You get a massive opportunity to get local yoof following the club.
Ticket prices are affordable and with attendances tailed off you create the ability for teens to start going as a group and get involved in the North Upper.
you can see the benefit of that now in the North Upper and on aways such as Reading. We have been literally flooded with teens over the last 2-3 years, more so than in any period since I started going as a kid.
You sinply couldn’t have got that in the Prem or when the North Upper / Old Covered End remained sold out in previous Championship spells.
Lads want to go together and be amongst the noise. We’ve picked up a huge amount over last couple of years.
Its a massive factor in why our atmospheres at home and on the road have been so good the last couple of seasons
45
Comments
Certainly ticket prices make it more affordable but i'd certainly say style of play and results will always have a say too. One of my biggest fears if Lord Bowyer ever moves on is going back to the toothless away performances where we've brought a big away crowd.
Other than access to space and tickets, and I can see why the numbers have grown post Bowyer, but why else did they start to follow.
And we don’t need a plastic ultra scene to do it :-)
Yeah.....great to have them.
1k at Blackburn, less than 800 at Barnsley. I don't expect many at Wigan next up either.
Definitely agree that the atmosphere is decent now though, and i've noticed a lot of opposition fans lately commenting on how noisy we are.
We were shocking and in the radio interview afterwards, their manager (Flitcroft maybe) said “I think Charlton will do enough to stay safe this season”
i went there thinking it was it was a stroll in the park and they saw us as potential relegation fodder.
Time moves on and we are 2nd in the Championship and Bury are not in the league.
A pre season tour in the sun seems to do the trick.
Wembley was the same, although lots of people went to both games the crowd felt younger than 20 odd years before.
Pompey away in April 2018 was the first time I really noticed it, though to be fair the atmosphere at The Valley has even at its most silent, been better than at many other grounds
She said, no don’t be daft, we’re just getting old!
Its funny even the coppers look too young to be doing the job!
but with that the wally count does go up and I’m sure when I was a youngster I wasn’t as divvy as some of the baseball cap brigade I saw strutting round like peacocks after we’d beaten the mighty Doncaster away in the play offs (prolly cos I couldnt and can’t fight)
I’m all up for some raucous behaviour but there’s a time and a place
and if pavement dancing is your thing then go find like minded rather than wait for the wall of policemen or stewards to start giving it the big one to other fans .
oh fuck I’ve turned in to Len Glover !
I was talking on the tube to a Chelsea fan yesterday who was going to the Sheffield United match, he wasn’t a season ticket holder and had paid 47 quid for his ticket!
I asked him what he thought the Chelsea score would be, he said 3-0 but then again when I started raving about the ‘ Blonde Frank Lampard’ they’d loaned us, he’d never heard of him!
Ban them all I say.
golfie......you do talk some crap at times fella!
Having a good team to follow helps a lot too.
kids that age are more interested in the atmosphere, banter etc than the actual football.
Agree totally though that winning helps set the backdrop though.
just great to see youngsters getting into us and not being sheep-like following that lot down the road
Now our support has all sorts of ages but notably massive increase in lads in their 20s and 30s who go away from home. I think we’re the generation who grew up seeing the Scott Parker’s and Matt Holland’s and are continuously chasing the glory days, like a gambler chasing loses, but are happy for the ride it takes to get there because we were starved of your Rochdale’s and the Blackpool’s, I genuinely mean that too those little grounds if we ever get back to the promised land will be talked of fondly.
Thats my take on it anyway.