and wiser to spend £60/80 on a cold Tue night to watch that? I don't blame Powell or the current players or the board for my sudden loss of commitment and passion I just think its been gradually be drained from me and I've suddenly not looking at it through rose tinted glasses anymore?
I'd like to say I was pleased that I didn't go to this match, but I'm not.
I was still angry about the Huddersfield match on Tuesday night.
I'd taken a lieu day off at work to go, booked a hotel , and fell over in the bath whilst having a shower ( no shower mat) hurting my knee, bruising my foot and pulling the towel rail off the wall.
On the drive home from Huddersfield in a 50 mph drive zone, I had a foreign plated car transporter driver pull right up behind me, flash his lights then proceed to undertake me in the inside lane, then hitting the concrete barrier that was on his left hand side, bits of his lorry flew off, bounced in front of me , and flew over my windscreen.
After a crap drive home where I could barely stay awake, I then was off work the next day as I went down with the flu, which I've still got.
I decided to give the Millwall game a wide berth as I still felt crap, and watched it on tele , whilst waiting in for delivery of a new bed.
Well the bed turned up, just after the final whistle blew, and yes you've guessed it , the delivery driver was a Millwall fan.
My missus now has the lurgies, and my sons are put off going to the return fixture, i've never watched the movie 'falling down' but i think i can understand why Michael Douglass did what he did.
It amuses me that the official attendance never drops below 15,500; it looked far less than that on Saturday. A mate of mine watched it on the box and commented on the vast swathes of empty seats.
Comments
the slight flaw in your argument is that before the game nobody actually knew in advance it would be 4-4. If you say we were still second at that point then my memory is playing tricks because I thought that by the time we got to this game the gloss was beginning to come off Parky's good start to the season. What is definitely true is that the weather was a serious issue. I almost didnt get there at all since Heathrow had started its emotinoal breakdown over 5cms of snow, and I finally I arrived at 01.00 the previous night in a black cab driven by a Spanner who edged up my Mums road at 5mph. Yet the next day people headed out to the game in impressive numbers - instead of going Christmas shopping btw
If, as JohnnyH2 says, it was a 3.00 then it just goes to show that the club last season should not have gone along with the police nonsense, and instead pointed out that the last time we met there had been no trouble and the crowd had been bigger then.
Of course recent form doesnt help. It does not however explain why less Charlton supporters turn up for a derby than for a routine game. That is in fact almost unprecedented in English football. Both on here, and in my own private dialogues, neutral fans from other clubs are asking "WTF" about this.
I'm sticking to my guns on this.
JohnnyH2 is right. It was a 3pm kick off in 2009
The idea that the club has any discretion over following police advice / instructions is just fanciful, I'm afraid. The council would intervene as the licensing authority if they tried.
Of course it would have helped if we had started better on the pitch. But this other stuff is important, a lot of people on here have been saying it for ages.
Explain
I was still angry about the Huddersfield match on Tuesday night.
I'd taken a lieu day off at work to go, booked a hotel , and fell over in the bath whilst having a shower ( no shower mat) hurting my knee, bruising my foot and pulling the towel rail off the wall.
On the drive home from Huddersfield in a 50 mph drive zone, I had a foreign plated car transporter driver pull right up behind me, flash his lights then proceed to undertake me in the inside lane, then hitting the concrete barrier that was on his left hand side, bits of his lorry flew off, bounced in front of me , and flew over my windscreen.
After a crap drive home where I could barely stay awake, I then was off work the next day as I went down with the flu, which I've still got.
I decided to give the Millwall game a wide berth as I still felt crap, and watched it on tele , whilst waiting in for delivery of a new bed.
Well the bed turned up, just after the final whistle blew, and yes you've guessed it , the delivery driver was a Millwall fan.
My missus now has the lurgies, and my sons are put off going to the return fixture, i've never watched the movie 'falling down' but i think i can understand why Michael Douglass did what he did.
Do you think fans of Cardiff/Swansea , Pompey/Saints, Norwich/Ipswich etc come up with the same silly excuses when their derbies are early KO, on TV etc? No, they don't.
Don't expect the players to go into it with that full blooded derby mentality if the fanbase as a whole can't do the same.
We embarrassed ourselves as a club yesterday, at every level.
How depressing is it that MILLWALL had a bigger attendance for this fixture at The Den last season!?!?
Going to Burnley ?????
It's a bit pointless comparing with say Ipswich/Norwich given neither club has any bad reputation whatsoever.
And like I said before never felt this way in 40 years and in that time the have been many more lows than highs!
At the moment I just can put a finger on why though?
Maybee I'm getting older and wiser to spend £60/80 on a cold Tue night to watch that?
I don't blame Powell or the current players or the board for my sudden loss of commitment and passion
I just think its been gradually be drained from me and I've suddenly not looking at it through rose tinted glasses anymore?
Cheers Redsek , that cheered me up , poor old Shep , i guess there's always someone worse off than you , as they say....