Forever Blue wrote:Reply from FB
Ian Roberts:
Really sick of our shite crowds, Saturday 75k will attend a pointless friendly for £80 , will get stuck in queues , pay £5 for a pint of piss and generally get ripped off all night in a horrible atmosphere. We are heading for the premiership or not with a top manager and honest players Ffs wake up fans and attend, there’s no excuses anymore
i just think that Cardiff is a 'big game/event' city without the dyed in the wool, deeply embedded football culture of, for example, Sheffield, Portsmouth or Sunderland - let alone that of Manchester, Liverpool or Glasgow.
Make no mistake though, as we all know Cardiff has always had the potential to attract enormous crowds for one off games whether for Cardiff City matches or for international football. The problem is, such crowds have never really been sustained. Vast crowds against the likes of Real Madrid and Hereford in the 70s were quickly back to poor attendances once the hype and 'big game' pull rode out of town. It was the same in the following decades too. I can remember queues stretching hundreds of yards when tickets went on sale for the Man City cup game on a Sunday morning in 1994. A few weeks later? Back to a quarter full Ninian Pk.
I'm guessing there's still a hardcore of support at Cardiff - perhaps a bit diminished after the rebrand.. but Cardiff for its size and catchment area just doesn't seem able to sustain consistently big crowds. I'm quite sure that if Cardiff get promoted there'll be a real clamour again for tickets but longer term once the novelty has worn off? I'm not so sure. Cardiff is a great place but is it a football city? Once again, I'm not so sure.