August 2011 Archives

First of all I've been thinking for the past couple of days what to write in this blog, I've only written a blog once before as part of my coursework during my first year at university but being a typical student at the time I left the work till the last minute and made up a three month blog in about an hour. So I thought I'd vaguely talk about the current dismay at the ticket pricing for Huddersfield Town fans to visit Sheffield United's Brammell Lane. I'm not going to talk about it too much as it has been brilliant put by both fellow bloggers Marco and Luke so its really a hard act to follow.

The boycott of the game by Town fans is looking strong with the last time of looking at the Down At The Mac thread it was over £7000 in total (please correct me if I'm wrong). I agree it is wrong and a huge difference between Bury fans paying £14 and Town fans being asked to pay £28.50 to sit in the exact same seats but it seems these days that categorizing games for the visits of the supposed "bigger teams" is favoured rather than charging the same all across the board which would be fairer to everyone. If fans choose to go or not that is their choice and we should respect that but it seems as though clubs are playing on fans loyalty. Attending away matches myself I find myself roughly spending between £40-£50 per away match when you count together the ticket price, travel, food, drink and a programme. I seem to remember a similar boycott a few years ago when Oldham Athletic hiked their prices up when we were due to visit Boundary Park which lead to many Town fans not making the short trip and if I remember rightly Town won 3-0 that day!

With the early season games coming thick and fast, us Town fans are anxiously awaiting the local games. In recent seasons we have been starved by the few and far between northern clashes unless you count our annual festive cracker at Carlisle! This season we meet up with a few old friends like Preston, Bury, Scunthorpe and Chesterfield amongst others but arguably the biggest game of the local matches is the Blades.


The away tie is first up and tickets are now on sale but something is not as it should be. Normally sites like Down At The Mac and Twitter would be full of people sat sweating over their keyboards with worry about ticket availability. Even with the generous allocation people would be busy intimidating their season ticket holder pals into parting with their season ticket reference number.


The Blades generosity stopped with the allocation when they announced ticket prices were to be £28.50. This has angered Town fans and some have pledged to not attend in protest or because it's on a Tuesday night and it's a hassle to get to night games. For many like myself it's a bit of a combination of the two to be honest.

Attending football matches is an expensive business. If it were any cheaper, I'd go to more. There have been questions raised by Huddersfield Town fans (reasonably so, I have to say) about being charged double the amount to see their team at an away ground than other teams are. I wanted to know how this would tally out, in two different ways.

Firstly, and most importantly, I want to see how much it would cost to attend all 46 games a team plays this season. In an ideal world, it would cost every fan the same. Obviously, this is not an ideal world, but I am very interested to see if there are any clubs that are either benefiting from any features (small attendance, remoteness of home town) or hamstrung by any (size of city, fanbase, proximity to other teams), and how big a disparity there is in watching League One football.

I've been in contact with a number of clubs to find out ticket prices, and used the guidance the clubs offer themselves for others, for away fans, keeping constant in that I was always looking for the 'cheapest' ticket that I could, as a 29 year old man, buy for the game if I paid in advance (though obviously some games are pay on the gate). I've balanced these with the cheapest season tickets I could buy for the home games.

Huddersfield Town fans have their say on HTAFC, League I and lower league football.