That picture of the Millwall fans in the huge away end last night

Re: What a disaster, we are "stuck" with a big stand

Full to capacity

Norwich 2002
Man City 2000
Sheff Weds 2006, 2003, 2000, 2005
Newcastle 2009
Leeds United 2010
Sheff Utd 2008
Man United 2009

A few teams over the years have had around 4000-5000 Hudders, Donny, Newcastle (Cup), Burnley, Chelsea, Weds on last two occasions. It totally kills the atmosphere at 90% of the home games.

Once that Euromillion's come in thats my 2nd on list when l take over Oakwell, pull the North Stand down and get a bit of Feng Shui involved in the ground.

 

Probably because they chose where to sit. Providing you have them in just one section so you aren't opening all the gangways what's the problem. Some may like to sit high up and others further down. Rather have them spread out myself to cut back on the noise from away fans.

 

Can anyone upload the picture of the Millwall fans? Saw it going round twitter last night.

 

Re: What a disaster, we are "stuck" with a big stand

You could say that about every ground in the football league. You've mentioned 16 occasions when the stand wouldn't have been big enough to hold everyone. There's probably been numerous more round about the 4,000 mark. The original intention was to build a mirror image of the Ponty but they ended up getting about 1500 seats for free by building seats behind the stancheons right up to the back wall. Just in those games you mention it must have been worth half a million in gate receipts for no extra cost so fully justified in my opinion.

 

Those 1500 could have gone in the West Stand though so we won't have missed out on any gate receipts. Only 3 occasions has an all seater Oakwell had over 21,000 in it. Would have preffered a mirror image of the Ponty. Would have had a total capacity of just over 21,500, more compact ground holding a better atmosphere and been able to cope with 99.99% of our attendances over the past 19 years.

Who know's safe standing may be coming back in, we may have a 10,000 away end in 10 years time.

 

It's not very nice in the West Stand upper though is it ? We cannot put our guests in there and I don't like having them any nearer us than is necessary.

 

Aye think our away fans would go ape if they were put in a similar situation. Although £28, earlier int season, for small followings and having the benefit of seeing and utilising our world famous West Stand piss oils would have been a bargain and memory they would never have forgotten shurely.

 

Dyson pays into West Stand as well as showing his season ticket just to view those West Stand pissers. If they're good enough for our fans they're good enough for away uns.

 

Don't forget it has the changing rooms and a gym underneath it, plus the Academy.

 

Better to have extra seats spare than too few to cash in on big gates. Agree about moving away fans to West Stand to save money when the following is small.

 

Re: What a disaster, we are "stuck" with a big stand

Plus Wolves in 2009, Birmingham the year before, Sunderland in 2007ish, Bristol City almost filled it in 2004. Better to have loads of teams bringing 4500 in a 6000 seater stand than turning 500 or more away.

 

To be accurate

99.99% of all our home games in 19 years equates to about 0.05 games

I think you'll find attendances exceeding 21k or so is probably more than a dozen since the stand was built in 2000, 12 seasons ago.

So, once a season on average so 1/24th or 4%.

The stand will probably get filled this season twice (Hull/Leicester maybe even Watford) at a guess even if we dont end up with an FA Cup quarter final.

If we had got promotion to the prem again it would have been utterly stupid to have a smaller away end.

So to summarise...

The decision to build it the size it is possibly cost us nowt, it's probably paid for itself in any case and we still need it.

sithi.

 

We might not need the extra seats now but we may do in the future. Building it bigger than needed showed vision and ambition.

I'd be interested to see how much extra it cost to put 6,000 seats in as opposed to 4,000 seats. I bet it wasn't that much extra really and will probably have been paid back by now from the few times it's been packed (don't forget that it doesn't need to have had 6,000 people in to be full) and the extra capacity will bring in extra money in the future.

We currently only need a 10,000 seater stadium but if we only had a 12,000 seats like rotherham we'd be throwing money away whenever we get a big team in the cup or as soon as we get any success. It's false economy to build the very minimum what you need as all that happens is you end up having to spend more money increasing in the future.

 

Always frustrates me on games like this why they don't offer every school kid in local area a free ticket with 1 adult for £10, first come first served!! Got 6000 to go at!! Wolves in the half time might be a good idea, put Wolves in the west, they won't bring that many on a night playing like they are!!

 

Re: What a disaster, we are "stuck" with a big stand

Missed the Wolves and Sunderland but Brum and Bristol City have never filled it. No one would be turned away the West Stand is left empty if someone brought more than 4,500.

 

Re: To be accurate

I think you'll find the attendances exceeding 21,000 is three, Chelsea, Man City and Sheff Wed. So 437 games played in 19 seasons even more including the cup so less than 1%.

You can check using www.stats.football365.co.uk records going back to the nineties

Not a bad guess sithi.

And our ground has never been completely sold out since it turned all seater.

 

To complete the picture

assuming the 3 is accurate which I will trust your research on since I certainly cant be arsed to check but as the stand wasn't
built until 2000 then abart 12x24=188 games, 3 of which were over 21000 (and some more close to this and a fair number with more than 4500) discounting the fact that post taylor the grounds capacity was severely restricted. I'm not sure about the ground being not sold out as an all seater since for almost an entire season it effectively was.

anyway 3/188 is 5.64%

and in any case even if your poorly constructed point were correct and I'd been unknowingly given mind bending drugs 4% is a lot feckin closer to 1% than 0.01%

So to summarise...

The decision to build it the size it is possibly cost us nowt, it's probably paid for itself in any case and we still need it.

sithi.

 

Though i'd heard far end of the west stand upper had been declared unsafe?

 

Re: To complete the picture

I don't know how my post is poorly constructed, its been researched and the links provided. l said the away stands too big it should have mirrored the Ponty, bringing the overall total capacity down to just over 21,500. I used 19 seasons marker because thats when the redevelopment started, so 3 games that would have filled it in the last 19 seasons. There's 23 home games by the way = 437 games plus cup games so well over 450 games played and only 3 occasions has it been over 21,000 full. Had the away end sold out of the 4,500 there's room in the West. If we did ever get back up the redevelopment of the West could have provided bigger capacity if needed.

I used 99.99% of the time has a tongue in cheek comment its more like 99% of the time that we've needed a ground over 21,000.


Anymore of those drugs left?

 

Re: To complete the picture

You appear to have consumed the medication in your quest to prove an entirely poorly thought out point of view.

So to summarise...

The decision to build it the size it is possibly cost us nowt, it's probably paid for itself in any case and we still need it.

sithi.