Pissed mi sen reading this on rivals board from a Rotherham fan. The bit about the last 30 years, us and them regularly doing battle in Div 3, them having better crowds and a better ground etc particulary funny. And of course we only biild the Eats Stand and Ora Stand once we got the Prem money : ) ********************************************************************************************* Posted by Hull_Miller on 15 Oct 2008 12:10 Complain | Reply re: re: re: re: re: re: re: You're a good Championship side... ... -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Not sure who you support postcode boy, but you are right with a lot of it. Doncaster, when faced with adversity attracted 900-strong crowds. Rotherham, when faced with several administrations, 3 separate points deductions and having to relocate out of its own town, still sttracts a core of 3500-4000. It isn't even close. Doncaster are no bigger or better than Wigan, Fulham, MK Dons etc, all of which I would class as smaller clubs than Rotherham. Shrewsbury are a tiny club, nearly as small as Rovers, but with investment and a new stadium, now attract over 7k in L2. Barnsley is a tough one. Over the last 30 odd years, whilst the Sheffield clubs plyed their trade generally in the top 2 divisions (top 1 mainly for Wednesday) Blades had a few seasons in the lower 2 leagues, Barnsley and Rotherham contended battles in the 3rd quite regularly. Both always seemed to be in about the same position, both had similar gates (Rotherham slightly better) and Rotherham's ground was better than Barnsley's. Rotherham also spend a great deal longer in the second tier than Barnsley I believe, whilst being the first ever League Cup finalists and winning the only ever Kop Choir award. However, Barnsley's resurgance came at the right time, when money was starting to really hit football. This meant that even though they only had one season in the top flight, they managed to get a brand spanking new ground and training facilities out of it, as well as a slightly increased fanbase. Their core is probably now about 6 thousand, whereas before it was 3 or 4 much like Rotherham's. Thanks for your input though, all intereting stuff. Question for Rovers fans, who would you say is the bigger club, Burnley or Blackburn?
Im speechless. Hes living in a Rotherham dream land. 'Rotherham also spend a great deal longer in the second tier than Barnsley I believe' Im sure we have the record for most seasons in the second tier of football?
Correct, we hold the record amongst all league clubs. In the early to mid 80s, we were getting nearly twice as many as Rotherham in Div 3 and Div 2.... I could go on. The thing is, when you read all his other threads, he is deadly serious. That Don Valley air is obvioulsy making him deluded.
He's making it up as he goes along. Just whatever pops into his head. Spent longer in the second tier of English football? For the majority of the time, all I have known of Rotherham is 'shame, they used to have a decent side when Mountfield was laiking' because the rest of the time they have been v poor. As for us hitting the big time just at the moment the boom hit - what about when the Taylor report just about closed Oakwell? We didn't have any Premier League money then (and only about 2,000 seats), and that's when the refurbishment had to begin. As far as I recall we bought one stand from selling Ashley Ward - and the other two were built before we got promoted (and it's worth pointing out, not only did we improve the facilities, we built a promotion winning top flight football team also). I would add that my issue is with the writer of the post - not Rotherham - because as local derbies go, I haven't got anything at all against Rotherham.
The best bit for me Rotherham's ground better than Barnsley's Did he get lost on his way to Oakwell and go to feckin athersley rec or summat? Oakwell in 1958 was a better ground than Millmoor in 2008
"Over the last 30 odd years, whilst the Sheffield clubs plyed their trade generally in the top 2 divisions (top 1 mainly for Wednesday) Blades had a few seasons in the lower 2 leagues, Barnsley and Rotherham contended battles in the 3rd quite regularly." From us getting promotion to the old second division to being relegated to league 1 I can hardly remember us playing them. Thats got to be over a 20yr period hasnt it?
They came up with us in 1981, survived for 2 years and went down again in 1983 (I think). We didn't play them again in the league until they were promoted to the Championship about 2001 - 18 years. The period I think he is referring to is the period I started watching the reds - early 80's. If memory serves me right their average attendance was about 8k - ours was about 12k. Our East Stand was opened in early 1993 and was built with the £1.5m we got from the sale of Carl Tiler. The following season, standing areas were closed and we played for another year (was it 2) with only 2 sides until the New Ponty was completed. Can't remember which sale funded the Ponty however.
Actually, didn't we play one year with 2 sides (and then only the upper tier of the west stand) and then we bolted seats to the West Lower and the Away end.
Rotherham used to get huge crowds when we played em and regularly sold over half the tickets for the total capacity (judging by the number of reds fans who used to get chucked out of their end, ps Blackburn far bigger side than Burnley, Burnley one of lancashires smaller teams, below Oldham i would say
