Our next sky game is the Blades, they’ll sell their allocation if they haven’t already anyway and 80% of the home fans are season ticket holders who have already paid so it wouldn’t be worth it for us.
Biggest crowd of the season at Oakwell yesterday for a midday kick off , live on SKY , weather not too grand and playing a team from down south , up by over 1200 .
Interesting thing is that match tickets were £10 as opposed to the normal £24 .
Got to be some merit for RUFC to reduce prices for your SKY games at the NYS .
Our next sky game is the Blades, they’ll sell their allocation if they haven’t already anyway and 80% of the home fans are season ticket holders who have already paid so it wouldn’t be worth it for us.
Over the years our support has generally been mediocre. Our crowds have usually been average or slightly less than average for the division we've been in at the time apart from in the Championship where we have no chance of matching the average weekly crowds, and the first few years at NYS.
We would probably have to be challenging for the playoffs to see a real increase in attendances at the minute. The fickle element of our support are bored with mere Championship football. Cost may also be a big factor too.
Incidentally I remember seeing an article from Barnsleys local rag a few short years ago stating it was a dark day for Barnsley FC, as league 2 Rotherham pulled in a crowd just short of 11000 for a game against port Vale while Barnsley, at home the same day, had a sub 9000 crowd for a Championship game. Support wise, we've gone backwards since then while Barnsley have probably improved.
When was the last time we used half the south stand to cater for demand from our own fans? It was quite a regular thing in the first 3 years of opening the NYS. It's hard to see it happening again anytime soon.
I remember the debacle for the Aldershot promotion game when the club took the move to open half the south stand for Millers fans and put the tickets up for sale the weekend before - while 2000 fans were down at Plymouth, largely unaware. The allocation sold out really quick due to the Plymouth result and a lot of people missed out.
At that point it felt like the stadium was going to be too small for our needs. Turns out not. I blame Sky..