Controversial Opinions

[SwalePie]

Here are two controversial opinions for debate:

1) We are a bigger club now ‘pound for pound’ then we have been in the last 50 years. If you consider the attendances we used to get in the first and second tier and compare them to the attendances we have had over the last five years. The playoff season in league 2 had attendances comparable to the last time we were in the top flight.

2) We are a bigger club because of Alan Hardy and his marketing. The attendances over the last five years can all be linked to his promotion of the club. The fact we get such big crowds now is due to him bringing in new fans and the offer on Saturday was likely linked to the success of previous recent offers. No chairman has ever consistently put on the offers / promotion that Hardy did.

P.s. I am not Alan Hardy haha.. I’ve been using this board since 2004.

Not controversial at all as I see it. I think you're spot on. Hardy didn't ultimately get a lot right in the final analysis, despite huge 'spending', but he was most certainly top-notch at getting bums on seats.

[upthemaggies]

Agree on point 2.

On point 1, it's relative to all other clubs, there's been an increase across the board with virtually all clubs getting bigger gates and many overtaking Notts in terms of size from where they were 20/30 years ago - Wigan, Reading, Bournemouth, Peterborough, Rotherham, Fulham, Huddersfield, Hull all spring to mind, we were even averaging higher than Middlesbrough in the same division at one stage, they are light years ahead of us now.

Our current average is half of what it was 50 years ago. Almost everybody's gates began to collapse from about 1974 with high profile cases of violence, then Fwords success under Clough pressed down even harder on our ceiling.

I'm sure we could get out of the 4th tier with relative ease if we had our act together, but the 3rd tier has become so much tougher now. Whenever we've been in it (tier 3) since the mid-90s I'd say we were among the top third biggest and not much smaller than the 2nd or 3rd biggest in most cases, but there'd probably be 3 or 4 clubs way bigger than us in there now at any given time and up to 12 who could claim to be bigger.

[Old_pie]

Agree on point 2.

On point 1, it's relative to all other clubs, there's been an increase across the board with virtually all clubs getting bigger gates and many overtaking Notts in terms of size from where they were 20/30 years ago - Wigan, Reading, Bournemouth, Peterborough, Rotherham, Fulham, Huddersfield, Hull all spring to mind, we were even averaging higher than Middlesbrough in the same division at one stage, they are light years ahead of us now.

Our current average is half of what it was 50 years ago. Almost everybody's gates began to collapse from about 1974 with high profile cases of violence, then Fwords success under Clough pressed down even harder on our ceiling.

I'm sure we could get out of the 4th tier with relative ease if we had our act together, but the 3rd tier has become so much tougher now. Whenever we've been in it (tier 3) since the mid-90s I'd say we were among the top third biggest and not much smaller than the 2nd or 3rd biggest in most cases, but there'd probably be 3 or 4 clubs way bigger than us in there now at any given time and up to 12 who could claim to be bigger.

We were regularly getting well over 10,000 in our first stint in the 4th tier with over 20k on the Easter Monday. I'd hazard that the gate averages then were better than our 2nd stint in the top tier and probably better than much of the first stint there as well.

Munto must have brought a lot of supporters back. Hardy did have some effect. I'd guess now that having a reasonable chance of seeing a win has made a difference plus the renewed hope and the spectacular failure of the dark side to capitalise on our predicaments.

If we did get promoted to the 3rd tier and then struggled I suspect we'd just see a repeat of the mid-60s pre Sirrel having an impact.

[PedroTheFisherman66]

The good thing about Hardys ownership is he knew how to promote Notts and did a half decent job promoting us as a club.One thing that surprises me is that we don't shout from the roof tops that we are the oldest football league club in the world ( when we were!).When we are again we need to advertise this fact anywhere and everywhere world wide.

[ncfcog]

The good thing about Hardys ownership is he knew how to promote Notts and did a half decent job promoting us as a club.One thing that surprises me is that we don't shout from the roof tops that we are the oldest football league club in the world ( when we were!).When we are again we need to advertise this fact anywhere and everywhere world wide.

I can understand why you might want to shout about the oldest club tag etc but I'm a bit indifferent to it. I absolutely love looking back at the clubs history and nostalgic moments but I'm more inclined now to forget about the oldest league/professional club angle and just quietly get on with becoming what others see as a sustainable and relatively successful football club.