Stickied League 2 Away Support Thread 2024/25

[GTFCfish]

your only shot on target was at the other end so you didn't miss anything.

We had a shot on target?!!

 

[BarraMatt]

It's shite, but something the SAG insisted on apparently.

 

[Son of Cod]

It's shite, but something the SAG insisted on apparently.

Fair enough. I don't really get why there's one rule for standing terraces and seated areas as you could have temporary solutions like they do in fully seated stands that house both sets of fans. Would be interesting to see what Barrow do if they ever get a big Prem side and fully sellout. Would that middle block still be empty? Or maybe there has been a full sellout in recent years?

SAGs need to be renamed as Anti Away Fan Advisory Groups.

 

[BarraMatt]

This is no way a gripe at SoC or anyone who has brought it up recently, and I'll be first to admit that the current setup for the away end could be a lot better, but it coming to the fore again has put these thoughts back into mind. It is just one thing that sometimes gets on my nerves and a bit of perspective is sometimes needed. When you come to Holker Street you're looking at the perfect example of a club running hand by mouth for nearly fifty years, ticket sales and sponsors being the only income. We have never had the benefit of someone sticking their hand in their pocket for 10-15 years like your typical clubs who have got promoted in recent years. The annual income from the National League was £50k p/a I believe, compare that to the £1.25m we now get. Clubs that have been down and come up have had the benefit of parachute payments if spent wisely and a long lasting fanbase, which we never really had. Therefore it's never been anything but a make do and mend scenario on our ground.

Looking at you Sutton for some backup, ha.

 

[BarraMatt]

Fair enough. I don't really get why there's one rule for standing terraces and seated areas as you could have temporary solutions like they do in fully seated stands that house both sets of fans. Would be interesting to see what Barrow do if they ever get a big Prem side and fully sellout. Would that middle block still be empty? Or maybe there has been a full sellout in recent years?

SAGs need to be renamed as Anti Away Fan Advisory Groups.

Villa just had to put up with the same as everyone else last season. Wasn't an issue as the rest of the ground sold out and being a decent PL club they gave us their half of the gate receipts. Probably felt sorry for us after they bummed us 6-0.

 

[Limerick Mariner]

I think we are on slightly dodgy ground here - the top couple of rows of the Osmond...!

We could easily beat the Barrow blocked view if we allocated Block A of the Main Stand to away fans, in fact I'm not entirely sure why we don't, instead of a goalmouth you see the side elevation of the police box.

 

[E10rifle]

Looking at you Sutton for some backup, ha.

They’ve built a new away end. There is no excuse for yours. None.

 

[BarraMatt]

They’ve built a new away end. There is no excuse for yours. None.

Touche. Then again, how much room did they have, we are hemmed in by two roads.

 

[E10rifle]

Bratfurt fans, our game on December 3rd has been moved to 12:30pm. Hope none of you have already bought train tickets.

 

[Gunit]

This is no way a gripe at SoC or anyone who has brought it up recently, and I'll be first to admit that the current setup for the away end could be a lot better, but it coming to the fore again has put these thoughts back into mind. It is just one thing that sometimes gets on my nerves and a bit of perspective is sometimes needed. When you come to Holker Street you're looking at the perfect example of a club running hand by mouth for nearly fifty years, ticket sales and sponsors being the only income. We have never had the benefit of someone sticking their hand in their pocket for 10-15 years like your typical clubs who have got promoted in recent years. The annual income from the National League was £50k p/a I believe, compare that to the £1.25m we now get. Clubs that have been down and come up have had the benefit of parachute payments if spent wisely and a long lasting fanbase, which we never really had. Therefore it's never been anything but a make do and mend scenario on our ground.

Looking at you Sutton for some backup, ha.

Yeah we’re still very much an old non league ground but we’re doing our best to update fairly quickly - we had to for ground grading tbf. We have upgraded the away end including some sort of bar/food provision concourse area, still quite small in comparison to many but can accommodate around about 1.2-1.4k I think if needed. Next step is the Rec side home terrace as we need to get another 1,000 odd seats by end of 3rd season which I think will be done this coming summer, hopefully we can get something reasonable but as ever finances will dictate (as well as possible neighbours’ objections to anything of decent size). We obviously get plenty of sneering by the big boys but we were never expecting to play at this level and as per BarraMatt we didn’t ever have any spare cash to spend, it’s always been hard enough scraping enough for a competitive team.

 

[JaredSUFC]

They’ve built a new away end. There is no excuse for yours. None.

The away end was the first part of the ground to be developed because it was the cheapest/easiest along with the necessity of providing more space for away supporters.

Prior to 2014 that end of the ground was the last remnants of the old athletic ground and the terrace that stood there from 2014 until earlier this year was built on the space from the running track curve. So with the need to add extra terracing and seat capacity to meet EFL requirements that was the most obvious place to start.

On the day we secured the National League title title I spoke to our now CEO and as excited as he was about winning the league he was equally relieved that all the work that went into securing funding for ground improvements should we have gone up was not going to go to waste.

Like Barrow we’ve not been reliant on one person putting lots of money into the club, we’ve always been reliant mainly on things like gate receipts and sponsorship, and whilst our away end has improved, Gander Green Lane is very much a work in progress.

 

[Son of Cod]

This is no way a gripe at SoC or anyone who has brought it up recently, and I'll be first to admit that the current setup for the away end could be a lot better, but it coming to the fore again has put these thoughts back into mind. It is just one thing that sometimes gets on my nerves and a bit of perspective is sometimes needed. When you come to Holker Street you're looking at the perfect example of a club running hand by mouth for nearly fifty years, ticket sales and sponsors being the only income. We have never had the benefit of someone sticking their hand in their pocket for 10-15 years like your typical clubs who have got promoted in recent years. The annual income from the National League was £50k p/a I believe, compare that to the £1.25m we now get. Clubs that have been down and come up have had the benefit of parachute payments if spent wisely and a long lasting fanbase, which we never really had. Therefore it's never been anything but a make do and mend scenario on our ground.

Looking at you Sutton for some backup, ha.

I get what you're saying, but not sure of the relevance to the restricted view in the away end. What I'm saying there is don't have two dividers, so in theory less of an expense. However, I've since been informed that it's at the request of the SAG. But yeah, I do understand that you're probably a bit sick of fans of other clubs coming and ripping into Holker Street especially when you haven't had the cashflow that a lot of those clubs have. I didn't mean to come across like I was shitting on your ground for being tinpot or anything, I'm a big fan of old grounds, I'd have posted that view if it had been any club in the division. As Limerick Mariner says above too, we can hardly talk.

It's interesting that you mention this hand by mouth for year on year and other clubs, as the clubs you talk about that have dropped down to the NL are in a lot of ways the polar opposite of the likes of yourself. Always well ran are Barrow and while you often haven't had the budget to compete you've had sensible ownership and as you say Holker Street is in some ways a reflection of those lack of funds. However when you look at the BELTs that have gone down you'll also see grounds that appear to have had barely nothing spent on them, but not necessarily as a reflection of the bank balance of each club but more one of incompetence. So what the likes of us, Mansfield, Luton, Stockport, Notts County, Wrexham, Chesterfield, Oxford, etc don't know about in terms of how debilitating it is for a club to operate with lower resources at the level below or at this level we more than make up for it by knowing just how debilitating it is to be ran by ownership who aren't fit to run football clubs. There's no point having someone sticking their hand in their pocket if it's not being done so with the correct intentions or with a solid plan.

 

[DearneValleyRover]

170 Stevenage at Donny and all quieter than fatty eating a pie

 

[BarraMatt]

I get what you're saying, but not sure of the relevance to the restricted view in the away end. What I'm saying there is don't have two dividers, so in theory less of an expense. However, I've since been informed that it's at the request of the SAG. But yeah, I do understand that you're probably a bit sick of fans of other clubs coming and ripping into Holker Street especially when you haven't had the cashflow that a lot of those clubs have. I didn't mean to come across like I was shitting on your ground for being tinpot or anything, I'm a big fan of old grounds, I'd have posted that view if it had been any club in the division. As Limerick Mariner says above too, we can hardly talk.

It's interesting that you mention this hand by mouth for year on year and other clubs, as the clubs you talk about that have dropped down to the NL are in a lot of ways the polar opposite of the likes of yourself. Always well ran are Barrow and while you often haven't had the budget to compete you've had sensible ownership and as you say Holker Street is in some ways a reflection of those lack of funds. However when you look at the BELTs that have gone down you'll also see grounds that appear to have had barely nothing spent on them, but not necessarily as a reflection of the bank balance of each club but more one of incompetence. So what the likes of us, Mansfield, Luton, Stockport, Notts County, Wrexham, Chesterfield, Oxford, etc don't know about in terms of how debilitating it is for a club to operate with lower resources at the level below or at this level we more than make up for it by knowing just how debilitating it is to be ran by ownership who aren't fit to run football clubs. There's no point having someone sticking their hand in their pocket if it's not being done so with the correct intentions or with a solid plan.

Many fair points SoC. As you say, it's wasn't specifically an argument against the divider thing because I agree it isn't great at all. At the end of the day, you want your club to have a decent ground more so for your own self than anyone else. But the point that is often overlooked is that there's potentially decades of reasons as to why something is the way it is.

The main eyesore for me is the office block that was built (Chipmunx may well correct me as it was before I knew what a football was) sometime in the 90s. Ideally we could build a whole new stand there given the depth available which would situate decent changing rooms, ticket office, hospitality etc but in doing that we'd have to demolish everything we have in place currently. That's obviously not an easy job like chucking a terrace up over the summer, and as a result, we couldn't run any match day operations so wouldn't be able to host fixtures.

The EFL whatever your opinion is of them, are happy with what we've got proposed otherwise we wouldn't be here. For reference, our rugby side finished 4th in the tier under the Super League and their ground is more of a wreck than ours. They have ambitions of being a Super League team in the mid term. Our two teams coincidentally are the most successful they've been in years. It's the nature of having no substantial, right minded investment during last few decades that is holding both back so to speak. Both teams need to collaborate with each other (not necessarily ground sharing as I'm against that) with an aim for both to reach their potential but for some reason we have older generation football folk hating the rugby club as if if it were Celtic to their Rangers, and vice versa, which I find absolutely baffling.

 

[Kendalcufc]

1,116 Carlisle at Stockport.

 

[northstandexile]

115 Newport at Mansfield
326 Dale at Prenton
62 Harrogate at Walsall

any idea of Salford at Pool.

 

[Limerick Mariner]

115 Newport at Mansfield
326 Dale at Prenton
62 Harrogate at Walsall

any idea of Salford at Pool.

Is there a prize? I’ll go for 42

 

[Crewelad87]

Never been Barrow and going up on Saturday where is best to stand? I noticed you can stand down the side or behind the goal next to a fence, i can't sit as those tickets sold out.

 

[Conker]

Never been Barrow and going up on Saturday where is best to stand? I noticed you can stand down the side or behind the goal next to a fence, i can't sit as those tickets sold out.

The standing bit is that small you’ll work it out on your own, terrible away end with poor views all round.

 

[Monkey Tennis]

Never been Barrow and going up on Saturday where is best to stand? I noticed you can stand down the side or behind the goal next to a fence, i can't sit as those tickets sold out.

How many are you likely to bring? Unless it's about 450+, you'll be fine for a view. It's more whether you will stay dry or not...

 

[Crewelad87]

How many are you likely to bring? Unless it's about 450+, you'll be fine for a view. It's more whether you will stay dry or not...

Not sure I'd guess around 4-500, the club only announced seating was sold out a few days ago.

 

[northstandexile]

Not sure I'd guess around 4-500, the club only announced seating was sold out a few days ago.

If you don’t sell out the seating at Barrow for a league game, then you are proper tin pot club.

 

[E10rifle]

202 what I assume are lost tourists in the away end today

 

[JaredSUFC]

129 Sutton fans at Stockport

 

[Crewelad87]

373 Crewe at Barrow

 

[Chief Rocka]

716 Grimsby today after the Grimsby delegation complained to the authorities about not being given the minimum 10%, forced the clubs hand to fix up enough seats to hit the quota.

 

[Soup Ladle]

716 Grimsby today after the Grimsby delegation complained to the authorities about not being given the minimum 10%, forced the clubs hand to fix up enough seats to hit the quota.

Definitely saw at least 300 deckchairs in the Rink End on ifollow

 

[Kendalcufc]

905 Carlisle at Tranmere.

 

[DearneValleyRover]

336 Gills at Donny

 

[Boz]

458 staggies at Crawley
222 dons at Dale
1285 hatters at Salford
959 cobblers at the lamex

assuming 600 rovers at Harrogate

Programme yesterday had 570 SWA at Harrogate
We had sold all the tickets