I'm an exile and I only attend a handful of away games a season but i was wondering why our away numbers have dropped off so much in recent years. We only had 190 odd at Crewe, whereas most were predicting 400 or so. I've noticed our numbers have declined a lot. Our home crowds are holding up and are around the top half of the division but we must take one of the lowest percentages of home crowd to away in the division (discounting when we play Carlisle and York)

Wondering why this is. Obviously, Hartlepool has never been the richest place in England and the transport links are crap, the team have done bugger all in recent years so maybe I've just answered my own question, but do you think our away support will get back up to the decent levels we had not so long ago if we have a successful team or is the local outlook deteriorating so much that this looks unlikely to ever get back up to previous levels.

Predicting 400 for a Tuesday night game not far from Stoke.... really?

I'm not sure the numbers have dropped off, and they obviously always increase if we're having a good season but I'd say the following on Tuesday was pretty bog standard for a midweek game.

As you indicate, you've answered your own questions but fundamentally, it's probable due to us being so shite for the past 10 years.

Like you I get to half a dozen or so away games year and historically, whether we've been poor or not has never bothered me that much as I'd 'treasure' the games I could get to. That all changed under Ronnie Moore and found myself being so bored that I just didn't know why I was bothering.

Of course, it's also bloody expensive to go away, never mind a time suck when I'm sure we've all got home lives to balance out as well.

Fans loyalty will only stretch so far.

Take into consideration how shite we been for a few years and the amount off southern teams in league two im not surprised our away support has dropped off.
Having said that we nearly always have 100+ at the long distance games.

Promotion to league One and it will be back to the big followings of the good old days when we had one of the best away support based on percentage of our home crowds.
I can remember about 16 years ago we averaged over 500 for the 23 games which included trips to plymouth Torquay n exeter.
And that was on 3000 home crowds.


Back to the original post.
200 at crewe is a decent following for a night game.

Agree with the replies that 200 is decent for a Tuesday night also taking into account the Corner Flag didn't put a bus on too.

Tuesday away matches don't really intrest me anymore, I haven't done one since we got spanked 5-0 by Preston a few year back.

Our closest away game is now 80 odd miles away. When teams like darlo, York, halifax and Rochdale come back into our league away crowds will be boosted a lot. Our crowds away have died of quite a lot but that's probobly down to watching utter rubbish and you can still compare it to most clubs in this league even when were rubbish. But if we are challenging at the top not many teams in this league are capable of taking 2500-3000 like we are apart from the pompeys and plymouths.

If we don't take 4,000 to Yeovil next month I'm not going again.

well why dont you count the number of crewe fans that come to hartlepool on a tuesday night in the reverse fixture? Take the 0 off the end and i bet thats roughly the number of crewe supporters occupying the rink end

If you look at the numbers we take away compared to what people bring to pools and baring the odd few like Portsmouth and Luton then you will see pools come out as one of the best. A couple of years ago I remember seeing something about the average distance the average fan travels over the course of the season and again pools come out as one of the best.

Fetish, Fireball and Newton - The Bunker dream team.