Attendances at Vicarage Road

I couldn't tell you, but I'm sure it not a new thing!

 

It does go back a while yes. The oldest article i found mentioning it was from nearly ten years back.. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/fo...attendances-How-clubs-count-missing-fans.html
About the time i remember it being discussed on the Football Ground guide message board.

Not sure it happened much before then though and certain it wasnt done back in the 80's/90's.


Surprised some football fans still dont know about it tbh.

 

82/83 was preceded by several consecutive seasons of constant and often barn-storming success; so not surprising, really.

Apart from the fact so many people actually go to watch that lot. (And sit amongst so many unpleasant people).

 

Push off! Who are you to say your way is the only way to support a team? People live complex lives these days; gone are the days when most men worked five and a half days and cycled to football to watch the greatest bit of excitement/entertainment they were likely to get that week. No television, no car to take them somewhere easily. Much less cash to spend in real terms for frivilous purposes. People buy season tickets these days because they can afford to and it bestows an easy way to guarantee a place. But there are many other things in their lives to distract them, including really unavoidable ones such as work commitments.
You are much like those who claim that, if you don't jump up and down and sing ceaselessly, you cannot be a true supporter.

 

I too used to have jlloyd's attitude back in the late 60s and 70s, that if you were over 30 and didn't go to every home match and most away games and sang yourself hoarse, you were somehow not a "real fan". Now for various reasons both financial and health-related, I cannot attend many games. But I still consider myself a "real fan", having paid my dues by watching the Horns at such venues as the Recreation Ground - Aldershot, Crown Meadow -Lowestoft, Haig Avenue - Southport, Feethams -Darlington, Holker Street - Barrow and Plainmoor- Torquay. I also swelled (not literally then) the home attendances in 1975-76 of 3,271 v. Newport County, 3,581 v. Scanthorpe Utd. and 3,598 v. Hartlepool.

So my derision at the quiet old 'uns in the 60s was definitely misdirected, as these folks probably watched Watford at Merthyr Town (1-4 one season) and Aberdare Athletic (0-4) in the League and Ilford (3-0 hooray) in the Cup in the 20s.

Maybe jlloyd does not consider me a proper supporter now - but I bet he was not at Darlington in 1975 when we lost and went bottom of the old 4th Div. and watched us beat WBA seven years later to top Div. 1 - I was though along with another 40 or so Horns fans. Not many of us left now, I fear.

 

It's run by Ticketmaster like all the club's online ticket sales so I don't see there being a great admin issue. I think there are two issues:

1. If there are still a reasonable number of non-ST seats available, why should the club subsidise a season ticket holder rather than just get full whack for a seat? This is why they wait so long before activating ticket exchange.

2. The way the re-sale system is set up means the buyer can only get a ticket at full adult rate. No concessions. So it's pretty useless for anyone who wants to go with a kid or a older relative.

 

Well to have attended games in the mid 70's you'd only have to be in your 50's now.. so let's hope there's enough of us still around!

No doubt Jlloyd is a young'un.. full of bravado and what it is to be a "real fan" but i think he was making a comment about today's transient football followers.
While it's up to season ticket holders to choose how they attend.. you pays yer money & takes yer choice.. there is a tendency for people to buy seasons tickets to see the big games and/or get the privileges to purchase away tickets or big cup games. There also seems to be a scam going on in the Family stand. Ive even heard of away fans buying season tickets at clubs they dont follow just so they can see their team play the one game there.. while trying to sell off the unused tickets of course.

While it's a smart thing to do so you can cherry pick the games you want.. i guess we all know how difficult it can be to get single match tickets for the bigger game these days.. it doesnt lend itself to the matchday experience if there are too many empty seats.
I think Jlloyds point was that people are missing out on tickets while seats remain empty.
The only solution here, as people have said, is an efficient ticket re-sale system.

 

I wonder how many of these missing seats are "corporates"? I've been in a Ashburton Grove box twice - both times there were around 15-20 of us in it with mountains of booze and food and told "...we catered for 30...". If people aren't turning up for the "posh" free seats gawd knows what's happening on the stands...

 

if we were winning and playing decent football then it would be full all the time. I can fully understand the mentality of not going to the game. There has been loads of times when I've been sat in the pub before the match and having a good time, and been gutted that we'd had to get up and go to endure 2 hours of **** before we can start enjoying ourselves again. You cant even have a drink at your seat! Attending the second half of QSF season was more of an endurance challenge than joining the SAS.

Why would anyone want to spend their hard earned money on a miserable experience?

 

I wonder if having ST holders in the Family Stand is a mistake? I get that the club is trying to secure young supporters for the future but surely children are the most likely part of the fan base to miss games (school nights, other commitments or just losing interest during the season) leading to all those empty seats? Perhaps the stand could just be for one-off tickets sales but still with the same concessions for family groups, then those who just want to see the big games could still do so at reasonable cost and it would give others the chance to get tickets for the 'lesser' games.

 

Is this really an issue? 10% is on average less than missing 2 games in a season. How many people manage to get to every single game. Especially nowadays when matches get moved fairly late for TV onto a work night where you might /might not get back in time so cannot let a friend have the ticket in case you make it.

 

Fantastic idea. You could make the kids tickets in the family stand full price but with massive discounts for attendance until (say) 80% attendance (evening games excluded) gets the price down to the current price for renewal.

 

Would it?

Have a look at the attendance figures in the first post again. The only patterns you can see are from playing the bigger clubs and those from London. I dont think the way we play or our league position comes into it.
What does come into it is that football has become more and more of a leisure activity.. and for some it's just one of many others.

 

I guess the issues are that it looks crap having empty seats, maybe the match atmosphere suffers as a result.. and, perhaps most importantly, people missing out on attending even though the ground is far from full.

Maybe the club should purchase a load of dummies to place in the empty seats? Fit them with speakers blasting out the latest chants and youve fixed the atmosphere problem. Actually it would be an improvement if they went back to the old camera position as the SEJ seems to be the place most likely to have the spaces (though oddly it was quite full for the Saints game)

 

I agree that it does not look good but I am not sure you will often get much less than 10% fail to turn up on the day. Unfortunately they cannot really sell tickets on the day after kick off for seats not taken up.

 

Yes, I apologise - i misunderstood the jist of jlloyd's post - tired but not emotional last night. I agree with the need to overhaul and improve the ticket re-sale situation - and also to consider the case of "underuse" of STs - however difficult it may be to determine.

 

But at least half of those have said they won't go if they get a season ticket.

 

I fully understood your sentiment though.
It has annoyed me in the past when weve had discussions on here about atmosphere at games and the upper GT always comes in for criticism.. and the "olds" in general. A lot of those guys have earned their stripes following the club up and down the country.. when we werent exactly a fashionable club, and they get accused of not being "real fans" because they are not so vocal.

Real fans come in all shapes and sizes.. and ages.

 

I'm not as old as the really old farts on here, but am still old and have been going for decades. And I have to say it was much easier and more enjoyable to go to matches in the past. You make it sound like it was a hardship back in the day, but it was miles better. Going to the match since we've been in the premier league is much harder to motivate yourself for I reckon....

 

Did i? I only suggested it wasnt as fashionable to follow us when we were a perennial lower league club.

Yes it was certainly easier to go to games in the past.. and more enjoyable, at times.
In truth i just liked football in general better back in the day.. but i still take some pleasure from it now on occasions.

 

Unless you have stood on the corners around the ground and been frozen under at least a dozen managers then you are certainly not a REAL Watford fan

 

Sorry I got your post mixed up with the other chap, apologies. I agree with you.

Probably the fact is was less mainstream made it feel better too.

It's like music, a band always turns to **** when the masses start listening to it...

 

I suspect that I have fewer farts than many of the younger brethren on this board - but in the days of eight or so pints a night, the ferocity of my flatulent eructations was legendary.

Of course it was not a hardship all the time at our away games in the 70s. But watching us lose at Rochdale with Horther Arsefield as our main striker was not entirely enjoyable. 1-0 defeats at Aldershot and Torquay were not bundles of fun either. In those (far-off) days, the enjoyable part of away games was the camaraderie, the sessions in local hostelries and the menacing, counter-menacing and the occasional bouts of fisticuffs in the ground. This may not suit today's football purists obviously but when you are confronted by a horde of Shakers fans at Gigg Lane, you do not shy away like shrinking violets. There was then not the overwhelming police presence or the rows of plastic seats to prevent the coming together of rival tribes.

I do not expect these scenes to be repeated when I visit St Mary's next week for my latest (infrequent) game - but I may be surprised.

 

Exactly! The camaraderie was there in the late 80s and throughout the 90s because we are all pretty much the same: working class lads out on the piss having a laugh, or so it seemed to me. Of course the football was important but now it's the be all and end all.

There's loads of snooty types at the match now too who don't even drink, and look down their nose at those who do...even at aways.

Enjoy the cup match mate!

 

I certainly shall, thanks - if you should see a tall, grey-haired old git leaping about and screaming at the pitch then it definitely won't be me.....especially as that may be before the game has even started.

 

Not suprised, know of two season ticket holders whom first bought when promoted , they only go to the ' big games ' and can't be bothered to sell on / give away ticket when they are not using it ! Needless to say , they are not 'average earners ' ..... ! Wealthy day trippers, as you say !

 

I contacted the club this week to try and put my and my wife’s seats for the Man City game up for resale under the ticket exchange scheme. This was the reply:

Thank you for your email.

Unfortunately, ticket exchange is no longer available.

However, we can release your seat for you, and if we manage to re-sell it, the money will be passed onto the Watford FC Charity.

I don’t know if I have missed the announcement that ticket exchange is no more, but since there is now no financial incentive for ST holders to resell we can expect more empty spaces at home games. I have also no idea what the Watford FC Charity is and whether I would choose to support it.

 

Poor effort.

WFC’s rather than your wife’s.

 

I didn't see many empty seats at the Liverpool match. Official attendance 20,540, three more than were alleged to have attended the Man Utd fixture. In third place was star-studded HUDDERSFIELD, with 20,457

 

I have two ST holders next to me, a bloke in his early 30s and his 'too young to know what's going on' son, who needs to go to the loo at least three times a game. Guess which are the only three matches they've attended this season?! The bloke spends most of his time on his phone as well. Each to their own and all that, but I just don't understand it. Banking on us staying up until his son grows up?

There was also a Liverpool-supporting acquaintance of mine in the Rookery. One of hundreds probably!