Match Day Liverpool v Huddersfield, Saturday 28th October 15:00

[AnkleBiter]

Things like those Charlton leaflets are examples of short sighted greediness. None of those people they attracted to games will still be going now. If they wanted long term local fans like they should've done (and this is when supporters clubs should be more involved) then they should've had initiatives such as kids for a quid instead. You're bound to get a good amount that'll then be hooked for life.

Bilo is spot on about pricing. Our atmosphere had gotten quite flat during Chris Powell's extremely boring reign, which was a concern because we always had big potential to make the place bouncing, like pretty much all the Yorkshire clubs. Luckily we have a fan owner, and as soon as we made season tickets cheap again our attendances went up by more than a third and we've had a great atmosphere since then, which has been commented on by various media in all of our home games so far. I know of plenty of fans that returned last season due to the cut prices, as well as having a positive manager, and I'd say they're all working class, and would never be seen with a half and half scarf and a selfie stick!

No one can buy a ticket for our home games this season unless they had booking history before this season. So I'm certain we won't fall victim of this kind of thing.

In fairness I'm not really sure what the top 6 can do about this. Cut price tickets for locals only is a no go, all sorts of problems with that. And they need a full stadium or they'll look a bit daft. Guess it's just modern football.

 

[HarvSFC]

I don’t think I’d ever fall out of love with going to football like Skinner. However, as a Southampton fan, who has seen the demise to League One and then the rise to European football, there has certainly been a change at St Marys over the past few years. In League One we were drawing crowds of around 17,000 and they could generally be defined as the “proper fans”. However, now we’ve sold out most games this season and given our dire form over the past year and a bit the atmosphere is more toxic than when we were getting thrashed week in, week out in the Championship with David McGoldrick and Olly Lancashire lining up. A draw at home in the Premier League is now greeted with a chorus of boos and there’s a lot more self-entitled supporters now given our success.

 

[Jockney]

Class is talked too about nebulously. I'm pretty sure a majority of Millwall's match-day attendance fit into the middle-section of at least one class taxonomy. Playing up your family's industrial past or experiences of in the '50s sleeping two or three to a bed is a less compelling class testimony than your objective material relations: like owning a small business, or voting Tory to protect your 700k house valuation. But playing on a more hegemonic sociological terrain, one that gives weight to economic status rather than a set of relations (Pierre Bordieu's idea of a class habitus for instance), you'll find that even white-collar office workers are categorised as working-class if they fit certain cultural markers. It's all very confused; everyone seems to have different definitions even as we ostensibly talk about the same thing. The working-class is simultaneously present, departed or transformed, as if it had some sort of generational tangibility.

There is a correlation between the change in make-up of football attendances to the change in match-day culture, but it isn't a linear or even wholly causal link I don't think. There are many factors to consider: global television rights, destruction of trade unions, changes in community demographics, white flight, new industries, the changing nature of work and recreation more generally, information commodities (video games, the internet, cable tv, on demand, etc), the list goes on. Stab in the dark, but it seems that those cultural aspects are informed more by the way a community relates to the world around them than any distinct class character. Clubs like Manchester United and Liverpool are now global, almost borderless, but these sorts of changes extend even to clubs where the support base has remained fairly homogenous.

 

[Pagnell]

Not sure why I'd make that up. Walking around the ground before and after the game, I genuinely didn't hear any. Wasn't exactly trying particularly hard to listen tbh but it struck me after a while.

In which case I need to ask. Do you know what a scouse accent sounds like?

 

[Stevencc]