Jump to content

Do You Support Your Local Team?


Recommended Posts

8 minutes ago, Leith Green said:

There are plenty of people in Fife, Livi, East Lothian, Borders etc that support Hibs and Hearts - much of it because so many people cant afford a family home here and move out. A bit like there are a lot of Spurs fans in places like Essex?

I cant see people having any animosity over that - its not even in the same galaxy as people choosing to support one of the gruesome twosome.

I grew up in Essex and my wee English team is Southend United. I live in New Mexico so the Shire aren't really my local team, but my Dad and his Dad followed the Shire so I do too. Two sides, both non-league now. What a fucking glory hunter I am.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

9 minutes ago, Aim Here said:

I did the research. If everybody supported their local team, as per the OP, Hibs and Hearts would be the gruesome twosome.

And since it might be on-topic for this thread, here's the population of Scotland divvied up by who their nearest league teams are, as far as the postcode database and census can be ascertained (this is a couple of years old, so Brechin is there and Kelty isn't, but that probably doesn't make a huge difference. Edinburgh City moving back to Meadowbank might, though).

LocalTeams.thumb.png.696a9d66c5378446b2b6176bb0f0e4f6.png

ken what, in some ways it would be nice to have grown up in a wee town next to a shitey east of scotland or junior club with a staggerable social club - as they said on AVFTT, the pies at Haddinton are apparently historic !!!

Edited by Leith Green
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Ross County wasn't ever my local team. From 0 to 6 it was Caledonian, then it'd be Nairn County after that. For league team it'd be Aberdeen. But as a kid my best friend's dad played pipes at the Dingwall British Legion & so he went to Ross County games because he had pals there, and as football starved kids we'd have gone to any games we could, including Inverness Welfare League games.

And then you just get in the habit and that's it until nearly 30 years later & the club appoint a racist Clown manager. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

13 minutes ago, Aim Here said:

I did the research. If everybody supported their local team, as per the OP, Hibs and Hearts would be the gruesome twosome.

And since it might be on-topic for this thread, here's the population of Scotland divvied up by who their nearest league teams are, as far as the postcode database and census can be ascertained (this is a couple of years old, so Brechin is there and Kelty isn't, but that probably doesn't make a huge difference. Edinburgh City moving back to Meadowbank might, though).

LocalTeams.thumb.png.696a9d66c5378446b2b6176bb0f0e4f6.png

Appreciate the capacity number is relatively superfluous to the point of the table but that capacity number for us is about a decade out of date! Capacity of Palmerston has been 8,690 for years after they re-opened the Terregles Street Terrace.

EDITED to add - Elgin City being the nearest club for 164,000 people is an incredible stat. Surely that can't be right? It's in the middle of bloody nowhere and the nearest two significant sized locations (Inverness and Aberdeen) have their own clubs.

Edited by Skyline Drifter
Link to comment
Share on other sites

14 minutes ago, Aim Here said:

I did the research. If everybody supported their local team, as per the OP, Hibs and Hearts would be the gruesome twosome.

And since it might be on-topic for this thread, here's the population of Scotland divvied up by who their nearest league teams are, as far as the postcode database and census can be ascertained (this is a couple of years old, so Brechin is there and Kelty isn't, but that probably doesn't make a huge difference. Edinburgh City moving back to Meadowbank might, though).

LocalTeams.thumb.png.696a9d66c5378446b2b6176bb0f0e4f6.png

How can United have 26,000 more 'locals' than Dundee?? The stadiums are literally across the road from one another

Link to comment
Share on other sites

8 minutes ago, Ralphies_Chip said:

How can United have 26,000 more 'locals' than Dundee?? The stadiums are literally across the road from one another

Presumably the part of Dundee who live slightly nearer Tannadice than Dens contains more people. That's entirely believable but as noted above I'd love to know where these 164,000 people for whom Elgin City is their nearest club are hiding? Its possibly the nearest club for Orkney and Shetland but that's still only about 45,000 people.

Edit - Had a bigger look. Elgin itself has a population of almost 25,000 (it's bigger than I thought). It's also the nearest senior club for the likes of Lossiemouth (7,870), Forres (10,100), Buckie (8,760). It will be nearest for the Shetland and Orkney Isles. It's probably also closer for the very North of Scotland as the crow flies than Ross County are although it's clearly a much more awkward journey. Anything from Brora and North I'd guess so the likes of Wick and Thurso and sundry other wee places probably add another 20,000. Catchment will run South of Huntly (5,000) too. I guess it all adds up but it's still an amazing stat.

Edited by Skyline Drifter
Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 minutes ago, Ralphies_Chip said:

How can United have 26,000 more 'locals' than Dundee?? The stadiums are literally across the road from one another

I'd assume it's the areas beyond. 

I was surprised about the Hearts and Hibs figures as well but thinking about it they'll have East Lothian,  Midlothian which is a bit of a Hearts stronghold and the Borders.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

43 minutes ago, Ralphies_Chip said:

How can United have 26,000 more 'locals' than Dundee?? The stadiums are literally across the road from one another

Draw a line between the two centre circles. Find the midpoint of that line and draw a line perpendicular to that line, passing through the midpoint. People on one side of that line are closer to Dens, people on the other side are closer to Tannadice. Everybody in Dundee is on one or other side of that line. It's just geometric happenstance that the line is drawn so that more people are on the United side than the Dundee side. You probably have a good idea as to which of Dens Park or Tannadice you're closer to.

The fact that the two stadia are close together just makes it easier for there to be an imbalance. If there were two stadiums next to each other on the edge of town (similar to Macdiarmid Park's location in Perth, say), it's possible that you could have one stadium closer to ALL Dundee residents than the other.

Edited by Aim Here
Link to comment
Share on other sites

12 minutes ago, Skyline Drifter said:

Presumably the part of Dundee who live slightly nearer Tannadice than Dens contains more people. That's entirely believable but as noted above I'd love to know where these 164,000 people for whom Elgin City is their nearest club are hiding? Its possibly the nearest club for Orkney and Shetland but that's still only about 45,000 people.

There might be an issue in my methodology.

The census only has consolidated postcodes - they don't give you the population per postcode, but for a bunch of postcodes. I had to just guess which point on the map was associated with this bundle of postcodes, so I chose to take the average point. It might be that there's a lot of people in one IV postcode that's part of, say, Inverness proper, that's mixed in with big rural postcodes nearer Elgin and my averaging process accidentally shifts a bunch of locals of ICT into Elgin. I'm not sure how I could fix that, short of actually breaking into the Public Records Office and stealing the unpublished census data.

Then again, it could just be Elgin hoovering up people from ton of nearby towns in the Highlands, Grampian and Northern Isles.

Edited by Aim Here
Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 minutes ago, Aim Here said:

There might be an issue in my methodology.

The census only has consolidated postcodes - they don't give you the population per postcode, but for a bunch of postcodes. I had to just guess which point on the map was associated with this bundle of postcodes, so I chose to take the average point. It might be that there's a lot of people in one IV postcode that's part of, say, Inverness proper, that's mixed in with big rural postcodes nearer Elgin and my averaging process accidentally shifts a bunch of locals of ICT into Elgin. I'm not sure how I could fix that, short of actually breaking into the Public Records Office and stealing the unpublished census data.

Then again, it could just be Elgin hoovering up people from ton of nearby towns in the Highlands, Grampian and Northern Isles.

Yeah, I already edited the post you quoted after looking at it in more detail. I suspect it's a bit of both but Elgin is bigger than I thought.

I didn't realise you actually made up the table yourself. I assumed it was sourced somewhere. Can you confirm then if it's a "crow flies" table? I presume it is. The inclusion of the Shetlands and Orkney in Elgin's numbers, plus presumably the Thurso / Wick / John O'groats type places is a little farcical. It may be technically correct but given these people would have to make a road trip past Dingwall and Inverness to get to Elgin it's nonsensical.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

17 minutes ago, Skyline Drifter said:

Yeah, I already edited the post you quoted after looking at it in more detail. I suspect it's a bit of both but Elgin is bigger than I thought.

I didn't realise you actually made up the table yourself. I assumed it was sourced somewhere. Can you confirm then if it's a "crow flies" table? I presume it is. The inclusion of the Shetlands and Orkney in Elgin's numbers, plus presumably the Thurso / Wick / John O'groats type places is a little farcical. It may be technically correct but given these people would have to make a road trip past Dingwall and Inverness to get to Elgin it's nonsensical.

Yeah, it's 'crow flies' numbers. I just took coordinates of the centre circles for the various grounds, took the coordinates for the postcodes, averaged the positions and applied populations to them per the census, and then worked out the distance from some longitude/latitude->distance formula. Taking into account travel times/distances would be far more work than it's worth!

Besides, I think the fact that it scientifically proves beyond reasonable doubt that Elgin City has a moral claim to more Scottish football fans than Rangers is more than ample justification for the table as-is.

Edited by Aim Here
Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 hours ago, Kyle Reese said:


Lol. No idea, I didn't even know he had a book. The old physio from the time Alan Rae, has a pretty decent autobiography. Again quite a unique perspective: Hands on Hearts.

I thought it was "Hands Off Hibs". Or is that something else?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, Skyline Drifter said:

Presumably the part of Dundee who live slightly nearer Tannadice than Dens contains more people. That's entirely believable but as noted above I'd love to know where these 164,000 people for whom Elgin City is their nearest club are hiding? Its possibly the nearest club for Orkney and Shetland but that's still only about 45,000 people.

Edit - Had a bigger look. Elgin itself has a population of almost 25,000 (it's bigger than I thought). It's also the nearest senior club for the likes of Lossiemouth (7,870), Forres (10,100), Buckie (8,760). It will be nearest for the Shetland and Orkney Isles. It's probably also closer for the very North of Scotland as the crow flies than Ross County are although it's clearly a much more awkward journey. Anything from Brora and North I'd guess so the likes of Wick and Thurso and sundry other wee places probably add another 20,000. Catchment will run South of Huntly (5,000) too. I guess it all adds up but it's still an amazing stat.

Lossie, Forres, and Buckie are all senior clubs...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

5 hours ago, AJF said:

It's hard to say how much influence that had on things. I don't recall ever having any tendency to support anyone other than Rangers, so I don't know if things would've been different had they not been successful. If Rangers happened to be rubbish, would I have switched allegiances to Livi when they were established here? I couldn't even guess.

I just remember going into Primary 1 fully believing Rangers were the best team in the world, and I think I'd probably have thought that regardless of who I was brought up to support. Things may have changed further down the line as I matured and took more of an interest in it, but it's impossible to say.

I remember Livi were doing a scheme around the same time I was in Primary 1 where they'd send players into schools to talk about the team and give away free tickets. I was sat in the front row starry eyed at the sight of Marvin Andrews giving a presentation about Livi. 

A big part of us missing a recent generation was that they'd completely stopped that. Only recently I'd found out they've started it again over the last 2-3 years. I know Bartley has been into my old primary a lot of times, so hopefully that can grab us a few more local fans that we might end up missing out on.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

11 minutes ago, ATLIS said:

I remember Livi were doing a scheme around the same time I was in Primary 1 where they'd send players into schools to talk about the team and give away free tickets. I was sat in the front row starry eyed at the sight of Marvin Andrews giving a presentation about Livi. 

A big part of us missing a recent generation was that they'd completely stopped that. Only recently I'd found out they've started it again over the last 2-3 years. I know Bartley has been into my old primary a lot of times, so hopefully that can grab us a few more local fans that we might end up missing out on.

I know I'm biased but I'll never see Livi as a real club.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 hours ago, Aim Here said:

Draw a line between the two centre circles. Find the midpoint of that line and draw a line perpendicular to that line, passing through the midpoint. People on one side of that line are closer to Dens, people on the other side are closer to Tannadice. Everybody in Dundee is on one or other side of that line. It's just geometric happenstance that the line is drawn so that more people are on the United side than the Dundee side. You probably have a good idea as to which of Dens Park or Tannadice you're closer to.

The fact that the two stadia are close together just makes it easier for there to be an imbalance. If there were two stadiums next to each other on the edge of town (similar to Macdiarmid Park's location in Perth, say), it's possible that you could have one stadium closer to ALL Dundee residents than the other.

They are almost exactly as far north as each other so it's basically going to be a north south line heading down to roughly the station.

It will cut through the most densely populated bit of the city so there are going to be quite a few people who live in flats which should have a dark blue end and a tangerine end.

The fact that so many people are on the border line means your postcode method is even more prone to error

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

28 minutes ago, ATLIS said:

I remember Livi were doing a scheme around the same time I was in Primary 1 where they'd send players into schools to talk about the team and give away free tickets. I was sat in the front row starry eyed at the sight of Marvin Andrews giving a presentation about Livi. 

A big part of us missing a recent generation was that they'd completely stopped that. Only recently I'd found out they've started it again over the last 2-3 years. I know Bartley has been into my old primary a lot of times, so hopefully that can grab us a few more local fans that we might end up missing out on.

I don’t remember my school getting any players attending but we certainly got the free tickets handed out but it didn’t seem to last very long, which is understandable.

If I had to guess that would’ve been around 1999 as I remember attending a Livi vs Clyde match which would’ve likely come in the season they won the old second division so I think I’d have been in primary 5 at the time. 

My dad and I did have Livingston season tickets their first season in the Premier League (partly due to the amazingly affordable prices) and went along when we weren’t at Rangers matches but it never really stuck after that season.

Edited by AJF
Link to comment
Share on other sites

3 hours ago, Skyline Drifter said:

Presumably the part of Dundee who live slightly nearer Tannadice than Dens contains more people. That's entirely believable but as noted above I'd love to know where these 164,000 people for whom Elgin City is their nearest club are hiding? Its possibly the nearest club for Orkney and Shetland but that's still only about 45,000 people.

Edit - Had a bigger look. Elgin itself has a population of almost 25,000 (it's bigger than I thought). It's also the nearest senior club for the likes of Lossiemouth (7,870), Forres (10,100), Buckie (8,760). It will be nearest for the Shetland and Orkney Isles. It's probably also closer for the very North of Scotland as the crow flies than Ross County are although it's clearly a much more awkward journey. Anything from Brora and North I'd guess so the likes of Wick and Thurso and sundry other wee places probably add another 20,000. Catchment will run South of Huntly (5,000) too. I guess it all adds up but it's still an amazing stat.

Elgin City is not the nearest senior club for the likes of Lossiemouth, Forres or Buckie.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

Loading...
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...