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Underachieving Football Clubs with Massive Potential fanbases/catchment areas.


Colinjb
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I have had the pleasure of a work tripto Lincolnshire today which includes a lunch stop in Lincoln. It has struck me that the City of Lincoln, with an immediate district population if a quarter of a million people has just seen it's football club relegated to the conference.

 

For a city of it's size it's astonishing that it's football club couldn't sustain league football. It terms of catchment area/performance is this on of the biggest underachievers in the Country!?

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For population it was possibly Hull City up until recent years. But with the massive catchment area of England's 'second city' (shared with Villa) Birmingham City should probably do far better and if Bristol had one 'big' team it could have been challenging more.

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York is a massive city, but they have the disadvantage of having a number of bigger teams within about 50 miles, including:

 

Leeds

Bradford

Huddersfield

Hull

Sc*nthorpe

Barnsley

Doncaster

Sheffield Wed & Utd

 

And then if you look a bit further west, you get Manchester with:

 

Man Utd & City

Wigan

Blackburn

Bolton

Burnley

Rochdale

Oldham

Bury

 

I think York have been a bit unlucky in having so many big football teams near them!

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Dudley, Maidstone and Basingstoke are up there, according to this.

 

That was quite an interesting article, albeit 8 years old

 

Dudley has a larger population than Walsall, yet is absolutely nowhere in footballing circles

I suppose all clubs need support to get the ball rolling, and with Wolves, WBA and Villa on your doorstep that makes it pretty tough!

 

Maidstone however are a different proposition, Kent really should have a bigger club than Gillingham

 

I don't live too far from Lincolnshire and whilst it's geographically a largish area, it's not densely populated

I think only 120k live within Lincoln, so bigger than some clubs in League 2, but not huge

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If only Sheffield and Bristol didn't have two clubs, I reckon they could both be Prem regulars.

 

I'm not so sure about Lincoln being 1/4 of a million. I grew up there and from my vague recollection of geography lessons it barely troubled the 80k mark. (It's 88k according to wiki). Should be in the FL for sure, but hardly a big place. Same size as Bath, which doesn't have a League club either, although they are fairly close to Brizzle and Swindon and do have egg chasing.

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I think we have the biggest potential from the current crop of championship and prem clubs.

 

Add Winchester Eastleigh Southampton and areas around there under the SO post code also Basingstokes Population we could easy get 28k a game this season if were doing well and in the prem if we became a top 10 prem team get around 38k plus close to 250k shirts being sold.

 

agree about Lincoln have a friend that goes to uni there reckons they got potential to be biggish club for championship and league one but get attendance's like say bolton or fulham were they would get 15-18k on a average home game, even said hes seen quite alot of shirts about so they may do ok for shirt sales.

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Poole is one of the biggest towns in the country that has never had a Football League side.

 

Bradford is the 14th largest city in the UK population wise.

 

Bournemouth have terrible support considering the size of the surrounding catchment area . If you include Poole,Wimborne, Ferndown, Verwood, Upton, Wareham,Christchurch, Corfe Mullen and Broadstone there is no other club anywhere near and yet they get gates of 5,000. .

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Bournemouth have terrible support considering the size of the surrounding catchment area . If you include Poole,Wimborne, Ferndown, Verwood, Upton, Wareham,Christchurch, Corfe Mullen and Broadstone there is no other club anywhere near and yet they get gates of 5,000. .

 

Apparently, according to Bompey fans, that's our fault.

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Gloucester used to have a similar population to Burnley but never a league club,and they play in a couple of divisions lower than Forest Green Rovers (Nailsworth, just south of Stroud).

 

It's a Rugby region really. Even in Cheltenham they struggle to get much over 3,0000 for home games despite a population of around 100,000.

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I think we have the biggest potential from the current crop of championship and prem clubs.

 

Add Winchester Eastleigh Southampton and areas around there under the SO post code also Basingstokes Population we could easy get 28k a game this season if were doing well and in the prem if we became a top 10 prem team get around 38k plus close to 250k shirts being sold.

 

agree about Lincoln have a friend that goes to uni there reckons they got potential to be biggish club for championship and league one but get attendance's like say bolton or fulham were they would get 15-18k on a average home game, even said hes seen quite alot of shirts about so they may do ok for shirt sales.

Southampton has about 250k people living in it....what is known as the Southampton Urban Area has around 310k people living in it...

the big one though....is an area classed as the southampton and portsmouth Metropolitan area...that has way over 1.6m....so plenty to tap into

 

(that was from the census in 2001...no doubt those numbers have gone up)

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  • 2 weeks later...
I think we have the biggest potential from the current crop of championship and prem clubs.

 

Add Winchester Eastleigh Southampton and areas around there under the SO post code also Basingstokes Population we could easy get 28k a game this season if were doing well and in the prem if we became a top 10 prem team get around 38k plus close to 250k shirts being sold.

 

agree about Lincoln have a friend that goes to uni there reckons they got potential to be biggish club for championship and league one but get attendance's like say bolton or fulham were they would get 15-18k on a average home game, even said hes seen quite alot of shirts about so they may do ok for shirt sales.

 

More than Leeds? More than Cardiff? More than Nottingham Forest? More than Leicester? More than Ipswich?

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Just to agree - yes we (Bmth) probably have the most pathetic home gates for the size of population. Considering we are the 'largest non industrial connurbation in Europe' with a local population of about 400k (Bmth 167k, Poole 135k, xchurch 40k plus Wimborne and the rest) - the crowds are toss.

 

But, debated this endlessly on our boards and the population is too transient and support other sides and the area is just too 'nice' to be a football heartland.

 

http://www.lovemytown.co.uk/

 

...great website for population geeks!!

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