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Poor Crowd

Near the top of the league, unbeaten at home, reasonable weather, decent opposition , improved match day experience and still just over 5000. Are we ever going to get to 7/8000 the proposed owners want/need ? It looks no matter what is offered, unless big boys are in town, 5000 is our norm on a nice day. Not sure what’s going to happen when the weather is cold and wet. Even if they win the vote and I hope they do ( if the proposal is right) will they lose interest if they don’t see the support of the local community not coming out in bigger numbers.

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Comments

  • We can do a lot more to encourage greater numbers to come through the turnstiles. It’s not going to change overnight.

  • I really doubt the Couhig’s expected to smash the 9000 attendance barrier with regularity before they’d even gained control of the club.

  • Someone's already mentioned this on a different thread, but it may be that some floating supporters are picking and choosing games month by month, so it's either Posh or Sunderland for this month. Still quite poor though, considering everything.

  • None of those Arsenal, Chelsea, Tottenham fans you see going on the train to Marylebone had home games yesterday. If we make AP an attractive place to watch live football and market our product in a professional manner to these ‘floating ‘ locals throughout the Chilterns we can certainly up the attendances by 20%, more if against better / higher opposition.
    Parking in the side streets was unusually difficult yesterday , strange given the final crowd. Are people just giving up on the parking lock down at the ground? Sorting this has to be top priority if and when new owners get the nod.
    We have to start thinking like Bournemouth not Slough Town.

  • Does anyone know whether the attendance figure is tickets sold or actual bums on seats?

  • So much more needs to be done off the pitch regarding the "matchday experience" (the tea bars were worse than ever yesterday), but as Vincey said its not going to change overnight, I think it will happen but could take a season or two.

  • There wasn't the same level of publicity and hype in advance of the Peterborough match as there was for the Portsmouth one. Perhaps it will take that amount of "let's fill the park" promotion for every home match to get people to turn up until they get used to coming each time (and eventually start to miss it when there isn't a home match on).

  • @perfidious_albion said:
    None of those Arsenal, Chelsea, Tottenham fans you see going on the train to Marylebone had home games yesterday. If we make AP an attractive place to watch live football and market our product in a professional manner to these ‘floating ‘ locals throughout the Chilterns we can certainly up the attendances by 20%, more if against better / higher opposition.
    Parking in the side streets was unusually difficult yesterday , strange given the final crowd. Are people just giving up on the parking lock down at the ground? Sorting this has to be top priority if and when new owners get the nod.
    We have to start thinking like Bournemouth not Slough Town.

    We parked at our normal place and was stunned how many spaces there was.Villiage looked a lot than of late as well which was strange.

  • What happens to the village when the bad weather starts ?
    Cant see many people wanting to stand outside on a freezing rainy day in January, maybe a bigger heated marquee could be a worthwhile investment

  • The crowd was fairly poor yesterday, marketing does make a huge difference - the bigger presence we have in town and on social media the more casual / new fans were likely to get.

    Free tickets given out to primary schools as well is a no brainer

  • I agree Rome wasn't built in a day but I was nonetheless surprised fewer than 5000 locals turned up given the status quo.

  • I'm not sure targeting supporters of the big London teams is the way to go. If they're not armchair fans, they'll have likely forked out a sizeable chunk on a season ticket - can't really expect them to spend more money on football every few weeks, especially on a team in which they're probably not that interested. Not everyone in Wycombe is from Wycombe or has grown up with Wycombe-supporting family - and plenty will have entirely legitimate reasons for supporting other teams

  • @Username said:
    The crowd was fairly poor yesterday, marketing does make a huge difference - the bigger presence we have in town and on social media the more casual / new fans were likely to get.

    Free tickets given out to primary schools as well is a no brainer

    Kids tickets are still free aren't they? So that's literally every game

  • edited October 2019

    @eric_plant said:

    @Username said:
    The crowd was fairly poor yesterday, marketing does make a huge difference - the bigger presence we have in town and on social media the more casual / new fans were likely to get.

    Free tickets given out to primary schools as well is a no brainer

    Kids tickets are still free aren't they? So that's literally every game

    That's definitely not the same as physically giving a ticket/ letter once a term to every primary school kid. You have to keep reminding people that we're just down the road.

  • Interesting take on the slow egress after the game yesterday, even with a smaller than expected crowd.

    Unusually for me I was sat in the car waiting to leave about 5:30pm when a group of the uniformed staff arrived to their car. I assume they were from the Woodlands having finished their shift looking after boxholders, but it doesn't really matter.
    When they saw that we were still queuing to leave there was a visible look of disgust and I heard them discuss would they be working at AP again if they had to queue to leave like this.

    It's never occured to me that as casual staff you'd be put off working at AP because of the parking issues, but clearly it is to some. If that snapshot is anywhere near typical, and I don't know if it is, then it might explain why getting good/enough staff is difficult.

  • There seemed to me to be even more kids than usual yesterday - a couple of young lads in the row behind us, never seen before, were pleasingly loud and vocal in a reasonably polite way (perhaps a little OTT in their shouted references to 26 year old Marcus Maddison as “baldy”!) and the massed ranks of youngsters leaping around excitedly in the area in front of the family stand after our second and third goals was a sight to behold. All very encouraging for the future. Get ‘em hooked.

    I did wonder when I saw the published attendance (1500 below my @railwaysteve prediction!) whether 12s and under - absolutely legion yesterday - are included.

  • Noticed Barry Fry about to get into his big Posh car and trying to exit the main car park around 5.30 - surveyed the scene down Hillbottom Road and shook his head in frustrated bemusement - then stood around and posed for a couple of photos.

  • edited October 2019

    Interesting point @micra Whilst the crowd was lower than I was expecting, I was still surprised to see it given at only just over 5000, I didn't think it was that low! Certainly there did seem to be a good number of youngsters there, which at least is encouraging

  • Wonder how the egg chasers coped at Adams park when they was here..they had bigger gates than us..Remember visiting the club shop prior to one of their match days and seeing more of the units on hillbottom road open for car parking.Why is this not happening..

  • Took the matchday bus for the first time in ages, and was surprised to see it wasn't particularly full.
    Only about 2 got on at the Frogmore stop, wonder if that's usual or not. The idea presumably, being that fans can enjoy a booze up at Butlers (if it's still called that), right up until pick up? Although it didn't stop there after the game...

  • Lower then expected however are Peterborough a big draw I don’t think so, equally I expected them to bring more fans. Parking was a lot easier then normal it was around Pinewood road . To me parking is the big issue it would put me off if I was a casual supporter but don’t know how you can improve that.

  • @Malone said:
    Took the matchday bus for the first time in ages, and was surprised to see it wasn't particularly full.
    Only about 2 got on at the Frogmore stop, wonder if that's usual or not. The idea presumably, being that fans can enjoy a booze up at Butlers (if it's still called that), right up until pick up? Although it didn't stop there after the game...

    Very rarely see more than a couple of people get on at Butler's, I tried it out when they started, and don't often get there early enough but I wouldn't put it towards the top of any list possible pre match venues.

  • Do you still have to go through an airport style metal detector to get in there?

  • @StrongestTeam said:

    @Malone said:
    Took the matchday bus for the first time in ages, and was surprised to see it wasn't particularly full.
    Only about 2 got on at the Frogmore stop, wonder if that's usual or not. The idea presumably, being that fans can enjoy a booze up at Butlers (if it's still called that), right up until pick up? Although it didn't stop there after the game...

    Very rarely see more than a couple of people get on at Butler's, I tried it out when they started, and don't often get there early enough but I wouldn't put it towards the top of any list possible pre match venues.

    In my very rare little spell of regularly going out, over a decade ago now, we genuinely used to wonder if it was some sort of money fiddle operation, as like you say there were never ever more than a couple of people in there.

    How they stay in business I do not know.

  • Years ago I used to get a coach to the ground that stopped at the Green Dragon pub in Flackwell Heath. The P&R service now is a bit torturous if you park at the Hub. In my view we need more shuttle buses running from more P&R sites situated around HW. Later departures from outside the stadium after the game as well.
    Maybe no parking at the ground at all apart from Blue badge holders.

  • edited October 2019

    @Stewie63 said:
    Years ago I used to get a coach to the ground that stopped at the Green Dragon pub in Flackwell Heath. The P&R service now is a bit torturous if you park at the Hub. In my view we need more shuttle buses running from more P&R sites situated around HW. Later departures from outside the stadium after the game as well.
    Maybe no parking at the ground at all apart from Blue badge holders.

    Know what you mean about that hub stop.

    Originally it was the last stop, and went at about 2.25-30, so you could get up there, park for free, and cruise into the ground nicely before kick off.

    All for £3 return.

    Easy route back too, as the bus could take a right hand turn at the end of Hilbottom and escape. Even better if they had the stop at the end of that road too.

    Now, it's stop 1, about 45mins earlier, and you take about an hour trawling round Wycombe, even though you start off only about 3miles from the ground!

    And now £4! Worse on all levels.

    ps I suggested that later idea about actually having parking at the ground for only disabled people, and staff. But the sad truth is you can't beat that convenience, and people will always want to park within 2metres of where they're going.

  • Buses used to go from all over the place back in the day. I remember getting on one, massively hungover, on a Sunday morning to get to Millwall away for a 2nd round FA Cup game (yeah, that one).

    Actually, I think Andy Worboys might have organised that.

  • @StrongestTeam said:

    @Malone said:
    Took the matchday bus for the first time in ages, and was surprised to see it wasn't particularly full.
    Only about 2 got on at the Frogmore stop, wonder if that's usual or not. The idea presumably, being that fans can enjoy a booze up at Butlers (if it's still called that), right up until pick up? Although it didn't stop there after the game...

    Very rarely see more than a couple of people get on at Butler's, I tried it out when they started, and don't often get there early enough but I wouldn't put it towards the top of any list possible pre match venues.

    I've got the bus a few times from outside butlers, it's close enough to plenty of other places in town, and they have the early game on in the lobby if you're 5 minutes early.

  • Just seems a weird extra, when the train station is about 1/3mile away anyway!

  • @Malone said:
    Just seems a weird extra, when the train station is about 1/3mile away anyway!

    They might be sponsoring it, they have a few billboards around the ground and they have lots of WWFC gear in the entrance.

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