“Morning all, sorry for the late reply but I'm pleased to see that it spouted some decent debate. Oscar, to answer your question and paraphrase my previous.....during late-modernity (the era we are no now), the need to derive pleasure from legitimate means such as recreation/sport, is directly proportionate the frustration and alientation endured during the working week. Basically sport provides a cathartic outlay, thats what I found during my research in Consett (which incidentally doesn't have any sport, so everyone stays in WMC's shooting darts at Thatcher's picture, but did have a thriving sporting scene prior to the 80's).

If any of you are interested, I'm currently working on a doctoral thesis which goes the other way at how pleasure can be derived when no work is available. The simple answer for is criminal deviance and delinquency, commonly in the form of joyriding, graffiti; and a new one of urban dog breeding for fighting purposes. Again, any of this sound familiar in post-industrial Scunthorpe.

In other words, locations of strong employment have strong sporting connections......those that don't have strong criminal elements.”

“For all this talk of sociological factors influencing crowds, it remains nothing but talk until the club takes it upon itself to aggressively market itself. To my knowledge, this has never happened (the ideal time was when we won the league, but it didn't happen), so we can theorise as much as we want but nothing will be proved or disproved until the club has had a serious crack at appealing to ALL sections of our community, in a way that is visible to all (i.e. not just using channels that will only be seen by people already following the club). There's nothing to be gained by sitting on our hands and adopting a "well, nobody's interested anyway" attitude, and it's quite offensive to those of us that are interested. If, as Wharton claims, it really doesn't make much of a difference, then at least the club have tried to stimulate interest and we can carry on knowing that the club have done the best by the team and current supporters.”

“Derek - while you're at it, google misogynist.

BERK.”

“Straight answer as to where I found the population of North Lincolnshire to be 152,000?

I posted the link below for the 2001 cencus - he asked where the figure came from so I replied.

As for football - I dont see any mention of the game on this thread at all...Ive over 15,000 QUALITY posts on football on Iron Bru...be my guest to google 1500club or use a search option on Iron Bru.

Derek? DEREK? How come all the clowns sound like the same person/alternating moniker?

Up the Iron!”

“Well done 1500 club, you obviously don.t know much about football but credit to you, you can certainly hide it.
You've not given Hector McHammy a straight answer, Chris the student totally disagreed with you but you turned it around to make it sound the complete opposite and O'Moggie has caught you out about 5 times but you just call him names to cover it.
So you can turn any argument in your own favour, make anyones idea sound as if it's your own and you know nothing about football - you must be a woman.”

“McHammy - well done on the nautical knowledge...it did little to cover your lack of a response to the 152,000 population cenus.

Boat with no sails it is then.

Oscar - all you need to take onboard, is '1500club is dead right', in that students resume....that and if the club actually made some effort worth backing, the town WOULD turn out for the side. The reason that crowds are low have more to do with player sales, an air of cheapness around GP and a lack of soul at the club....alongside hiked admission fees and poor marketing.

I'll leave you chaps to lick your monitors whilst dreaming up new ways of labeling my ilk as 'negative'...I'm off for a pot of tea and will be back to answer any further queries on SUFC in an hour.

Up the Iron!”

“Dear Oscar please please admit for your own good its the Zebras that you really look out for on a Saturday, and stop winding 1500 club up he can't help it, its all he knows watching poor old Scunny. You should pity him !”

“Thanks for your contribution Chris, I couldn't have put it better myself.
Correct me if I've misunderstood you, but you seem to be saying that with outside forces affecting the local population like lack of work, the ecconomy etc etc, people, basically can't be bothered to go to matches, regardless of what ambition the club has or doesn't have.
I hope I understood you correctly.”

“Just to add to the population vs size/ambition of club argument. The example I like to use is Burnley, in 2010 the population of Burnley was approx 73,000. Funnily enough I seem to remember they had a season in the Premiership recently.

I don`t see many people labelling them as a small club, just shows what can be achieved with a bit of ambition”

“'Boat with no sails' !

Boats don't have sails they have oars, ships and yaughts have sails. Hence rowing boat and sailing ship, not sailing boat.

Think you are paddling without your oars 1500 club”