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THE PETER HUGHES COLUMN - DISAPPOINTING TURNOUT? 19-11-08
Peter Hughes
After the debacle of the Chelsea match, I looked at the fixture
list.
Home games against Billionaires City and the Hammers, who did the double
over us last term.
Away matches against our bogey team, Blackburn, and two European hopefuls
in Villa and Everton.
I looked and thought two points - maybe three if we scrape a lucky away
point. I couldn't help thinking that we were about to do the same as last
season and just about avoid a relegation battle.
But five weeks and nine points later, it has shown us two things:
Firstly, the thing we all knew - never try to guess how the Boro are going
to do.
Secondly, could this actually be the making of a good team? After all,
even the ‘weak’ players are starting to come good.
Downing has had two good games on the trot.
Alves (although not scoring as many as he, or us, would like) is running
good lines and making himself available. But then does he have to score
when Gary ‘goal machine’ O’Neil is knocking them in for fun?
We played well without the likes of Wheater, Huth, Aliadiere and Mido in
the starting line up.
Are we actually starting to get a good squad?
Do we miss the likes of Cattermole? After he put Barton out of action for
two months, I did yearn for those days to return but then after Super
Lee's midnight ‘escapades’ on Yarm High Street, you realise that Gareth
wants professionals in his own image playing at the club.
After all, I often think that however satisfying James Morrison's ‘tackle’
on Ronaldo was to the fans, the look on Southgate's face said he was not
going to be his sort of player.
We’ve had a third of the season so far and it gives us a reasonable idea
of how the team is doing.
If Pompey beat Hull and we beat Bolton, we would be SIXTH on Saturday
night! This is slightly better than everybody's “probably thirteenth
again” predictions.
You would think that after a decent run we would see a decent crowd at the
Riverside this Saturday, especially as we are playing a team that have
only beaten us once in nine matches since that marvellous day at the
Millenium.
In the last three seasons we have put four past them, five past them and
last season we gave them a 0-1 drubbing at the Riverside.
The team deserve a crowd of over thirty thousand. Unfortunately, a crowd
of twenty five thousand is more likely.
In case you’ve been living in a cave with Osama Bin Laden, there’s a
Credit Crunch on. People are finding it harder and harder to get by these
days. Gas, electric and water have gone up by thirty percent, petrol and
food prices have shot up and it is the luxuries that are getting
squeezed.
And what bigger luxury is there than paying £30 to see some blokes kick a
ball around?
How can a bloke justify paying that much in a week when his family are
struggling to eat?
That may be an exaggeration, but more likely it becomes a choice of taking
the wife out on a night or going to the match. Though I know which one I
would prefer, I know which one will make my life run easier.
Then your little girl wants to see High School Musical. Can you
honestly go to the match and see her miss out?
These are the choices that thousands of Boro fans face every week and the
answer is usually a compromise.
Instead of going to every match, they pick and choose the ones they can go
to. How many will go to the Bolton game and miss Newcastle? Not
many.
You end up cherry picking the top matches and only going to see the top
teams or local derbies as long as they aren’t on Sky or
Setanta.
I know this because I have been in this position.
When I was young, free and rich, I would follow the Boro all over, even
down to the South Coast. They were great days out. Boro even won
once.
But when you get married, get a mortgage and get kids, you have to
prioritise. Suddenly, for most of us, football goes from number one on the
list to about number five.
Last season I took my son to about eight matches. It cost me about £360.
Thanks to this season's ‘kids for £95’ policy, it cost me just over £500
for nineteen matches. I managed to persuade the missus to put my birthday
money towards it and so it hasn’t cost me any more to become a season
ticket holder for the first time since the Eighties.
I know loads of people who have taken up this offer and a generation of
future fans will follow the Boro because of it. The club should be
congratulated for its initiative.
A few years ago they did a ‘kid for a pound’ game against Charlton. I
would not have prioritised Charlton as a must see match but I took four
kids - two of them to see their first game - and it only cost me £33
(alhough I did end up spending a few quid extra on
Coke/chips/scarf/programme etc).
There were thousands of other ‘stay away’ dads who forked out and instead
of a half empty stadium, there was a good turnout.
Why did they not do that again last season? Why not do it for the Bolton
game? There will be ten thousand empty seats on Saturday. Why not fill
them and make a few quid at the same time?
Last season, despite being in the bottom half all year and just above the
relegation zone for most of it, we still averaged over 26,000. That is
quite modest by Premier League standards and a reason for derision by fans
of ‘city clubs’ who seem to think we are stopping a ‘bigger’ club from
being in the Premiership.
But in terms of the percentage of the local population going to matches,
we were the best supported team in the League.
I’ll repeat that….. ‘THE BEST SUPPORTED TEAM IN THE LEAGUE’
Big city clubs can sometimes draw from millions of fans. Some cities have
only one team to choose from. Newcastle's population is 350,000 and only
one in seven go to the match.
Middlesbrough's population is 120,000 and one in five go to every game,
one in four if it’s a big game.
But if you look at it from a European perspective, there were only six
town teams in the top 100 supported clubs in Europe last season.
German side Arminia Bielefeld were the only continental team to make the
top 100 but Bolton, Ipswich, Reading and Blackburn (who as second best
made seventy-second) all represented the Premier League.
And the Boro?
They were the fifty-eighth best supported club in Europe, having a better
attendance than the likes of Anderlecht, Basiktas, Bayer Leverkusen, Lazio
and Zenit St Petersburg.
It is some going, when you consider we pay more than twice as much for our
tickets as they all do.
But the most amazing thing about these statistics, if you can get excited
by statistics, is that Middlesbrough is the best supported town club IN
THE WORLD.
Yes, city clubs with their massive conurbations can fill 80,000 seater
arenas.
But when you go to the Bolton match and are disappointed to see only
25,000 turn up, just remember you are all taking part in A WORLD
RECORD.
Not bad for a small town in Yorkshire.
BACK TO THE PETER HUGHES COLUMN INDEX
A GUARANTEED PROFIT OF AT LEAST £45.20 ON SPAIN U21 v GERMANY U21
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Please note that the bonuses are valid for new customers only so if you already have an account with one or more of the bookies we are using, you
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