Why have southern clubs( not London) and East Anglian clubs never been big?

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Stortford said:
Well many turning out will have been at RP, you lot had Whitley Bay to support.

They were regularly national champions man and all ruined by your chairman trying to copy the sporting club model at Barcelona, some would say ideas above your station, some might say delusional
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Durham Mags mate. Gazza turned up and got a heroes welcome while still playing at NUFC. So it was well before KK ever turned up at SJP in 1992.
 


Barista said:
I was at the barbers this morning (just across the road from the old Cambridge City ground) before seeing this thread and coincidentally he started telling me how they were the biggest club in Cambridge until the 1960s. They apparently had the largest ground outside of league football and used to get crowds of up to 8 or 9 k
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With a great pitch,big wooden stands,decent
 
Barista said:
I was at the barbers this morning (just across the road from the old Cambridge City ground) before seeing this thread and coincidentally he started telling me how they were the biggest club in Cambridge until the 1960s. They apparently had the largest ground outside of league football and used to get crowds of up to 8 or 9 k
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You live in cambridge?
 
Muttley said:
Portsmouth and Plymouth seems a fair analogy .. the only difference really is the distance from London; perhaps this has made attracting players to Portsmouth easier. Over the last 50-60 years Portsmouth have probably done as well as many large northern teams. Plymouth seem to have underachieved. As a naval city perhaps they have a high transient population who are there to serve but support other teams?

Bournemouth has been geographically small for most of footballs history – Wimborne perhaps being bigger for the early days of football – their more recent success is probably a reflection of the growth of the town and it merging into Poole and Wimborne to be on a size now able to compete. If they invest well in their infrastructure and stadium, they could have a local fan base large enough to sustain success on the same scale as. Say, Southampton. That wasn’t true 50 years ago.

Bristol is very much rugby city. It also suffers from 2 teams – had they a single club I wonder would they have been more successful? That said, Bristol is only slightly smaller than Liverpool so even that argument doesn’t stack up.

Other big southern towns like Swindon, Basingstoke and Milton Keynes are historically geographically small – as they have grown to bigger sizes since the 40s or been invented as new towns - perhaps, we will see them being more significant in future years though with the influx of foreign ownership of bigger teams maybe they are limited in the growth that they can achieve, until/unless they can get to a size that attracts large scale investment.

We shouldn’t forget that not all northern cities have done as well as geography might suggest – Leeds, Bradford and Sheffield for example are all bigger than either Manchester or Liverpool and none have had sustained success on the scale of either. Rather than Plymouth or Bristol, I would suggest that Bradford with a ½ million population is the biggest underachiever.
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Both Leeds and Bradford suffer Significantly from the influence of Rugby League, you only come to realise how big it is when u come to live here
 
riffraff said:
Don’t talk to me about Cambridge City ffs.
First time I went to Cambridge Utd we drove, got there early, saw floodlights ower the roof tops, saw free street parking, saw pub, marra parked car off main road with LH turn into our route away for quick getaway, sorted.
Into pub, couple of hours drinking with virtually no one else there bar a few old boys reading the racing pages, football focus, pool table, dart board, bandit, juke box, landlords daughter serving, prematch lad heaven. Ten to three she pipes up: cutting it a bit fine aren’t you boys?
Her dad had made himself scarce after we’d bought ten pints in 30 mins and sent her downstairs to take over. He was no mug, we were. To be fair she rang a taxi to get five donkey eared mackems all the way across town sharpish......to the set of floodlights we were actually
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Barista said:
Yeah for nearly 28yrs. Off Milton Road. You?
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Born here 45 years ago, other side of town,off cherry Hinton road
 
Smaller towns I suppose, but most of them are solid top 3 division clubs, whereas in same era a lot of northern towns have lost their football league status
 
bahtat said:
Both Leeds and Bradford suffer Significantly from the influence of Rugby League, you only come to realise how big it is when u come to live here
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Leeds United and rl do ok , imo some Yorkshire clubs suffer from leeds taking fans, similar to north west ,,i dont think rugby league impacts much on Yorkshire football attendancs
 
Football just not the backbone to the Towns in question.
Notice down these parts a very mobile population as well. People and families move around thus lack identity to a particular place.
People down these parts love football but don’t see it as going to the games and would rather watch it in bars and have a take it or leave it approach.

Take both my lads they go but none of them have any mates that go and support a football club. Equally I can count on one hand people I know that go to a couple of games a season.
 
JL1985 said:
Does Sunderland play any sports other than football?
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The city? Boxing quite a bit. Not really another team sport though (or at least since the basketball club moved as said above). There is a small rugby team but I couldn't tell you anything about them.
 
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