BrightonBird said:Rambo - Sheffield have two teams so it will not be as high.
Does anyone actually know where I can find the info out? Geek on a mission!
What about the World's OLDEST football club?DessieBoy said:Sorry BB, I think, if you count again, you'll find there's only one team in Sheffield. They are, in fact, the only team in Yorkshire too (unless you count Wednesday reserves).
UTO
Lord Bracknell said:What about the World's OLDEST football club?
BrightonBird said:Bloody hell Wilts, I'm impressed!
Nope. Although Notts County are the oldest Football League Club.CrabtreeBHA said:Notts County aint it?
ditchy said:Also ..cardiff have a lot of
Yeah but according to southtoday today brighton and hove have missed out roughly 12000 people and need a re=count.Lord Bracknell said:Largest Urban Area in England WITHOUT a league football club is Aldershot (population 231,000).
Largest Urban Area in England with ONLY ONE league football club is Tyneside (population 886,000). Second is Brighton/Worthing/Littlehampton (population 438,000).
Greater London (population 7,652,000) has 12 league clubs - which, apart from Tyneside, is the highest ratio of people to football club in England - one club per 638,000 people.
The SMALLEST recognised free-standing Urban Area with a league football club is Irthlingborough (population 5,200). Combine Irthingborough with Rushden and Higham Ferrers and you get 34,400 people.
"Urban Areas" are as defined by the Office of National Statistics - a definition that was accepted by all parties at the Falmer Public Inquiry.
Personally, I think it's daft to include Littlehampton in the Brighton Urban Area, but if you get rid of it and add in Newhaven, Haywards Heath, etc, things more or less balance up.
All the population figures are 1991 census figures.
And if Tim Carder's reading this - I'll return your notes on all this stuff soon.
Very strange wilts as reading isn't a city mmmmmWilts said:Catchment areas are unfortunately all bollocks. Having looked at this myself, I came to the conclusion that absolutely nothing makes sense at all! Look at Ipswich, tiny place (smaller than Basingstoke, which is an RFC town), no "traditional working class" which used to be the factor linked to football crowds, nothing around it, and other teams quite close, and yet until recently they could pull in over 25,000 per game!
To the question "Is Brighton the biggest city not to have 2 teams?", I give you... in order. Not counting places attached (like Hove) otherwise I could attach Wokingham's population to Reading and Bedworth to Coventry etc.
Leeds
Leicester
Kingston_upon_Hull
Coventry
Bradford
Cardiff
Wolverhampton
Plymouth
Derby
Reading
Southampton
Newcastle_upon_Tyne
Preston
Sunderland
Bournemouth
Peterborough
West_Bromwich
Middlesbrough
All larger places than Brighton in population and with only 1 team.
Catchment areas in themselves are odd. Norwich has a massive catchment area but there's nobody in it. Sussex is relatively big in terms of size, but again there's nothing in it. You have Crawley (London side really) Worthing, and Littlehampton in addition to Brighton and Hove with any real half-decent sized populations.
People in surrounding areas are a good source of fans. We run buses from Basingstoke to the MadStad, and also Newbury, Henley, Bracknell etc. All nice decent sized towns which need to be plugged to get them all to be Reading fans. The likes of Maidenhead and Slough are not ripe with Royals because to be honest, we've been shite for far too long for people to make the effort. But now with Oxford as shite as they are, our fanbase seems to extend to even Oxfordians themselves, which is a good sign.
Sussex is pretty desolate as far as counties go. Nice countryside and all that, but few people. 1 million or something, isn't it? But bear in mind that about 200,000 probably live too close to London and all follow London teams, and that on the West Sussex side you'll lose another 300,000 or so towards Pompey. So that's nearly half gone already. Not as simple as it sounds.
Also bear in mind that people move down to Brighton from all areas of the country as its a quality place. So the amount of "locals" in Brighton is pretty small in comparison to somewhere like Hull, where people are all Hull citizens and feel more of an association with the place. We have the same problem in Reading as the work in Thames Valley brings along people with their own football teams already.
And its all to do with how "football mad" the place is. In Reading we've produced footballers for years and years, though sadly rarely for RFC. Winning national tournements at school level and seeing the obsession with football all around, its great. Hence why us RFC fans are so desperate to get this club up and running with the big boys, because the place is football mad, yet sadly has never been quite enough mad about the local team.
The problem with both of our clubs is that its too easy to get to London. I'm off to fck up the Reading-Paddington train line. Shouldn't be difficult considering Railtrack did a very good job at that themselves!