August 8th 1980.

[Aubrey Maturin]

Found this image elsewhere and was somewhat surprised at the lack of crowds.   

Only 20000 of the world's most loyal greatest supporters in attendance at Celtic Park.  Surely they're not a bunch of massive glory hunters.

On another note look at the Aberdeen and Dundee Utd line ups. Some magnificent players.

[naegoodinthedark]

Clydebank and Shire in the first division!

[Alert Mongoose]

Considering the team we had, Utd's attendance is pretty poor.

Hopefully St Mirren's result didn't affect the telephone exchange back then.

Haven't Falkirk fans suffered enough?

Edited August 7, 2022 by Alert Mongoose

[tamthebam]

Just now, naegoodinthedark said:

Clydebank and Shire in the first division!

Shire had been runners up to Division 2 winners Falkirk the season before

I always felt the Bankies have been airbrushed out of history, they were in the Premier Division twice and were a respectable Division 1 side for most of their history. It was only towards the end that things weren't so good 

[Doctor Sanchez]

What a St Mirren team that was...  

[BFTD]

My old work moved into a new warehouse and I was asked to replace the doormat, which had a few copies of the Falkirk Herald from this era stuffed underneath. The back page of one had a report of the Shire walloping Falkirk 4-0 at Brockville.

Seems like a fun day in the second tier. Ayr putting five past Motherwell seems a bit fantastical now, Falkirk shipping five at home to Dumbo, and Hamilton 9 Berwick 1  

Three sides out of the league altogether, for one reason or another.

Edit: looked it up and it was Falkirk 0 East Stirlingshire 3 at Brockville on New Years' Day 1982. The Herald seemed fairly incredulous about it even back then.

Who doesn't change their doormat in 25 years, BTW? Manky.

Edited August 7, 2022 by BFTD

[Lurkst]

1 hour ago, Tynie Pecksniff said:

Found this image elsewhere and was somewhat surprised at the lack of crowds.   

Only 20000 of the world's most loyal greatest supporters in attendance at Celtic Park.  Surely they're not a bunch of massive glory hunters.

On another note look at the Aberdeen and Dundee Utd line ups. Some magnificent players.

IIRC Scotsport moved to a Saturday night that season and Sportscene switched to Sunday. I think Jock Brown moved from BBC radio commentary to STV then as well.

Re crowds, the season before there were more fans at both Killie v Rangers games at Rugby Park than at Ibrox.

 

 

Edited August 7, 2022 by Lurkst

[Sergeant Wilson]

One of Ernie McGarr's last games for Airdrie. Even then he got signed by Berwick when he left. I was convinced he would have qualified as registered blind by then.

I thought it was Monday that scores for Rangers.

[Jacksgranda]

2 hours ago, naegoodinthedark said:

Clydebank and Shire in the first division!

And Stirling Albion and Berwick.

Although there were only 3 divisions in those days.

[Jinky67]

2 hours ago, Tynie Pecksniff said:

Found this image elsewhere and was somewhat surprised at the lack of crowds.   

Only 20000 of the world's most loyal greatest supporters in attendance at Celtic Park.  Surely they're not a bunch of massive glory hunters.

On another note look at the Aberdeen and Dundee Utd line ups. Some magnificent players.

Attendances went up dramatically after Fergus redeveloped in the 90’s ironically in a time when we were absolute dugshite so kinda goes against the glory hunting logic.

 

[Mark Connolly]

1 minute ago, Jinky67 said:

Attendances went up dramatically after the Kellys stopped doing the counting in the 90’s

 

FTFY

[Jinky67]

1 minute ago, Mark Connolly said:

FTFY

There is some truth in that too

[Wee Jock Poopong McPlop]

2 hours ago, Doctor Sanchez said:

What a St Mirren team that was...  

We finished 4th in the league. We’d been 3rd the season before. 

[bennett]

A draw against Airdrie, poor show Rangers. 

 

Morten in the premier league, shocker.

Didn't celtic used to regularly have huge crowds and small attendances back then?

[pozbaird]

6 minutes ago, bennett said:

A draw against Airdrie, poor show Rangers. 

Decent result, when your team selection is limited to eleven Scottish proddies.

[Swami]

Maybe Celtic were announcing actual attendances then instead of the made-up shite that they do these days. Last couple of times I’ve been at Celtic Park there haven’t been many more than 20000 there. 

[Sergeant Wilson]

17 minutes ago, Swami said:

Maybe Celtic were announcing actual attendances then instead of the made-up shite that they do these days. Last couple of times I’ve been at Celtic Park there haven’t been many more than 20000 there. 

Football crime has changed over the years.

Clubs used to publish low attendance and keep the cash from the excess, unaccounted crowd for themselves.

Now, they publish higher than actual attendance to launder money for gangsters.

It really is the people's game!

[Ayrshire Analytica]

That Ayr score and crowd...

When I was a teenager, I would watch any fitba VHS I could find, as well as reading old annuals/season reviews.  

I mind reading a Celtic review from a season in the 80's when Aberdeen pipped Celtic to the league and Scottish Cup (1984).  

I distinctly remember seeing that Celtic drew only 11,000 to a home game against St. Mirren, presumably soon after losing to Aberdeen in the league.

Rangers, in the same era, had even less fans than that in attendance sometimes, as they couldn't compete for the title.

 

[Dirty Sanchez]

There was general decline nearly everywhere in the 1980s, a feature of which was that the gap between the Old Firm's crowds and everyone else was a fraction of what it is now.

I can remember when Ibrox would be more than half empty for most games, with modest away supports being given the whole of the Broomloan Rear stand, and stuff like that, because there were no home fans to fill the seats anyway.

The Hibs crowd in that newspaper cutting was nothing out of the ordinary for the early 80s either. They were routinely playing to gates like that even when they were back in the Premier.

'The Roar of the Crowd' by David Ross is a good read about the history of crowds in Scotland, and also touches on the dicussion above about the comical under reporting of crowds when it suited. There's a section in the book that gives the average attendances for every team for every season from 1900 to whenever the book came out, which is an eye opener as to how things change.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Roar-Crowd-Following-Scottish-Football/dp/1902831837

I'm not David Ross, btw.

 

[Monkey Tennis]

8 hours ago, Dirty Sanchez said:

There was general decline nearly everywhere in the 1980s, a feature of which was that the gap between the Old Firm's crowds and everyone else was a fraction of what it is now.

I can remember when Ibrox would be more than half empty for most games, with modest away supports being given the whole of the Broomloan Rear stand, and stuff like that, because there were no home fans to fill the seats anyway.

The Hibs crowd in that newspaper cutting was nothing out of the ordinary for the early 80s either. They were routinely playing to gates like that even when they were back in the Premier.

'The Roar of the Crowd' by David Ross is a good read about the history of crowds in Scotland, and also touches on the dicussion above about the comical under reporting of crowds when it suited. There's a section in the book that gives the average attendances for every team for every season from 1900 to whenever the book came out, which is an eye opener as to how things change.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Roar-Crowd-Following-Scottish-Football/dp/1902831837

I'm not David Ross, btw.

 

The bit that strikes me from that section of the Ross book is the year in the early 50's when Celtic's average attendance was double the size of Queens '.

Nowadays, Celtic would average 40-50 times as many as we'd get.