Romared Match Thoughts Exeter City v Barnsley

[Shadrack the Red]

It doesn't work how you think it works with regard to people who live in the borough but don't support Barnsley .

I'll tell you for why , if the truth be known the Sheffield clubs and Leeds United are as underperforming entities as we are currently , I don't see any Premier League longevity and Wednesday haven't competed in the Premier League for over 20 years .

Anybody from the borough supporting those three doesn't do it for the winning of trophies or even for the Premier League badge of honour .

What happens is , is that because of the close proximity of both city's youngsters get taken along by parents or relatives and once they go through those turnstiles it instantly becomes the club they support , I'd wager a month's wage that's how Jules came to support Barnsley even though I don't think he's lived in the borough in his entire life .

Here's another aspect to this even though it's a different sport but the same rules apply none the less .

I've supported Wakefield Trinity for 42 years but if someone formed a Rugby League club in Barnsley and they started to rise through the league's and become a force in the game overtaking or even became at least level with Trinity I wouldn't ditch my allegiance to Trinity because I'm a Barnsley lad .

Wakefield Trinity is my club and that is that .

All good points and the thing is times have changed , back in the fifties and sixties for example many people , were born, grew up , worked and lived in the same community and if they were football fond they would follow their local club, but has time has gone by and people began to move about more , travel for work they would very often move to another area to live, I did it myself in the seventies when I lived in Buckinghamshire but my roots and allegiance never altered and I would get to every Barnsley match I could so my point is my local club was Luton but I would never have dreamt of swapping Barnsley for Luton and nowadays you get a lot of people living in the Barnsley area because of the convenience but their roots are to other clubs from different areas , the world has moved on , everyone has a car or access to transport , you can basically live anywhere and still follow your club, it is a nonsense to suggest that everyone who lives in Barnsley should follow the reds ,we are not in competition commercially with Sheffield, Leeds or anywhere for that matter, what we have to do is try and attract new fans to make Barnsley their club and that is usually brought about by success on the pitch !!!

[Jules88]

It doesn't work how you think it works with regard to people who live in the borough but don't support Barnsley .

I'll tell you for why , if the truth be known the Sheffield clubs and Leeds United are as underperforming entities as we are currently , I don't see any Premier League longevity and Wednesday haven't competed in the Premier League for over 20 years .

Anybody from the borough supporting those three doesn't do it for the winning of trophies or even for the Premier League badge of honour .

What happens is , is that because of the close proximity of both city's youngsters get taken along by parents or relatives and once they go through those turnstiles it instantly becomes the club they support , I'd wager a month's wage that's how Jules came to support Barnsley even though I don't think he's lived in the borough in his entire life .

Here's another aspect to this even though it's a different sport but the same rules apply none the less .

I've supported Wakefield Trinity for 42 years but if someone formed a Rugby League club in Barnsley and they started to rise through the league's and become a force in the game overtaking or even became at least level with Trinity I wouldn't ditch my allegiance to Trinity because I'm a Barnsley lad .

Wakefield Trinity is my club and that is that .

You are safe with your wage Animal. In fact, with a dad from this side, and a mother from Wombwell ( elsecar heritage) the reason I was brought here as a youngster was that dad deemed the crowds too big at Huddersfield to take a youngster.
Third and fourth division in those days at Oakwell, there was plenty of room on the coyl stack, or west lower for a young Jules to wander while dad and his mate ( who was a Barnsley fan from the borough) smoked and chatted.
We have many other family members who never ever lived there, yet follow the reds? wierd innit.

I wouldn?t go anywhere else. I just couldn?t.

And I admit to wearing my reds shirt in Huddersfield now and again too?. I can imagine the locals crying ?shame? it is what it is?

[animallittle3]

Even if the stadium allowed would we ever see the 33k or the 32k we saw in the 80's against Manchester City and Everton respectively in the cups ? , I doubt it .

In fact I'd go as far as to say the stadium is too big for us now at 22k .

We are a league one club that sometimes play in the championship and that's how things are now and I don't see that changing anytime soon .

[pass_and_move]

According to the BBS "Comings and Goings" Section, an accurate a summary as there is, then

Adam Phillips contract, due to end Summer 2025, was extended to Summer 2026 with a further year until Summer 2027 decided by club

Luca Connell contract, was extended to Summer 2027 with a further year until Summer 2028 decided by club

Both these extensions were made in Summer 2023.

Thanks SB.

[pass_and_move]

Even if we pulled an extra 4000 fans buying season tickets, the income received from that (around 1.5 million) wouldn't exactly be enough to have a groundbreaking effect on our finances or league standing would it? The club is currently losing 7m per season according to the owners last meeting at the fans forum.

The television money that football clubs receive, combined with sponsorship money, usurps the annual gate receipts by a considerable margin. That's where football is at in this day and age.

[animallittle3]

The barometer that tests our potential support in my opinion is pretty simple .

How many fans have we on the waiting list to buy an ST ?

The answer is none .

In my opinion the biggest two games that fans could attend in recent times were the final home game of the Daniel Stendel promotion season against Blackpool .

The second was the 2nd leg of the play off semi final against Bolton under Duff .

Just over 14k Barnsley fans inside Oakwell on both occasions .

That's our potential support today .

[Shadrack the Red]

The barometer that tests our potential support in my opinion is pretty simple .

How many fans have we on the waiting list to buy an ST ?

The answer is none .

In my opinion the biggest two games that fans could attend in recent times were the final home game of the Daniel Stendel promotion season against Blackpool .

The second was the 2nd leg of the play off semi final against Bolton under Duff .

Just over 14k Barnsley fans inside Oakwell on both occasions .

That's our potential support today .

To be honest the 14 k you mention is pretty good, in the 60 odd years I have been attending that average has rarely been achieved , even when we had the promotion season to get us to the premier league our crowds did not start to swell until the turn of the year and of course we had excellent support during and shortly after our adventure in the big time but by and large we have flattered to deceive . It does make me smile when I read some of our posters going on about how we have lost thousands of our fans , fans are voting with their feet , no wonder fans are staying away etc etc etc , well to be honest are crowds have held up remarkably well , in the sixties and seventies when we played our football across the bottom two divisions we did well to get 5000 fans and then when we went up to division 2 ( todays championship ) which arguably was the best and most consistent period of football in our history we still struggled to attract the crowds and then of course came the strike which had a huge effect on our gates plus of course other clubs in our area which took us until 1997 to recover but heres the thing, since the turn of the century we have been in and out of the championship and division 1 but our gates have held up to around the 10 to 12 thousand mark which when you consider during the sixties and seventies when we were playing division todays equivalent we got no where near half the crowds we get now , especially when you take into the fact that people today do not have to get out of their front room to watch the team they follow but the longer television dominates our sport I think the lower league teams who are not pushing for promotion will suffer a big drop off in crowds and personally I think that tv will eventually kill off the bottom two leagues .

[pass_and_move]

The first year that I could afford a season ticket was the 94/95 season when i left school and started work. Because of the Taylor report, the ground was only able to host fans in the East Stand, West stand Upper tier and away fans were put in some temporary seating in the Kop. The capacity of Oakwell was reduced to 10 thousand because standing areas were closed off.

Bearing in mind that this was a time when the pits were closing or had all but closed, unemployment was bad and of course you couldn't stand up at Oakwell anymore which may well have put many folk off even if they weren't skint. Us Yorkshire folk dunt like change do we. We had some crowds of 3000 that season, thats a fact. We regularly couldnt even fill the East stand, I remember it well.

On the pitch however, we were doing exceptionally well that season. Danny Wilson had just taken over from Viv Anderson. We played some tremendous football that season and finished 6th in the Championship. Unfortunately for us, they were reducing the amount of teams in the Premier league, that meant that only 1 went up automatic and places 2nd to 5th contended the play offs for the other promotion berth. We missed out having finished 6th, which is sods law really isn't it, but what a season. Green shoots of the promotion side- Redders, Davis, Watson, Liddle, Eaden, Sheridan, Bullock. Added to those we still had Owen Archdeacon, Gary Flemming, Gerry Taggart and Andy Payton in the ranks. Average crowd must've been 5 and a half thousand that year. When tha looks back at that, it almost beggars belief really, but a sign of the times when this town suffered financial hardship.

Crowds are what they are. There's reasons that they drop or rise. Leeds United had a period in the 1980s when they could only attract 12k to Elland Rd. Hooliganism and the team being relegated from the top flight being the main cause of that. Again, it beggars belief but that's how it was.

Football has become much more appealing to families since those dark days of the 80s which has seen a general rise in average crowds nationwide in the last 30 years.

We do well in my opinion to draw the kind of support we get. Yes, there's potential for more but it could be a shyte sight worse.

[Shadrack the Red]

The first year that I could afford a season ticket was the 94/95 season when i left school and started work. Because of the Taylor report, the ground was only able to host fans in the East Stand, West stand Upper tier and away fans were put in some temporary seating in the Kop. The capacity of Oakwell was reduced to 10 thousand because standing areas were closed off.

Bearing in mind that this was a time when the pits were closing or had all but closed, unemployment was bad and of course you couldn't stand up at Oakwell anymore which may well have put many folk off even if they weren't skint. Us Yorkshire folk dunt like change do we. We had some crowds of 3000 that season, thats a fact. We regularly couldnt even fill the East stand, I remember it well.

On the pitch however, we were doing exceptionally well that season. Danny Wilson had just taken over from Viv Anderson. We played some tremendous football that season and finished 6th in the Championship. Unfortunately for us, they were reducing the amount of teams in the Premier league, that meant that only 1 went up automatic and places 2nd to 5th contended the play offs for the other promotion berth. We missed out having finished 6th, which is sods law really isn't it, but what a season. Green shoots of the promotion side- Redders, Davis, Watson, Liddle, Eaden, Sheridan, Bullock. Added to those we still had Owen Archdeacon, Gary Flemming, Gerry Taggart and Andy Payton in the ranks. Average crowd must've been 5 and a half thousand that year. When tha looks back at that, it almost beggars belief really, but a sign of the times when this town suffered financial hardship.

Crowds are what they are. There's reasons that they drop or rise. Leeds United had a period in the 1980s when they could only attract 12k to Elland Rd. Hooliganism and the team being relegated from the top flight being the main cause of that. Again, it beggars belief but that's how it was.

Football has become much more appealing to families since those dark days of the 80s which has seen a general rise in average crowds nationwide in the last 30 years.

We do well in my opinion to draw the kind of support we get. Yes, there's potential for more but it could be a shyte sight worse.

Excellent post , I think considering everything including recent years where covid got people out of the habit of going to matches coupled with the energy crisis and other economic issues which has squeezed peoples pockets then our gates have held up remarkably well , I also read all things reds , facebook, twitter , Bbs etc and I get the impression that a lot of criticism of our gates comes from people who do not actually attend which I find strange, although some of the time I think fans from other clubs chip in to stir the pot , however has I have said previously I strongly believe that the current tv deal will lead to a decline in support for the two bottom leagues eventually killing them off as we know it.

[Jules88]

Excellent post , I think considering everything including recent years where covid got people out of the habit of going to matches coupled with the energy crisis and other economic issues which has squeezed peoples pockets then our gates have held up remarkably well , I also read all things reds , facebook, twitter , Bbs etc and I get the impression that a lot of criticism of our gates comes from people who do not actually attend which I find strange, although some of the time I think fans from other clubs chip in to stir the pot , however has I have said previously I strongly believe that the current tv deal will lead to a decline in support for the two bottom leagues eventually killing them off as we know it.

I look around me, and there’s quite a few this season missing who sat round us regularly. I think the stagnation in league progress will hit this coming seasons renewals if we don’t go up. If not this coming one, the one after. Will they go elsewhere? I wouldn't think so. I think TV will make a warm chair very appealing. As folk say, “ you’ll miss it when it’s gone”