Non league attendances

[YeltzDoc]

Another reason fans like me are attending is the fact we support a local football league side in my case Albion and the result means everything whereby and I don’t mean this in a patronising way going to watch Halesowen playing is all about the football, yes I want them to win but for me it’s just about seeing and enjoying the game.

Yep, that's how it begins....

Welcome onboard!

[andy]

Another reason fans like me are attending is the fact we support a local football league side in my case Albion and the result means everything whereby and I don’t mean this in a patronising way going to watch Halesowen playing is all about the football, yes I want them to win but for me it’s just about seeing and enjoying the game.

When it's your team it means everything irrespective of league level. The excitement, pain, misery, joy, expectation, is no different. When you become hooked and start watching us away from home instead of the Albion, and we lose in some far flung corner of nowhere, the journey home will seem just as long.
As Doc says welcome on board. It's just a different rollercoaster.

[Yeltzbaby]

I do like my attendance stats.

137 clubs average over 500 which was always considered to be a very decent average crowd to have.

What's missing for me in all attendances figures throughout the pro and non league game is 'away fans figures'. Granted at our level it would have to be an educated guess but where segregation is compulsory I have always thought this would be easy to include and interesting to see.

Dagenham and Redbridge have for many years done this on their offical website and I have to say the away figures in the conference aren't as high as I would expect. They do visiting fans to them and how many they take themselves away. Dagenham v Barnet for example poor followings imo at each others grounds. Although I do appreciate on the whole in the conference away travel is much much further. Dagenham away to Gateshead for example 14....(if memory serves me correctly)

The Twitter site 'the 72' gives all the away attendances. Pictures of various away crowds are shown on (if memory serves) 'football away days.

Thank you Andy that's great, I just looked. Shame nowhere does it for non league, segregated games only of course.

I do laugh at some reports of away fans from clubs at out level, when describing their away followings, very often it's tripled, quadrupled and at very least doubled lol

[VanessaYeltz]

My own personal journey at Halesowen is progressively getting more enjoyable, second full season and I’ve gone from “I’ll just watch the match” to getting very very intense about it, between me and my lad we now own five Halesowen shirts.

As a bit of a romantic, it’s the cup after all, I dipped my toe into following Albion away again at Bristol yesterday and it was a vile experience (regardless of the result). Herded like cattle and packed into a dump of a stand surrounded by complete muppets who were off their heads - one chap by us was so drunk he couldn’t put one foot in front of the other and was sick all over the seat in front, I then made the grave mistake of going to the cigarette smoke filled toilets where some mid 20’s lad with blood all over his knuckles and a mouth that was caked white with cocaine decided to take a swing at me because I was “the biggest bloke in here” All with my autistic 13 year old in tow.

Safe to say I’m done with going away with the Albion, it was a bloody horrible day - all for 5x what I’d have spent at Halesowen drinking better beer, in better surroundings alongside better people.

Not everyone who follows the Yeltz are angels and we all like a good drink, but the ones who act like total divs are few and far between. In addition, when there were crowd issues the club acted and did something about it, to their own financial cost - the Albion couldn’t give a toss as long as the tickets are sold.

At 40 years old the serenity of a trip to the grove will do for me just fine, and the old Albion faces I see in the crowd, loads of them, tell me I’m not alone.

[old git]

My own personal journey at Halesowen is progressively getting more enjoyable, second full season and I’ve gone from “I’ll just watch the match” to getting very very intense about it, between me and my lad we now own five Halesowen shirts.

As a bit of a romantic, it’s the cup after all, I dipped my toe into following Albion away again at Bristol yesterday and it was a vile experience (regardless of the result). Herded like cattle and packed into a dump of a stand surrounded by complete muppets who were off their heads - one chap by us was so drunk he couldn’t put one foot in front of the other and was sick all over the seat in front, I then made the grave mistake of going to the cigarette smoke filled toilets where some mid 20’s lad with blood all over his knuckles and a mouth that was caked white with cocaine decided to take a swing at me because I was “the biggest bloke in here” All with my autistic 13 year old in tow.

Safe to say I’m done with going away with the Albion, it was a bloody horrible day - all for 5x what I’d have spent at Halesowen drinking better beer, in better surroundings alongside better people.

Not everyone who follows the Yeltz are angels and we all like a good drink, but the ones who act like total divs are few and far between. In addition, when there were crowd issues the club acted and did something about it, to their own financial cost - the Albion couldn’t give a toss as long as the tickets are sold.

At 40 years old the serenity of a trip to the grove will do for me just fine, and the old Albion faces I see in the crowd, loads of them, tell me I’m not alone.

If you could turn the clock back 40 years you have just perfectly summed up my own Albion experience from way back then. Penned in at Derby and assaulted by Neanderthals I decided it was time to give up. No social media back then of course, and I had always been mystified by the back page of the Argus. Who were all these teams I had never heard of playing in leagues that meant absolutely nothing to me? My mate said come and watch Halesowen in the FA vase… the what vase? …anyway along I went and at first laughed at the “stadium” …the players appeared from the dressing rooms over by the Yeltz bar and the crowd politely separated to allow them onto the pitch which all added to my amusement. However by half time I realised I was really enjoying the football on the “slope all ways” pitch without having to watch my back. A thoroughly entertaining match finished and my mate suggested we go to the club house for a beer….now that was something I had never experienced before, as in the pro game you had to walk miles to find a pub open, and even then you were on tenterhooks who might walk in and start a ruckus’s. After a while I was further amazed when all the players from both sides started to walk into the club, and after a while they started chatting to us.
What a wonderful experience that day when I suddenly found out what proper Saturday afternoons were for !!!!
40 years on and the love affair continues unabated.

[uncle jack and coke]

Reading VanessaYeltz and Old Git's posts got me thinking about my own introduction to the world of non league football.

I came to the Dudley area back in 1975 to study at the old Dudley College of Education and on completing my studies I got a job working in Birmingham. After a few internal moves/promotions I came into contact with two chaps who i came to learn were on the committee of Halesowen Town (Alan Hadley and Roger Wood). Over the next eighteen months or so they kept saying I ought to come and watch a match. However, having no car and living in Coseley I kept saying no. Eventually just before the end of the the 1983/4 season I relented and said I'd go.

Use of public transport meant i arrived at the ground around quarter past one, an hour before I'd agreed to meet Alan in the Yeltz Bar. I entered the Yeltz Bar to be warmly greeted by the bar steward Ken, who I later found out, worked with my best friend in Smethwick, and three chaps playing pool, sipping pints and checking their betting slips. We chatted and I joined them for a game of pool and about quarter to two they left wishing me all the best and hoped I would enjoy the game. Imagine my surprise when when the teams entered the pitch to find that these three chaps were Paul, Lee and Malcolm.

Time has eroded the memories of the match but that was the beginning of love affair with Halesowen Town with whom I twice got to go to Wembley before I eventually got to go with my home town professional club. Over the following years my Dad would come along to matches with me when he and Mum came to visit for the weekend; I started bringing my daughter when she was eighteen months old and she continued into her mid teens when other things (boys) became more important, she has "returned to the fold" and now brings her own daughter who loves the whole afternoon but especially getting her hand slapped through the tunnel fencing by "her boys."

I can't remember the last professional match I went to and to be honest I don't think I want to go to another. I'm happy where I am

[KenR]

Brilliant Uncle Jack and Coke, and good to remember Alan Hadley, any idea what happened to him ?