Thursday 27 November 2008

Shimizu S-Pulse: A Team on the GROW

With our last home game of the season heading for a near sell out, I decided to have a look at our average crowd for this year. I found out something pretty interesting which deserves to be noted.

2008 has borne S-Pulse's highest average home gate since 1995!!!

This season we have registered our highest average crowd
since the initial J. League boom subsided back in the mid nighties. It even tops seasons such as 2003 where bumper 30000 plus crowds at Ecopa or The Kokuritsu distorted the average number found at Nihondaira each week.
Another 19000 plus crowd packs in for the defeat of Gamba Osaka

Well this year, Nihondaira was on average 80% full for every single game.
That deserves a massive OTSUKARESAMA to all our wonderful, and growing! band of S-Pulse fanatics! Not only to us, but also the club, whose tireless efforts within the local community to stregthen ties and foster a new generation of supporters is continuing to bare fruit.

On the pitch, the first third of 2008 especially was rather hit and miss, but despite that, on the terraces we've outdone the last TWELVE seasons. That is something we can all be rightly proud of!

Why not bring a friend to a game or three next year, and let's top it again in 2009!

2 comments:

Mike Tuckerman said...

I'm sure if the club ever decided to instigate a "One person, one seat" policy they could draw pretty close to 20,000 crowds every game.

As it is the fact that so many people dubiously reserve extra seats for their personal belongings contributes to the fact that Nihondaira always looks set to burst at the seams even when it's one or two thousand people short of capacity.

Barry said...

Oh, seriously, don't get me started on that! It winds me right up seeing bags, coats, life-size Palchans etc taking up seats which then causes hundreds of people to sit or stand in the gangways.

I don't doubt for a moment tomorrow will be any different, either. To be fair, I have in the past seen staff going round making people move up or move bags etc, but it's a drop in the ocean.

Nihondaira is a great size for us, but they need to add another couple of thousand seats in for people's bags!