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SOL expansion

Flip said:
I love the enthusiasm and the want to expand but for me this is a consolidation season at best then see where we go with an expansion - do people remember the FA Cup game where about 15K turned up - and fair play to everyone that did there were 3 of us on the free bus from life of riley. I think people are excited and getting ahead of themselves which is nice but not how to make business decisions which should be return on investment and at this point there are two many unknowns for that calculation. Jesus I sound like the worlds most boring man....
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In essence it's not about the here and now tho, it's about vision and ambition.
JackL said:
Not boring at all, just being sensible mate
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Sensible doesn't move forward it just stays where it is
 

Weststand said:
In essence it's not about the here and now tho, it's about vision and ambition.

Sensible doesn't move forward it just stays where it is
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The current capacity isn't hindering the ability of fans to attend matches. I'd have thought the club will look at extending if that changes over a couple of seasons
 
Sporty said:
We got relegated into Div 2 for the 1st time in 1958 and I've been looking at the numbers for league games. Post war, we've got 60,000 plus 10 times in the league, 6 times in the 40s, 2 in the 50s, 2 in the 60s and 3 of the 10 were against the mags.

The 2 in the 60s both happened in 1962-63 while in Div 2 so not really a regular occurrence that I thought it was as the last time we'd got 60,000 was against the mags in 1954/55 season. Our highest league game of 62,420 was obviously against the mags but the other game was 62,138 against Stoke.

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Looking a little bit deeper I see Stoke were top and it was Bank Holiday Friday April 12th. We were at home again the very next day against Portsmouth and the crowd was 35,356. These are the next highest attendances that season and just shows how games would fluctuate in attendance.

48,106
47,955
43,230
43,087
42,407

We missed out on promotion in 62/63 due to GD as we lost the final game at home in front of 47,955 to Chelsea, who went up instead, when only a draw was required for promotion! We got promoted the next season and spent the next 6 seasons in Div 1 til the 70s but we never got 60,000 again after those 2 games in the 60s. We got over 50,000 10 more times in the 60s but only once in the 70s and never again as Roker was being reduced in capacity.

I hoyed the post war league game numbers into a quick graph and this is what it looks like. You can see from the early years just how much the attendances varied. I can add years etc if anyone is interested though I think it's clear to see when the SOL appeared, where it was expanded, where we got relegated, the 10 seasons in the PL, the relegation into L1, COVID and then the climb back up to PL. You can also see the 2 games from 1962/63 in the 2nd box from left and the gap prior to the mag game in 1954/55. Bear in mind, back then cup games got bigger attendances as this is just league and there won't include those sneaking in one way or another.

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There was way more than 47,000 at the Sunderland West Ham game in 1980 imho as example.
 
Northumberland Rocks said:
There was way more than 47,000 at the Sunderland West Ham game in 1980 imho as example.
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Aye though you can't really see much but the Roker End is packed when the camera pans at 40 secs as are other parts of the ground

The good old days of being part of a 'living and breathing' crowd, loved it! 😎

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Big Duke Six said:
Worra night that was.Last ever massive crowd at RP.
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Great days 😎 Looking at StatCat we got 41k against Southampton in the 2nd game of 1st Division yet only got 32k against Everton in opening game and 32k against Boro after Anyone know why? Was it just to see Southampton players or were the bosses watching the turnstiles?

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Sporty said:
Aye though you can't really see much but the Roker End is packed when the camera pans at 40 secs as are other parts of the ground

The good old days of being part of a 'living and breathing' crowd, loved it! 😎

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Aye was a nipper then
Went with my dad but we got locked out :cry:
 
Houghtoner said:
Don’t want to play devil’s advocate but we could (hope not) be dire and the match day tickets aren’t in as much demand/some season card holders become indifferent. Don’t want to be pessimistic just feel we’ve been here before and it wasn’t prolonged. Hopefully things are different.
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Could be an odd game we don't sell them. Particularly if we do a Southampton or Leicester. Or Ipswich :(
 
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