Colinjb Posted 8 June, 2011 Share Posted 8 June, 2011 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!? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
100%Red&White Posted 8 June, 2011 Share Posted 8 June, 2011 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. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Badger Posted 8 June, 2011 Share Posted 8 June, 2011 Bristol as you say should do better. Plymouth also underachieves for somewhere with the population the size of Southampton, and its catchment area. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kadeem Hardison Posted 8 June, 2011 Share Posted 8 June, 2011 Dudley, Maidstone and Basingstoke are up there, according to this. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SuperMikey Posted 8 June, 2011 Share Posted 8 June, 2011 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! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Red Alert Posted 8 June, 2011 Share Posted 8 June, 2011 Could say that based on a population catchment area AFC Telford should be doing better - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telford Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thedelldays Posted 8 June, 2011 Share Posted 8 June, 2011 plymouth, without a doubt Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Crab Lungs Posted 8 June, 2011 Share Posted 8 June, 2011 Portsm... oh hang on? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Huntingdon Posted 8 June, 2011 Share Posted 8 June, 2011 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 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jonnyboy Posted 8 June, 2011 Share Posted 8 June, 2011 plymouth, without a doubt when holloway sold out they were challenging for the prem... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
teamsaint Posted 8 June, 2011 Share Posted 8 June, 2011 ringwood winchester Canterbury guildford Chichester Poole(these days) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Badger Posted 8 June, 2011 Share Posted 8 June, 2011 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). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Badger Posted 8 June, 2011 Share Posted 8 June, 2011 Just checked: Burnley 73,000 Gloucester 123,000 Nailsworth 6,600 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Crab Lungs Posted 8 June, 2011 Share Posted 8 June, 2011 This is always an interesting subject. IIRC, Warrington and St Helen's also have towns which could sustain fairly sizeable football clubs. If it were not for egg chasing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lighthouse Posted 8 June, 2011 Share Posted 8 June, 2011 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. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sammysaint Posted 16 June, 2011 Share Posted 16 June, 2011 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. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lord Duckhunter Posted 16 June, 2011 Share Posted 16 June, 2011 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. . Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Crab Lungs Posted 16 June, 2011 Share Posted 16 June, 2011 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. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jjsaint Posted 16 June, 2011 Share Posted 16 June, 2011 I was thinking Durham but I went on Wikipedia, apparently Durham's only got a population of 30,000. Thought they were larger. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
toofarnorth Posted 20 June, 2011 Share Posted 20 June, 2011 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. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thedelldays Posted 20 June, 2011 Share Posted 20 June, 2011 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) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sammysaint Posted 29 June, 2011 Share Posted 29 June, 2011 imagine if we could sell shirts to half of that your looking at 125-150k shirt sales, would make the club a nice bit of dosh. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Turkish Posted 30 June, 2011 Share Posted 30 June, 2011 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? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SimonC Posted 5 July, 2011 Share Posted 5 July, 2011 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!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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