What was the crowd today?

Redwurzel said:
If Preston conurbation is 420k its actually bigger population than Middlesbrough, Stockton, Redcar and Cleveland councils area. I think they are 410k together.
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Christ, the Preston "metro" area is 336k in 2024, adding in surrounding areas further from Preston than Darlo, Hartlepool and Redcar are from Middlesbrough,
Lancashire County Council officially define Preston as 156k

Their support yesterday was pretty damned good and our catchment area is much much bigger without the competition they have.
 
Middlesbrough has never been just about the town of Middlesbrough.
It is the club of the Tees Valley, who's combined authority has a population of 678,200. Boro is the nearest league club for all those people.
Enough people want to down the area for us, we don't need to do it ourselves.

Preston is just over 10 miles from Blackburn, 17 miles from hated Blackpool, support is split in all the areas in between.
Burnley, Bolton, Wigan, Accrington, Fleetwood and Morecambe are all nearer Preston than Middlesbrough is from Sunderland.
Liverpool and Manchester are nearer to Preston than Newcastle is to us.
 
indeedido said:
Middlesbrough has never been just about the town of Middlesbrough.
It is the club of the Tees Valley, who's combined authority has a population of 678,200. Boro is the nearest league club for all those people.
Enough people want to down the area for us, we don't need to do it ourselves.

Preston is just over 10 miles from Blackburn, 17 miles from hated Blackpool, support is split in all the areas in between.
Burnley, Bolton, Wigan, Accrington, Fleetwood and Morecambe are all nearer Preston than Middlesbrough is from Sunderland.
Liverpool and Manchester are nearer to Preston than Newcastle is to us.
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Unfortunately for Boro a lot of people in the wider Tees Valley area don’t support their local club. We’ve probably all worked with people that ‘support’ the likes of Liverpool, Man United, Leeds and a few others. I know a bloke in Billingham, who is as Teesside as they come who ‘supports’ Chelsea. Even made his sons Chelsea fans.

I suppose the Boro support from the non-Middlesbrough Teesside areas hasn’t been helped at times by club rhetoric. It is a common theme hearing support and the town itself. Gibson with his notorious Stockton Mackems fans for example.
 
How many fans did Preston bring? I looks like we down are 500 or so down from looking at the Millwall and QPR fixtures from this time last season.

I know a lot of people have holidays in August and September.
 
indeedido said:
Middlesbrough has never been just about the town of Middlesbrough.
It is the club of the Tees Valley, who's combined authority has a population of 678,200. Boro is the nearest league club for all those people.
Enough people want to down the area for us, we don't need to do it ourselves.

Preston is just over 10 miles from Blackburn, 17 miles from hated Blackpool, support is split in all the areas in between.
Burnley, Bolton, Wigan, Accrington, Fleetwood and Morecambe are all nearer Preston than Middlesbrough is from Sunderland.
Liverpool and Manchester are nearer to Preston than Newcastle is to us.
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Don't include Hartlepool and Darlington in our catchment, they either support their local team or Sunderland/Newcastle.
 
NorthumberlandBoro said:
Don't include Hartlepool and Darlington in our catchment, they either support their local team or Sunderland/Newcastle.
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Give over man, there are loads of people in Darlington and Hartlepool post codes who are Boro fans.

People from every town in the country "support" clubs far away - and in numbers.
Its the same in other countries too, Benfica, Juve, RM all drain other places all over their countries.
Besides, kids all over Middlesbrough wear the shirts of City, Liverpool etc.
 
indeedido said:
Give over man, there are loads of people in Darlington and Hartlepool post codes who are Boro fans.

People from every town in the country "support" clubs far away - and in numbers.
Its the same in other countries too, Benfica, Juve, RM all drain other places all over their countries.
Besides, kids all over Middlesbrough wear the shirts of City, Liverpool etc.
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If you get the train through Hartlepool on a Sunderland match day you will see hordes of Sunderland fans boarding.
I've never seen any Boro fans boarding going the other way to a Boro game.
There are always exceptions to the general rule.
 
For the MFC catchment debate - I tend to include all the Boroughs of Stockton, Middlesbrough, and Redcar & Cleveland. Within these some the Stockton area had a lot of Sunderland support say back in the 1970s, possibly a legacy of when Sunderland were a top 6 type club in the 1930s and Durham miners moving to ICI for work after WW2, but I get the impression it has changed. In Cleveland, Leeds has a lot of support in the 1970s after the Revie years.

From the pre-1998 North Yorkshire County the only areas for majority Boro support are Great Ayton, Stokesley, Hutton Rudby areas. There is some support in Northallerton, Whitby, Thirsk, Helmsley, Richmond, Pickering, Kirkbymoorside, but its not big. Commuting professional workers from Teesside moved out to parts of North Yorkshire from 1970 onwards, when cars improved and became cheaper and spread support for the Boro. My parents and some relatives were examples. I remember being taken around derelict moorland farms in the middle of now where in 1974 and told this would be great for you. While I was thinking of 1 hour journeys to school every day and how would I get to any football or even pick up Radio Teesside.
 
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In the 1982/83 season I used to get a United Bus or train from Newcastle to the Boro on Saturday matchdays. I know those were grim days with crowds below 10k, but for the Arsenal cup game when we got 20k home crowd the only Boro fans getting on the bus were from Sedgefield inwards.

Travelling from Whitby to Boro - Boro fans would start to get on at Loftus inwards.

I think Middlesbrough really has never been seen as in North Yorkshire by people living in places like Northallerton, Thirsk, Whitby, Richmond. The Town was brand new in Victorian times and the Town was always linked to heavy industry. Socially the town took in a lot of incomings from Ireland over a short period (1850ish to 1880) and a lot if incoming from outside Yorkshire. My relatives came from Birmingham, Rotherham/Black Country, Durham/Scotland, Durham Dales (North Pennines), Wigton (Cumbria) in the period 1876 to 1919. Paternal great grandfather was born in Middlesbrough in 1863 and his family were more local and had come from Stokesley and Carlton in Cleveland when the Town was just starting around 1840. Some of the incoming relatives brought specialist industrial skills with them such as wire making, making stainless steel that were not present in the Teesside area when they came.

Visitors even in the 1970s say from Whitby saw the Boro as a bit scary, full of rough and ready characters, assume the air was thick with pollution - almost a foreign place.
 
There was a load of Teesside Whites waiting to be picked up on Saturday morning near the Rudds. All stood there with the new red bull shirts on and white, blue and yellow scarves. I'm glad they all had a sh1te day :ROFLMAO:
 
The 500 decline from last season is not bad really, when you consider a 6% price hike.

The Swansea game was lunch time and on Sky, none of the early home games last season were strange times or on Sky.

Posters on here said crowds would be down over 2,000, because of high prices and Sky.

Away from home 2 out of the 3 games were sold out and the other had nearly 1500 for a 12.30 KO over 280 miles away i.e support is up.
 
Dynamo Kev said:
i've lived in stockton 47 years. the only mackem i know lives in norton. hes probably about 55-60 now. this stockton mackem thing is made up rubbish. billingham has a few mackems though.
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I played football around Stockton all through the mid 80s to late 90s and only ever came across 2 Sunderland fans and a couple of mags..the rest all staunch Boro.
 
Willie Maddren had a paper shop in Haverton Hill in the 1970s and he said most people who came in supported Sunderland then. Is HH counted as Stockton?

In the 1970s there appeared to be N/E people coming to the Teesside area to find work, now its the other way round.
 
uncle_rico said:
There was a load of Teesside Whites waiting to be picked up on Saturday morning near the Rudds. All stood there with the new red bull shirts on and white, blue and yellow scarves. I'm glad they all had a sh1te day :ROFLMAO:
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Were a lot of them aged 55-65?

When I was at school in that area in the early 1970s - Leeds were the todays Man City of the era. The Boro at that time were for the older guys who talked about Mannion and Hardwick and smoked Woodbines.
 
Redwurzel said:
Willie Maddren had a paper shop in Haverton Hill in the 1970s and he said most people who came in supported Sunderland then. Is HH counted as Stockton?

In the 1970s there appeared to be N/E people coming to the Teesside area to find work, now its the other way round.
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Haverton Hill as a place where people lived was knocked down before Willie was old and rich enough to buy a shop.
 
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