FOLLOWING THE SALTMEN

As I was at a bit of a loose end I got to wondering whether the club’s move to the UhlSport Hellenic League had any impact on the size of the crowds attending games at Kingys.

This season we have some significant distances to travel for away games. And it’s just as far for our opponents to travel when they make the return trip to Kingys! Being on the northern edge of the Hellenic League’s catchment area means our furthest opponents are Wantage at 76 miles from home – 18 miles further away than our furthest old oppos in the Midland Football League (MFL). Clearly, increased travelling distances make it more difficult for supporters to travel to games and fewer travelling supporters would mean lower crowds. So I decided to compare attendances between this season and last to determine whether my hypotheses were right.

I took the attendance figures from the first 5 home league games of this season and compared them with the first 5 from 2023/2024 in the MFL. I also looked at the distances travelled by the relative visiting teams. The results, detailed in the table below, surprised me.

• * Please substitute the word Crawley for Cradley. Autocorrect eh!!

The first thing I noticed was the average attendance figures for both periods are identical at 228. On the face of it, the league switch has had no impact. But that’s far from the whole story. Last season’s figures include visits from both Cradley and Bilston, both clubs with relatively large away followings. This season we have not yet seen large numbers of visiting supporters – yet the attendance figures are right up there with 2023/2024. This strongly suggests that the underlying number of Spa fans attending home games has increased, no doubt inspired by the late season events which saw Spa only 8 minutes away from promotion to Step 5.

Clearly, the sample size of just 5 games is too small to draw any firm conclusions and it will be interesting to repeat the exercise later in the season. In the meantime I would suggest the attendance figures so far are quite encouraging.

Keep spreading the word.

Cheers

Steve