I can tell you the day that I first fell in love with Pompey;
it was Saturday the 25th of October 1986. We were playing at home at
Fratton Park to West Bromwich Albion and we beat them 2-1 in front of a crowd
of a paltry 11,698 fans. It must have been one of the rare seasons I was a
lucky omen to Pompey because of the hundreds of games I’ve seen us play since
that day the win rate versus the loss rate isn’t in my favour at all. I’d hate
to statistically work it out because it wouldn’t be good. That first day
however I was hooked as I still am to this very day over a quarter of a century
later and at the end of the season we had gained promotion to Division One as
was known back then. Pompey had resurfaced into to upper echelons of the
football league once more.
Rewind back to the day I entered the world on April 15th
1978; A Saturday afternoon I was born shortly before the start of the second
half of a game away being played in Division Three away to Hereford United
which Pompey won 2-0. My father is a son of Portsmouth like his father before
him. I however and until the time I had children remained the only person of a
vast family stretching the globe from the south of Ireland, to Portsmouth,
Essex, America and beyond to have been born in Suffolk. I had been born a Tractor
Boy and by all rights I should have supported my closest team which would is
Ipswich Town. I was a mere month old when I was photographed in an Ipswich
scarf crying my eyes out the day they won the FA Cup final. OK so I didn’t know
then at a month old that I never wanted to be photographed with anything
connected with Ipswich Town but having on numerous occasions been to Portman
Road over the years I do know there is a club I’d really not be connected to in
terms of geography and locality to my place of birth.
On my mother’s side there is a long standing connection to
West Ham be it family or personal connections. The links are strong enough to
have seen the younger me follow in my families footsteps when I first got
interested in football. In later years it transpired my mother dated the
brother of the World Cup hero Martin Peters before he so tragically committed
suicide unable to cope with living in the shadows of his now world renowned
brother having scored the vital goals to secure England’s one and only World
Cup victory.
I take myself back to the primary school days before uniform
when Frank McAvennie and Tony Cottee where my heroes. Being the fattest kid in
school when the other kids would sing to me “McAvennie aint worth a penny tra
la la la la, la la la la.” I still have never seen that advert and I maintain it
was made up. I could, as always be very wrong. I was still proud to wear the
shirt of West Ham. This is where things start to mould as a youngster and the
values that will always take hold as a true football fan start to gain impedance.
My father had never forced Pompey upon me as a kid. He had taken me to my first
ever game which was Ipswich vs Manchester City in the same year as my first
Pompey game which ended up a dog shit affair of a game with the score 0-0. By
that I mean it would take you a good 90 minutes to clear all the shit from your
brain of just how dire a game of football it really was. Even now I’m still
scraping. So once more I am a month old wrapped in a town scarf and still
crying.
All I can really remember from my first visit to Fratton
Park is being amazed by the atmosphere. That’s a crowd of less than 12,000
imparting more on a young boy’s soul and heart than a larger crowd at Portman
Road ever did. I was hooked.
I was the fattest kid in school who got bullied for saying
he followed West Ham and then fell in love with Pompey with mixed feelings. If
you’re going to be confused do it in style. I don’t remember being ecstatic about
the day Pompey got promoted back to the First Division. All I can remember is
being hooked on the atmosphere having come away from Fratton Park that very
first time. I’m equally sure I was probably following West Hams results more
than I was Pompey’s at that time but by the time I’d been given my first Pompey
shirt there wasn’t any more doubt.
There is a serious point to this blog by the way and not me
just walking down memory lane so do bear with me for a while.
The day of my birth we had played away in front of a crowd
of 3,893. League Cup first and second round attendances aside and god forbid
the Anglo-Italian Cup attendances, it shows just how far a football club that
was once Champions of England can fall when financial discrepancies take hold.
51,385 is the recorded record attendance for a home game held at Fratton Park.
The highest attendance that season at Fratton Park was against Cambridge United
with an attendance of 13,152.
It’s only when you look at the figures first hand that you
start to dispel the myths of what you have been lead to believe through all the
stories down the years; About this amazing
support home and away. How as fans we will always follow our club through thick
and thin. Remember that day we played x either home or away and we exaggerated
the size of our penis to impress the girls and we never quite pulled but said
we did anyway….
This is where I’m a sad bastard and I know more history
about the club than any son born out of Pompey who doesn’t wear an anorak. The
largest recorded attendance for any Pompey match is over 200,000. I’m not going
to reveal the details but if you’ve read about the history of our fine club
then you will know when it happened and occurred. It’s one of those great
statistics alongside which English club has held onto the FA Cup for the
longest period of time; So OK it might have got a bit dented during the War in
the pubs of Pompey. That’s just the romance of the cup and nothing to do with
alcohol consumption during the days of war time spirit and guarding the FA Cup
in the pubs of Pompey. Seriously did the FA not expect a little bit of damage
in the home of the Royal Navy at that time?
I do promise there is a point to all this.
After my first game in 1986, the final game of the season
saw a crowd of 28,004 saw us lose to Sheffield United 2-1. Promotion back to
the big time had occurred; the procurement of players like Paul Mariner who at
the time was the highest paid player in England on wages of £2,000K a week.
That season we were the highest spenders in England having gained promotion
back to where we belonged. I’m sure I can find the exact figures if I tried but
we were the highest spenders in the First Division that season. From memory the
figure was around £1.6 million. That sounds like peanuts now but when you
outspend all the established names in a bid to take on all who surround you and
you get relegated at the first attempt. That’s a financial recipe for disaster.
Any of this sound familiar?
I’m not going to sit and work out the average attendance
season by season at that point. All I will suggest is that until the mid point
where promotion was on the cards just doing basic math in my head, before the
Shrewsbury game on December 29th 1986 where the attendance was
15,006 we were averaging well below 10,000 a week. I can do the math over and
under in my head with no problems to know that figure was well under 10,000 on
average.
So the club got promoted in the days when it didn’t cost you
a mortgage to take your family to the game and perhaps your marriage if you
did. Three games into the season and we play Southampton at home to our so
called biggest rivals in the days before all seater stadia and restricted
capacity. The attendance that day was 20,161. Compare that to the visit of
Liverpool at home in a 2-0 loss which drew a crowd of 28,117 - way over 8,000
more than our so called biggest rivals. Either they didn’t turn up or we didn’t
simply care. Our first season back in the big time since we were once the
crowned champions of England, not once but twice in succession.
How can you go from having a record attendance of over
50,000 to not even being able to get above 21,000 to your so called closest
rivals? How is it that our record attendance for any game is over 200,000
people yet so much is played out about the derby game in which we couldn’t even
have a sell out this season? In fairness the record attendance was played out
thousands of miles away from home when the English league was king of the
football world. In reality the so called derby has been hyped up through the
era of hooliganism during its peak in the 70s and 80s. Portsmouth vs.
Southampton had before then always been a non event. The Cup Final winning team
of 1939 paraded the trophy to the Saints fans to a standing applause. Surely that’s when football was football? I
can’t see our fans applauding the current Saints squad parading the
Championship Trophy at Fratton Park this season to the same applause the team
of 1939 received. Oh no – they choked its fine. It didn’t happen.
For the second time in the history of our fine club after
the debacle of the 1970s and financial ruin promotion and relegation had taught
us nothing during the late 80s. The following is a set of figures that shows
the average attendance for our club at home that was available from sources on
the net.
1989–90 8,861
1990–91 9,681
1991–92 11,745
1992–93 13,695
1993–94 11,622
1994–95 8,269
1995–96 9,407
1996–97 8,723
1997–98 11,149
1998–99 11,956
1999–00 13,906
2000–01 13,707
2001–02 15,121
2002–03 18,933
So how did we ever
achieve a home record attendance in any competition of over 50,000? Why are so
many people aghast that around 250,000 people could attend an FA Cup
Celebration win and not want to contribute to the financial future of Pompey?
Well the figures stand up for themselves. Forgive me if I’m
wrong but the average attendance shows that at no time even during the Cup run
that ended up in defeat to Liverpool on penalties or the subsequent miss
fortune to lose out on Promotion to West Ham on automatic goal difference did
at any time capture the emotions of the people of Portsmouth enough to get them
through the turnstiles of Fratton Park.
The campaign to Pack the Park didn’t once see Fratton Park
full between the start of the campaign and the end of the season and remember
that included a so called derby game and a friend’s reunited game where the
fans of every other club had been invited to join in our support.
I don’t care what business model the PST proposes the facts
speak for themselves laid out for all to see.
The only way the PST will ever take hold of the club given
the history of time over my time of supporting the club is if a very rich
benefactor walks into town and pledges a large sum of cash.
Why buy into a dream? What are the PST trying to sell you
for you for your hard earned money? When the calls came down to pack the park
Fratton Park didn’t sell out once and that includes the so called Derby game. Invest in a future? If you cannot call to Pack
the Park and sell out on a so called derby game what does that tell us? If we
cannot average over 14,000 for most seasons at best before the EPL where do you
think the support will come flooding in? This isn’t fiction, this is fact. If
you believe the PST bid will attract the crowds back to Fratton Park then go
ahead.
The statistics don’t lie. The financial breakeven point last
season was well documented. We didn’t pack the park. Far from it. Since the
heady days of attendances of 50K, where has that so called support gone? It was
never there! Those figures came from those stationed in the area in the Royal
Navy when football was a sport and not a business.
The PST are in dream land. We couldn’t fill a stadium for
the so called derby. Even in the 90s our attendances were shocking when
football wasn’t overpriced. During the cup run and the season after when we missed out on promotion what were
our average attendances? Off the top of my head we had something like 19 consecutive
seasons in Division Two without promotion. Thats old school talk, to you youngsters lets call it the Chamoionship.
Wake up and smell the coffee.
There is no business plan that the PST can project to the FA
that would suggest any change can
happen.
The bid is dead.
It was always a non starter.
The debts are too high. As an outsider looking in. What more
do I need to say? Do I need to state the
obvious?
Crystal Palace somehow managed to exit a CVA for around a
penny in the pound.
Mr Birch has taken the stance of not letting investors see
the club accounts unless they pay a sum of x into y to see the club books.
I won’t divulge the true figures. All I will say is that he
has humoured the PST into a bid. There isn’t a hope in hell that the math of
the PST will stand up coming in front of the FA.
We have sold Pearce and about to sell Ward two of the lowest
wage earners at the club.
How do you suggest we find buyers for the two top wage
earners at the club? Do you think Mokoena on £32K a week is going to move if
the PST was lucky enough to convince creditors to agree to a CVA? Fuck me tip
of the iceberg. No way he’s going to give up his contract. TBH? Move for less
money?
Unless the club is liquidated and all the player registrations
are given to the PFA give me one answer how the PST bid can succeed?
How will your first escrow account donation of £100 make a
difference if the club survives another CVA?
If you can’t get Mokoena and TBH off the books how quickly
will your money go? Say the PST get support for a million? The law is in favour
of the players.
Lets state fact for fact. If you’re stupid enough to believe
the PST can ever gain access to the club without Chanrai riding in on a white
horse then more fool you. It won’t ever happen period.
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