To be fair Dev, there is a solution but the whole of football just isn't that interested in enforcing it. There's a smattering of administrators, fans and boards who are but not enough to make meaningful change.
It's exactly the same as the current climate debates. Everyone knows there is a massive issue but not enough want to do something about it so not much is changing.
Live within your means.
Stop paying ridiculous wages to players.
Actually put meaningful wage caps or budgets in place.
Actually follow through on FFP.
Get rid of EPPP.
I suppose it's not as simple as that though is it...
Couldn't agree more with those who said that drawing Accrington (the worst supported team in the whole EFL - no disrespect to a nice club but the town's small - only Forest Green and Fleetwood play in a smaller town but they have virtually no other nearby league teams - Accrington is about the same size of Chesham and surrounded by loads of other league clubs) at home would immediately draw unfair comparisons with other clubs at home that day. And anyway didn't Fleetwood draw less fans than Wycombe that day.
Wycombe is in a similar position to where I live here in Bury (when we still had a league club!) where it is too near to some of the larger premier league sides (here the two Manchester clubs) in Wycombe's case obviously the London sides not to have a very detrimental effect on attendances.
However this is nothing to do with the glossy, sky marketed world of the Premiership - as a child/young adult in the Wycombe area back in the 1970s and 80s I knew loads of blokes who supported London clubs and travelled to at least all the home games (it may have even been worse back then because Wycombe were non-league and even Watford took a few from that side of the catchment area) Chelsea, Spurs and Arsenal seemed to be the biggest draws but with significant groups going to West Ham and even QPR.
I think the cricket in August reason may be a bit of a red herring as in my years living around Wycombe I don't think I knew anyone who played cricket on a Saturday but I knew plenty who played football (one or two senior non-league, but quite a few parks football of the higher standard Saturday rather than Sunday variety) and of course their seasons run all the way through the league football season.There seem to be a fair few on here who do mention cricket though but I wonder if that is because they mixed in more middle class circles than me I'm from a firmly working class background where no one I knew seemed to have much interest in cricket. They say that football message boards have a greater preponderance of the more educated middle class fan compared with supporters per se so that may explain things.
And anyway I spent a few years living in Yorkshire which is arguably the one county where everyone whether working class as much as anyone else DOES love cricket and I don't think it meant their football clubs' home crowds were noticeably down in August. Although I don't have any figures to prove that to hand.
I think once Wycombe draw a half well-supported/attractive side we'll see a completely different picture and this "worst home attendance" stuff is all a bit alarmist.
What made me add my bit this late is that I noticed on another site that gave all the away followings at this week's EFL Cup matches Wycombe had a very creditable 191.
Creditable I say because despite (and this is not the first time this has happened) it being a cup round when you can expect to draw a club relatively nearby or at least in your part of the country!
And they give us Exeter which (clubs aside from Exeter and us) of which 68 league and premiership clubs are nearer (and another 15 within only another 20 miles further). This leaves only NINE* clubs appreciably further away. That is weird, not logical and definitely not fair. And so in the circumstances was a very good showing indeed.
Incidentally those clubs over 20 miles further away being Carlisle, Newcastle, Sunderland, Middlesbrough, Carlisle, Hartlepool, Fleetwood, Blackpool, Plymouth, and Barrow. Bloody hell I've just noticed until recently that would have been SIX further away.
@HolmerBlue said:
I can promise that when I started playing village cricket in the Bucks and Wycombe leagues back in the late 70' s it was very working class.
Welcome btw
Thank you - I was on here before a few years ago hence the name (I was RochdaleExile back then before I moved house) but forgot my password and couldn't seem to recover it probably because of an over strict. spam filter - I finally got round to re-registering!
Yes I take your point about working-class cricketers but maybe with certain people it always plays second fiddle to football once the season starts.> @micra said:
I refuse to copy down @BuryExileWasRochdale’s post but I did wonder if he/she has forsaken two Lancashire lower league clubs.
As you'd see from a post of mine from a few years ago about old pubs of Wycombe when I was 'Rochdale Exile' I am a he and most definitely Wycombe through and through.
Anyway I'd have to be mad and a unique kind of traitor to have gone from the always well run Rochdale (living within their financial limits even if it meant if spending nearly 40 years in the bottom tier until their recent stay in League 1) to move to their local rivals Bury just after they've ceased to be - it now looks like probably forever as the old club. We do have AFC Bury in the North West Counties league but for some reason a hardcore of ex-Bury fans absolutely detest them and make digs in the comments of the 'Bury Time' along the lines of "oh yes I might watch them...cheering on the other side of course!"
Having moved my season-ticket from the Frank Adams stand to the old Main Stand, it was noticeable v Accrington how thinly populated the Family Stand was. With most people not holidaying abroad I expected that part of the ground to be nearly full with people trying to entertain their children. The fact it wasn’t is a big worry. The Frank Adams Upper wasn’t very populated either. The terrace, however, seemed fuller than normal.
@Malone said:
Let's see how Lincoln goes before worrying too much.
Talk of the terrace being close to selling out already?
726 tickets available for the Terrace according to the tickets portal. Based on the club's recent post, they anticipate a huge surge in the last day or two before the game, as you'd expect. I guess sales started at a faster pace than for the Accrington fixture, hence the "probably going to sell out" predictions.
@bookertease said:
In past years the attendance figures may have been higher because of the free (?) season tickets for kids (I’m assuming we no longer do that).
They stopped doing them, partly because people would just take the piss - adults going in on free kids tickets, and some apparently using them so they had an empty seat next to them.
@Malone said:
Let's see how Lincoln goes before worrying too much.
Talk of the terrace being close to selling out already?
726 tickets available for the Terrace according to the tickets portal. Based on the club's recent post, they anticipate a huge surge in the last day or two before the game, as you'd expect. I guess sales started at a faster pace than for the Accrington fixture, hence the "probably going to sell out" predictions.
I think the rather full Terrace at the Accy game, and the fast sales for the Lincoln game, may well indicate that a lot of Wanderers fans either don't have, or don't wish to shell out for the more expensive tickets.
@ChasHarps said:
I think the rather full Terrace at the Accy game, and the fast sales for the Lincoln game, may well indicate that a lot of Wanderers fans either don't have, or don't wish to shell out for the more expensive tickets.
Exactly this, I'd have liked to get a seat in the Frank Adams, but couldn't justify the price so stuck with the terrace. My knees aren't happy about it though !
@A_Worboys said:
Having moved my season-ticket from the Frank Adams stand to the old Main Stand, it was noticeable v Accrington how thinly populated the Family Stand was. With most people not holidaying abroad I expected that part of the ground to be nearly full with people trying to entertain their children. The fact it wasn’t is a big worry. The Frank Adams Upper wasn’t very populated either. The terrace, however, seemed fuller than normal.
But then many families are on extremely tight budgets right now and they were guaranteed to get wet at some point during the game having looked at the sky that day.
I think that the number of people, particularly youngsters, involved in other sports is not realised by many who follow football. Hockey and Rugby clubs locally have many teams playing regularly on Saturdays, and that involves whole families as I know from experience. As the local paper only writes about the Wanderers it would appear to be the only sport going on which is far from the case.
@wingnut said:
I think that the number of people, particularly youngsters, involved in other sports is not realised by many who follow football. Hockey and Rugby clubs locally have many teams playing regularly on Saturdays, and that involves whole families as I know from experience. As the local paper only writes about the Wanderers it would appear to be the only sport going on which is far from the case.
They barely even do that anymore. No coverage of Saturday's game whatsoever and their 'Wanderers' homepage is still stuck on stories from early June. It's so poor.
To be pedantic and as an addendum to my first post above I missed Morecambe out - so there are a whole 10 clubs appreciably further away than Exeter - and like Barrow, Hartlepool, Fleetwood also relatively new to the league as far as gaining or regaining their places goes. We're lucky Truro City's ambitious plans to give Cornwall a league team don't appear to have come to anything or else we'd probably start being given them to play on a weekday evening in August. Still I suppose you could make a nice summer break of it there at least!
Truro are currently playing in Plymouth (sharing with new boy Southern leaguers Parkway). Hard to see them getting back to Cornwall for at least two seasons if ever. Must be risk of not surviving at all. At least it’s a bit nearer than Torquay.
Just to emphasize the point for those not sure of geography, Truro to Plymouth is on a good day about 1hr 20 mins roughly equivalent to WWFC playing home games at say Northampton.
Probably not the right thread for it, but amongst the moans at ticket prices at our place, and £22 away at Stevenage, I just noticed for the Papa Johns cup, tickets are
Fiver for 2 adults (BOGOF)
£1, that's ONE pound for kids, young adults (Up to 25years old!) and oldies.
Certainly doing their best to get people in for what is a divisive cup!
In fairness, Man City have to take out full sized adverts in national papers to sell their allocations to FA cup finals and champions league games, so we're in good company having to work hard to shift games.
@Malone said:
Probably not the right thread for it, but amongst the moans at ticket prices at our place, and £22 away at Stevenage, I just noticed for the Papa Johns cup, tickets are
Fiver for 2 adults (BOGOF)
£1, that's ONE pound for kids, young adults (Up to 25years old!) and oldies.
Certainly doing their best to get people in for what is a divisive cup!
Comments
To be fair Dev, there is a solution but the whole of football just isn't that interested in enforcing it. There's a smattering of administrators, fans and boards who are but not enough to make meaningful change.
It's exactly the same as the current climate debates. Everyone knows there is a massive issue but not enough want to do something about it so not much is changing.
Live within your means.
Stop paying ridiculous wages to players.
Actually put meaningful wage caps or budgets in place.
Actually follow through on FFP.
Get rid of EPPP.
I suppose it's not as simple as that though is it...
But then you need to get everyone to agree. And that is not in WWFC gift to do.
Couldn't agree more with those who said that drawing Accrington (the worst supported team in the whole EFL - no disrespect to a nice club but the town's small - only Forest Green and Fleetwood play in a smaller town but they have virtually no other nearby league teams - Accrington is about the same size of Chesham and surrounded by loads of other league clubs) at home would immediately draw unfair comparisons with other clubs at home that day. And anyway didn't Fleetwood draw less fans than Wycombe that day.
Wycombe is in a similar position to where I live here in Bury (when we still had a league club!) where it is too near to some of the larger premier league sides (here the two Manchester clubs) in Wycombe's case obviously the London sides not to have a very detrimental effect on attendances.
However this is nothing to do with the glossy, sky marketed world of the Premiership - as a child/young adult in the Wycombe area back in the 1970s and 80s I knew loads of blokes who supported London clubs and travelled to at least all the home games (it may have even been worse back then because Wycombe were non-league and even Watford took a few from that side of the catchment area) Chelsea, Spurs and Arsenal seemed to be the biggest draws but with significant groups going to West Ham and even QPR.
I think the cricket in August reason may be a bit of a red herring as in my years living around Wycombe I don't think I knew anyone who played cricket on a Saturday but I knew plenty who played football (one or two senior non-league, but quite a few parks football of the higher standard Saturday rather than Sunday variety) and of course their seasons run all the way through the league football season.There seem to be a fair few on here who do mention cricket though but I wonder if that is because they mixed in more middle class circles than me I'm from a firmly working class background where no one I knew seemed to have much interest in cricket. They say that football message boards have a greater preponderance of the more educated middle class fan compared with supporters per se so that may explain things.
And anyway I spent a few years living in Yorkshire which is arguably the one county where everyone whether working class as much as anyone else DOES love cricket and I don't think it meant their football clubs' home crowds were noticeably down in August. Although I don't have any figures to prove that to hand.
I think once Wycombe draw a half well-supported/attractive side we'll see a completely different picture and this "worst home attendance" stuff is all a bit alarmist.
What made me add my bit this late is that I noticed on another site that gave all the away followings at this week's EFL Cup matches Wycombe had a very creditable 191.
Creditable I say because despite (and this is not the first time this has happened) it being a cup round when you can expect to draw a club relatively nearby or at least in your part of the country!
And they give us Exeter which (clubs aside from Exeter and us) of which 68 league and premiership clubs are nearer (and another 15 within only another 20 miles further). This leaves only NINE* clubs appreciably further away. That is weird, not logical and definitely not fair. And so in the circumstances was a very good showing indeed.
Incidentally those clubs over 20 miles further away being Carlisle, Newcastle, Sunderland, Middlesbrough, Carlisle, Hartlepool, Fleetwood, Blackpool, Plymouth, and Barrow. Bloody hell I've just noticed until recently that would have been SIX further away.
I can promise that when I started playing village cricket in the Bucks and Wycombe leagues back in the late 70' s it was very working class.
Welcome btw
I refuse to copy down @BuryExileWasRochdale’s post but I did wonder if he/she has forsaken two Lancashire lower league clubs.
Thank you - I was on here before a few years ago hence the name (I was RochdaleExile back then before I moved house) but forgot my password and couldn't seem to recover it probably because of an over strict. spam filter - I finally got round to re-registering!
Yes I take your point about working-class cricketers but maybe with certain people it always plays second fiddle to football once the season starts.> @micra said:
As you'd see from a post of mine from a few years ago about old pubs of Wycombe when I was 'Rochdale Exile' I am a he and most definitely Wycombe through and through.
Anyway I'd have to be mad and a unique kind of traitor to have gone from the always well run Rochdale (living within their financial limits even if it meant if spending nearly 40 years in the bottom tier until their recent stay in League 1) to move to their local rivals Bury just after they've ceased to be - it now looks like probably forever as the old club. We do have AFC Bury in the North West Counties league but for some reason a hardcore of ex-Bury fans absolutely detest them and make digs in the comments of the 'Bury Time' along the lines of "oh yes I might watch them...cheering on the other side of course!"
Having moved my season-ticket from the Frank Adams stand to the old Main Stand, it was noticeable v Accrington how thinly populated the Family Stand was. With most people not holidaying abroad I expected that part of the ground to be nearly full with people trying to entertain their children. The fact it wasn’t is a big worry. The Frank Adams Upper wasn’t very populated either. The terrace, however, seemed fuller than normal.
Let's see how Lincoln goes before worrying too much.
Talk of the terrace being close to selling out already?
Any sort of result on Tuesday and I can see us getting a bumper crowd next Saturday
726 tickets available for the Terrace according to the tickets portal. Based on the club's recent post, they anticipate a huge surge in the last day or two before the game, as you'd expect. I guess sales started at a faster pace than for the Accrington fixture, hence the "probably going to sell out" predictions.
In past years the attendance figures may have been higher because of the free (?) season tickets for kids (I’m assuming we no longer do that).
They stopped doing them, partly because people would just take the piss - adults going in on free kids tickets, and some apparently using them so they had an empty seat next to them.
So nowhere near a sell out in fairness .
What's the terrace capacity these days?
I think the rather full Terrace at the Accy game, and the fast sales for the Lincoln game, may well indicate that a lot of Wanderers fans either don't have, or don't wish to shell out for the more expensive tickets.
In the words of Prophet, we shall see.
Exactly this, I'd have liked to get a seat in the Frank Adams, but couldn't justify the price so stuck with the terrace. My knees aren't happy about it though !
But then many families are on extremely tight budgets right now and they were guaranteed to get wet at some point during the game having looked at the sky that day.
I think that the number of people, particularly youngsters, involved in other sports is not realised by many who follow football. Hockey and Rugby clubs locally have many teams playing regularly on Saturdays, and that involves whole families as I know from experience. As the local paper only writes about the Wanderers it would appear to be the only sport going on which is far from the case.
They barely even do that anymore. No coverage of Saturday's game whatsoever and their 'Wanderers' homepage is still stuck on stories from early June. It's so poor.
I was talking about the Friday paper which will be full of reports and chat. Online I don't know as I haven't looked.
Reading the below it would appear 1/3 of the local population have more important things to worry about than affording a trip to Adams Park.
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2021/aug/01/high-wycombe-the-home-counties-food-insecurity-hotspot?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other
To be pedantic and as an addendum to my first post above I missed Morecambe out - so there are a whole 10 clubs appreciably further away than Exeter - and like Barrow, Hartlepool, Fleetwood also relatively new to the league as far as gaining or regaining their places goes. We're lucky Truro City's ambitious plans to give Cornwall a league team don't appear to have come to anything or else we'd probably start being given them to play on a weekday evening in August. Still I suppose you could make a nice summer break of it there at least!
Truro are currently playing in Plymouth (sharing with new boy Southern leaguers Parkway). Hard to see them getting back to Cornwall for at least two seasons if ever. Must be risk of not surviving at all. At least it’s a bit nearer than Torquay.
Just to emphasize the point for those not sure of geography, Truro to Plymouth is on a good day about 1hr 20 mins roughly equivalent to WWFC playing home games at say Northampton.
Probably not the right thread for it, but amongst the moans at ticket prices at our place, and £22 away at Stevenage, I just noticed for the Papa Johns cup, tickets are
Fiver for 2 adults (BOGOF)
£1, that's ONE pound for kids, young adults (Up to 25years old!) and oldies.
Certainly doing their best to get people in for what is a divisive cup!
I found this quite funny:
In fairness, Man City have to take out full sized adverts in national papers to sell their allocations to FA cup finals and champions league games, so we're in good company having to work hard to shift games.
That should cover most of the crowd for a lot of these games
Wouldn't go if they paid me