Matches Lack of supporters

OxfordYankee said:
I admire your positivity and agree that we have to try everything to get people to come.

I’m not sure it’s even about ‘new supporters’. Getting those who pick and choose or have just got out of the habit to go more regularly, or at all, would change things significantly.

I hope to see Oxford in a stadium that delivers an experience that neutralises the objections you listed, but I’ve just become too cynical and disappointed over the years to believe that those objections won’t be replaced by another tranche.
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I think one problem is that not everyone can go to the football weekly. Die hards will be at every home game (and in a lot of cases every away), but not everyone can commit to that.

That's why you have fans picking and choosing, and it's through a myriad of different reasons. Too expensive, not great value for money, travel issues, family responsibilities, other interests they want pursue. Obviously the stadium does play a big part, but I don't think it would be fair to say 'we pack out the bigger games, why can't these fans turn up against Crewe?'

I think the real solution would be to get more 'floating attendees' (of which I'm one) to attend the odd game, instead of hoping that people with lives outside of supporting the football club will turn up every home game.
 
Ox4Eva said:
Here we go again, if these people were real U's they would get their a**e along to more normal games then!

These people pick up and put down the club when it suits, if that is not a lack of passion, I don't know what is...
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With this attitude you're either really young or don't have anything else going on in your life.

If it's the former, you'll soon realise that there are many things that can stop adult fans from attending every home game, and if it's the latter I'm sorry that you don't have anything in your life that's occasionally more important than football.
 
battman said:
I think one problem is that not everyone can go to the football weekly. Die hards will be at every home game (and in a lot of cases every away), but not everyone can commit to that.

That's why you have fans picking and choosing, and it's through a myriad of different reasons. Too expensive, not great value for money, travel issues, family responsibilities, other interests they want pursue. Obviously the stadium does play a big part, but I don't think it would be fair to say 'we pack out the bigger games, why can't these fans turn up against Crewe?'

I think the real solution would be to get more 'floating attendees' (of which I'm one) to attend the odd game, instead of hoping that people with lives outside of supporting the football club will turn up every home game.
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Plenty of people that do attend very regularly have a life outside of supporting the club, in fact I’d venture that most do. It isn’t a binary issue.

No judgement from me, the individual must make their own decisions and set priorities accordingly. I expect that people get out of it what they put into it, generally.
 
christenedinjericho said:
An earlier poster mentioned Sw*ndon's recent crowds. Take a closer look and they have low priced offers on at the moment u11's - for a quid and u18's for 6 quid. This probably equates for the larger attendances they are getting... poor soul's!
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More likely something to do with the new owner after years of being a even more of a laughing stock than they already are and Swindon being a more working class town than Oxfordshire is... class still very much plays a part in attendances.

On the subject of our attendances, I think price is a very small factor to our inability to grow, the football is largely attractive so we can probably all agree that isn't the issue. For me, it's the facilities, they are pretty dire. Things I think would increase attendances in a new stadium pretty substantially;

  • 4 Stands... pretty easy one that, ideally corners also filled in (what modern stadium doesn't do this?!)
  • Pitch being closer to the fans
  • Transports links much improved, either a very reliable bus route or more ideally, within easy reach of a train station.
  • WiFi or improved access to the internet during matches, getting on the internet at half time is a joke currently
  • Catering facilities with places for people to congregate and chat, seen some clubs have TVs that show the game so you don't miss anything if you want a drink or there are queues and to be honest I love this idea.
  • Facilities like shops, bars etc around the ground would be ideal, not only for supporters to gather before and after games, but to allow people to drop the Mrs off at them and b****r off to the football without an earful
 
Carpy17 said:
More likely something to do with the new owner after years of being a even more of a laughing stock than they already are and Swindon being a more working class town than Oxfordshire is... class still very much plays a part in attendances.

On the subject of our attendances, I think price is a very small factor to our inability to grow, the football is largely attractive so we can probably all agree that isn't the issue. For me, it's the facilities, they are pretty dire. Things I think would increase attendances in a new stadium pretty substantially;

  • 4 Stands... pretty easy one that, ideally corners also filled in (what modern stadium doesn't do this?!)
  • Pitch being closer to the fans
  • Transports links much improved, either a very reliable bus route or more ideally, within easy reach of a train station.
  • WiFi or improved access to the internet during matches, getting on the internet at half time is a joke currently
  • Catering facilities with places for people to congregate and chat, seen some clubs have TVs that show the game so you don't miss anything if you want a drink or there are queues and to be honest I love this idea.
  • Facilities like shops, bars etc around the ground would be ideal, not only for supporters to gather before and after games, but to allow people to drop the Mrs off at them and b****r off to the football without an earful
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Of course you might find that if we had a shiny new ground and attracted more people Oxford United would become a more middle class experience. I bet Reading and Brighton’s grounds aren’t filled with down to Earth roughnecks, more the prawn sandwich brigade
 
Carpy17 said:
More likely something to do with the new owner after years of being a even more of a laughing stock than they already are and Swindon being a more working class town than Oxfordshire is... class still very much plays a part in attendances.

On the subject of our attendances, I think price is a very small factor to our inability to grow, the football is largely attractive so we can probably all agree that isn't the issue. For me, it's the facilities, they are pretty dire. Things I think would increase attendances in a new stadium pretty substantially;

  • 4 Stands... pretty easy one that, ideally corners also filled in (what modern stadium doesn't do this?!)
  • Pitch being closer to the fans
  • Transports links much improved, either a very reliable bus route or more ideally, within easy reach of a train station.
  • WiFi or improved access to the internet during matches, getting on the internet at half time is a joke currently
  • Catering facilities with places for people to congregate and chat, seen some clubs have TVs that show the game so you don't miss anything if you want a drink or there are queues and to be honest I love this idea.
  • Facilities like shops, bars etc around the ground would be ideal, not only for supporters to gather before and after games, but to allow people to drop the Mrs off at them and b****r off to the football without an earful
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Correct and you’ll be pleasantly surprised soon.
 
Plenty to wade through with this one, so I'll try to whistle through my points.

The Kassam Stadium had a very difficult birth. So many sides coincide their move to a new stadium during a period of renewal and going in the right direction - Brighton, Reading, Brentford to name a few. We on the other hand struggled to get the new stadium finished and the final few years of it being built - 1997 to 2001 - were awful for the club. Only diehards hung around for the last season at the Manor during 2000-01 because things were so bad. Without any form of team bounce, a generation of new fans was possibly lost which is a real shame. Any newbies that did latch on would have had to have strong stomachs to muster the early KasStad years too - football played by teams managed by Mark Wright, Ian Atkins (pragmatic, budget constrained and the only manager to generate anything resembling success under FK's time as chairman but dull), Graham Rix and Brian Talbot were hardly going to get the pulses racing. We missed a trick massively there.

If I was an away fan, Oxford United would not be a particularly inspiring away trip either. Far from the city centre, no walkable train station nearby, car parking problems, the three stands aspect, the lost atmosphere as there's no much space between pitch and stands, no pubs and sparse concourses. There's hardly a bad view to be had at the Kassam which does work in its favour, but there are plenty of better places to watch football. We have to contend with that every week. It's a poorly designed ground. Let's hope a new stadium can at least have the matchday experience in mind for when it (hopefully) emerges soon.

I'm not as melancholy as @Ox4Eva when it comes to out attendances - we're a better supported team at the Kassam than at the Manor. Compare two promotion campaigns. In 1995-96, our average attendance was 5709. In 2015-16, it was 7289. Sure there are many mitigating factors but football has evolved so despite the complaints that our attendances aren't all that, they're 1. moving in the right direction and 2. are representative of us as a League 1 club. They'd be big crowds for League 2, tiny for the Championship, about right for League 1. Lo and behold - that's where we are. There is a finite support for Oxford United - we're never going to be Manchester United or Liverpool. We won't ever even be Derby County or Preston North End. We can, however, be a Bournemouth (who I regard as a contemporary like Swindon, Blackpool and Peterborough - clubs who scream League 1), Brentford or Reading with the right push. Football attracts far wider reaching demographics nowadays - more families, more diverse crowds, old and young. We're the only fully professional club in the county and should celebrate that.

We're doing fine. Sure, a sellout every week would be great but if KR keeps delivering decent football and the prospect of something new and shiny is on the horizon, let's celebrate the rise in attendances despite the evident problems the KasStad brings.
 
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The Kassam (justifiably) gets a lot of stick, but it DOES have its good points; as unification says, the view of the pitch from all (three) sides is excellent, the tiering in the stands is good and there’s plenty of leg room if you want to stay seated. Having attended matches at the Manor since the sixties, I think there’s a lot of rosy-coloured specs being used to retrospectively conjure up the nostalgia. Let’s be honest, the place was a bit of a dump. However, it produced some great matches, great teams and great atmosphere. Let’s hope the new stadium combines some, or all, of those elements when it (eventually) materialises.
 
When I first watched Oxford in 1971 season the breakdown in attendences simply was that there 11 home games in excess of 10,000 and 10 below that figure, the highest being16,000 plus for the good Friday game against Birmingham city (featuring a very young trevor Francis), the fixture the following year produced the manors highest league attendece

even when we were a first division teams the crowds didn’t reach those levels

so I don’t really know where the additional fans to fill our new stadium will come from week in week out, for me I see the standard and quality dictates attendences , not the stadium and what else can be included, if that was the case Mk dons would be full all the time
 
werthersoriginal said:
Of course you might find that if we had a shiny new ground and attracted more people Oxford United would become a more middle class experience. I bet Reading and Brighton’s grounds aren’t filled with down to Earth roughnecks, more the prawn sandwich brigade
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Not all Brighton is posh. Ground is near Moulsecoomb, their version of
BBL.
 
Oxford57 said:
When I first watched Oxford in 1971 season the breakdown in attendences simply was that there 11 home games in excess of 10,000 and 10 below that figure, the highest being16,000 plus for the good Friday game against Birmingham city (featuring a very young trevor Francis), the fixture the following year produced the manors highest league attendece

even when we were a first division teams the crowds didn’t reach those levels

so I don’t really know where the additional fans to fill our new stadium will come from week in week out, for me I see the standard and quality dictates attendences , not the stadium and what else can be included, if that was the case Mk dons would be full all the time
Click to expand...
When looking at our top-flight attendances, it is worth remembering that it was in the mid-80s, where crowds were low across the board, Heysel had just happened, the Thatcher government were trying to push through ID Cards, elements of the England travelling support were embarrassing themselves... comparing the levels now to then isn't really that straightforward. And that's before you even consider the fence that had been installed around The Manor in summer of '85, which must have effected crowd numbers.
 
Oxford57 said:
When I first watched Oxford in 1971 season the breakdown in attendences simply was that there 11 home games in excess of 10,000 and 10 below that figure, the highest being16,000 plus for the good Friday game against Birmingham city (featuring a very young trevor Francis), the fixture the following year produced the manors highest league attendece

even when we were a first division teams the crowds didn’t reach those levels

so I don’t really know where the additional fans to fill our new stadium will come from week in week out, for me I see the standard and quality dictates attendences , not the stadium and what else can be included, if that was the case Mk dons would be full all the time
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that is largely correct, let's look at the Lincoln game where most would agree that the football was some of the best of recent seasons and yet at the next home game the home support was way down. I know some will say but it was Tuesday evening etc but i Guarantee if it was Swindon,Pompey or the like people would have made the effort as was the case when it was West Ham Man City Newcastle etc.

This is why in this thread i cast doubts about filling a new ground or even seeing the numbers increase in the Championship that much when to the average person the likes of Cardiff Barnsley Preston etc are not an attraction.

What should not be lost in all the Euphoria of a new stadium etc is that history shows people only turn up for the perceived glamour clubs and they sit in The Premier League and there is a very long way to go to reach those giddy heights.
 
SteMerritt said:
When looking at our top-flight attendances, it is worth remembering that it was in the mid-80s, where crowds were low across the board, Heysel had just happened, the Thatcher government were trying to push through ID Cards, elements of the England travelling support were embarrassing themselves... comparing the levels now to then isn't really that straightforward. And that's before you even consider the fence that had been installed around The Manor in summer of '85, which must have effected crowd numbers.
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That happened at the Kassam a few times also though, the very first game v Rochdale there were "issues" closely followed by Lincoln and not forgetting the half time shenanigans with Villa in the concourse. there have been other moments, York, Bristol Rovers,Pompey, Millwall to name 4 off the top of my head
 
SteMerritt said:
When looking at our top-flight attendances, it is worth remembering that it was in the mid-80s, where crowds were low across the board, Heysel had just happened, the Thatcher government were trying to push through ID Cards, elements of the England travelling support were embarrassing themselves... comparing the levels now to then isn't really that straightforward. And that's before you even consider the fence that had been installed around The Manor in summer of '85, which must have effected crowd numbers.
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I hated the fencing, it was such a huge knee jerk response, the moat was enough to stop any pitch invasions, in the end I suppose I got used to it , the issue that seemed to be ignored was the pitch was a place of safety if there was need to evacuate the stands
 
horseman said:
That happened at the Kassam a few times also though, the very first game v Rochdale there were "issues" closely followed by Lincoln and not forgetting the half time shenanigans with Villa in the concourse. there have been other moments, York, Bristol Rovers,Pompey, Millwall to name 4 off the top of my head
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The difference being that a family in the 80s would have been a lot more aware of "football violence" because it was big news, lots of coverage, and I expect there would have been lots who decided that it wasn't for them. These days coverage generally of football shows that stadiums are a safe space to be in, there is very little in the way of concerted press coverage of problems in grounds. The incidents you mention wouldn't have had any sort of widespread coverage, so I don't think would influence somebody attending a game today.
 
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