[ged62]

Our average attendances over the years have been about 3000 apart from the Fergie years. Then it comes to cup finals and 1st div titles all the part time glory hunters appear from nowhere, we have never had a big support, well in the last 30 years anyway.

[Gary Blues]

billyg, on 11 March 2010 - 18:56, said:

Not so , we've had home crowds of 7k and 8k v East Fife , 16k v Dundee U , 12k v Ayr and 10k v Clydebank , the product has just got to be right !

We've also had 10k gates at home under Gus against Dunfermline & Motherwell, 7k against Hamilton & Dundee.

There are exceptional circumstances that will draw out the punters - and you know fine well the circumstances that surrounded St. Mirren for those games.

Equally, we've had league gates of below 1,000 below as well - and low crowds have been the norm for St. Mirren for most of the time since the 50s.

And surely the product was "right" in 1987?

We finished 7th in the league - not as good as some seasons in the early 80s - but still historically high - plus we won the Scottish Cup! We also had players of the calibre of McGarvey, Clarke, Ferguson, Lambert & Money in the side - 5 of the greatest ever players to play for St. Mirren and a million miles apart from all of the players we have playing for us today and most of the current SPL as well..........

Yet we bigger crowds now than we did back then.

My thread isn't intended to turn into another anti / pro Gus debate - more a look at what our actual fanbase is actually like, particularly in the context of the debate about expanding the top flight because attendances in Scotland are apparently falling - when in reality they aren't!

Attendance figures in the SPL have been the highest in Scottish football history since the post war attendance boom in the 50s. I think most people are shocked by the reality.

[Dirty Sanchez]

Gary Blues, on 11 March 2010 - 12:08, said:

The last time that Accies were in the top flight was 1986/87.

No it wasn't.

But the crowds weren't much better two years later when they were back in the Premier.

The Old Firm boom was making a big difference back in those days. The whole league, including Hamilton were averaging 5,000+ thanks to the bigot infestation. Our average would have dropped by 3,000 without them.

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[nedflanders123]

ged62, on 11 March 2010 - 21:36, said:

Our average attendances over the years have been about 3000 apart from the Fergie years. Then it comes to cup finals and 1st div titles all the part time glory hunters appear from nowhere, we have never had a big support, well in the last 30 years anyway.

This has happened and will always happen when any team - throughout Britain - get to a cup final or win a championship. How many QOS fans went to see the cup final v Rangers? Were they all simply glory hunters? What about the many fans who travel from across the world to a cup final, like our own in 1987 and will do so this month, as it is something many have never seen in their lives and is a rarity for a club like ours. Some of the English 4th division (I know they call it the 2nd division) play off finals have around 60,000 or more at Wembley but those teams generally have around 4-5,000 maximum at their league games. If we only ever had our hard core at finals or while winning the league title, it would be seen as a disgrace or pathetic at least. A lot of people go along to support the town through the team on the big occasions and that will always be the case. It has nothing to do with part-time fans but more to do with the occasion.