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Article about Scottish vs Norwegian supporter culture


Sindre

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Hello!

My name is Sindre Leganger and I work as journalist for Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten. I'm writing about the supporter culture for our national team. We haven't qualified for a championship since 2000, and the support for our team is currently not strong. However - If I've understood correctly, Scotland has not qualified for a championship since 1998 (when we were in the same group!). Yet the Tartan Army stands strong. I'm trying to understand why that is. What are you guys doing right, that we are doing wrong? Who should I talk to? Can you help me with contact information?

Hope hear from you, and have a great day!

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FYI Sindre, you can see the number of tickets we were allocated for our last ten away games here...

https://www.scottishfa.co.uk/scotland/supporters-tickets/scotland-supporters-club-membership/ssc-loyalty-points/

Of the three away games open to all members we probably did not fill the allocation of two of them (Gibraltar & Italy).   While there is still a culture for travel, filling home stadia is rare these days as there's been less for the population at large to get excited about, I'd say.

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2 hours ago, ceudmilefailte said:

Doubt if many on here would say the Tartan Army stands strong. Maybe a couple of thousand, hardly an army. we are in much the same position as Norway regards support for the national team.

I think you're completely wrong, there are way more people travelling to away games than there were 20 years ago, I'd also say that on balance home crowds are also up.

To give you a few examples, we played France in a friendly in St Etienne in November 1997, fair enough it was arranged at fairly short notice but we took 250 max.  In 1999 our last game in the group was at home to Lithuania.  It was something of a dead rubber as we could finish nothing other than second in the group and qualify for the playoffs.  The attendance was 22,059 and that was for a game that kicked off at 3pm on a Saturday.   A week later we drew England out as play off opponents.  For the second leg we couldn't sell out our allocation of - from memory - 8000.  I could go on.

All of these would be completely unthinkable these days. 

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25 minutes ago, Scotland Ever More said:

Did we really struggle to sell out Wembley in 99??

 

Yes, I think we sent a few hundred back.  It was still the Travel club in those days and they would only sell tickets to members but I'm pretty sure there were more members than our allocation. 

Edited by aaid
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21 hours ago, ceudmilefailte said:

Doubt if many on here would say the Tartan Army stands strong. Maybe a couple of thousand, hardly an army. we are in much the same position as Norway regards support for the national team.

:blink: Norway's average home attendance for the World Cup qualifiers was 13,200. Less than half their stadium capacity.

 

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Talk in the 78 programme thread of which nations have declined as much as Scotland in last 40 years in international football, Hungary and Austria were both mentioned.

If you take last 20 years Norway are very good comparison.

When they played France 98 they beat Brazil last match to qualify for last 16. At the time they had players of quality of Henning Berg, Leonhardson, Ole Solskjaer and Tore Andre Flo.

They also made euro 2000 but went out in group stages. Nothing since although I think they'll qualify for next euros as they have some decent young players coming through now.

Similar to Scotland in that they've seen their neighbours like Denmark and Sweden qualify for plenty of tournaments in that period. Even Iceland are now lording it.

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17 hours ago, aaid said:

Yes, I think we sent a few hundred back.  It was still the Travel club in those days and they would only sell tickets to members but I'm pretty sure there were more members than our allocation. 

I think we sold all our allocation but there were definitely ticket holders who decided not to travel after the home defeat

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1 minute ago, Catchart Circle said:

I think we sold all our allocation but there were definitely ticket holders who decided not to travel after the home defeat

That's not how I remember it, there was a bit of criticism at the time of the SFA for sending tickets back rather than selling them to non-STC members.    You're right on your second point though.

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22 hours ago, Grim Jim said:

FYI Sindre, you can see the number of tickets we were allocated for our last ten away games here...

https://www.scottishfa.co.uk/scotland/supporters-tickets/scotland-supporters-club-membership/ssc-loyalty-points/

Of the three away games open to all members we probably did not fill the allocation of two of them (Gibraltar & Italy).   While there is still a culture for travel, filling home stadia is rare these days as there's been less for the population at large to get excited about, I'd say.

 

Like every nation, the UEFA week of football has taken a bit hit to our home crowds. Know of around 15 people who would go to games on Saturdays but wouldn't bother with games on Thursday, Friday, Monday and Tuesday nights.

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I did a quick graph on average home attendances over the last 20 years.  It's worth noting that for France 1998 and Euro 2000, Hampden was unavailable due to the rebuilding of the South Stand, that meant that some of the less attractive games were played around the country which has resulted in the average being lower than it would probably have been if the games had been at Hampden.   One thing I noticed putting this together, the two things that drive attendances are a. the quality of opposition and b. how well we are doing at the time, the day the game is being played is probably secondary. 

Given that we've had two decades of failure our attendances holding up so well is pretty remarkable.

image.png

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47 minutes ago, aaid said:

I did a quick graph on average home attendances over the last 20 years.  It's worth noting that for France 1998 and Euro 2000, Hampden was unavailable due to the rebuilding of the South Stand, that meant that some of the less attractive games were played around the country which has resulted in the average being lower than it would probably have been if the games had been at Hampden.   One thing I noticed putting this together, the two things that drive attendances are a. the quality of opposition and b. how well we are doing at the time, the day the game is being played is probably secondary. 

Given that we've had two decades of failure our attendances holding up so well is pretty remarkable.

image.png

Ticket prices wouldn't have helped - charging £35 for games against Gibraltar FFS. More reasonable ticket prices may have seen our attendances rise compared to the 90s.

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27 minutes ago, Clyde1998 said:

Ticket prices wouldn't have helped - charging £35 for games against Gibraltar FFS. More reasonable ticket prices may have seen our attendances rise compared to the 90s.

If you charged a lot less for games it follows that more people would go but I suspect the real deciding factors are the quality of opposition and how well we are doing - or at least what the "mood in the support" is.    

It's worth comparing the two home games against Malta and Gibraltar.  It's difficult to compare the costs.  The SFA policy for the Euro 2016 qualifiers was a set price regardless of opponent, on which basis the Gibraltar match probably looked over priced if looked at on its own.    For the last campaign the SFA priced the tickets according to the "quality" of the opposition and the Malta ticket was actually a lot cheaper than the Gibraltar one.  

The Gibraltar game was played on a Sunday evening at 5pm which is not a particularly fan friendly time.   However, we were going into that game off the back of a fighting defeat away in Germany (but Germany are going to win all their games anyway, aren't they), a good away draw in Poland and a decent hard fought win at home to the ROI.    The mood was fairly buoyant.    The crowd that evening was  34255.

The Malta game was 7.45 on a Monday night - about the worst time possible from a fan's perspective.   We went into that game in a pretty dismal mood, having had bad results at home to Lithuania and away to Slovakia.  The crowd was 26,731.

If you ever look at the attendances of European Qualifiers on any given weekend, if Scotland are at home they will more often than not be in the top five.   It's about the only thing we punch above our weight at.

 

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2 hours ago, aaid said:

I did a quick graph on average home attendances over the last 20 years.  It's worth noting that for France 1998 and Euro 2000, Hampden was unavailable due to the rebuilding of the South Stand, that meant that some of the less attractive games were played around the country which has resulted in the average being lower than it would probably have been if the games had been at Hampden.   One thing I noticed putting this together, the two things that drive attendances are a. the quality of opposition and b. how well we are doing at the time, the day the game is being played is probably secondary. 

Given that we've had two decades of failure our attendances holding up so well is pretty remarkable.

image.png

Pretty amazing really considering the week of football stuff and the performances on the pitch. Surprised how wrong I was, has become a bit of a chore though.

Think you would really need to put up the same graph for Norway to see if we are doing any better than them.

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2 minutes ago, ceudmilefailte said:

Pretty amazing really considering the week of football stuff and the performances on the pitch. Surprised how wrong I was, has become a bit of a chore though.

Think you would really need to put up the same graph for Norway to see if we are doing any better than them.

I'll leave that to some saddo Norwegian to do.   I'm only sad enough to do it for Scotland.

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23 minutes ago, ceudmilefailte said:

Think you would really need to put up the same graph for Norway to see if we are doing any better than them.

tGmQYOU.png

  • Green - Qualified
  • Cyan - Play-Offs
Edited by Clyde1998
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47 minutes ago, Clyde1998 said:

tGmQYOU.png

  • Green - Qualified
  • Cyan - Play-Offs

Thanks for that,  comparison probably just proves that football is a far bigger part of our culture than Norways. On the other hand if you went into all the details, variables, social factors, etc there's probably a book in it.

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50 minutes ago, ceudmilefailte said:

Thanks for that,  comparison probably just proves that football is a far bigger part of our culture than Norways. On the other hand if you went into all the details, variables, social factors, etc there's probably a book in it.

As aaid mentioned, Scotland crowds for qualifiers are often amongst the highest in Europe.

I think last time I saw stats on that it was the home nations (& Eire) leading most European crowd figures..

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2 minutes ago, fringo said:

As aaid mentioned, Scotland crowds for qualifiers are often amongst the highest in Europe.

I think last time I saw stats on that it was the home nations (& Eire) leading most European crowd figures..

Top ten for the World Cup qualifiers:

  1. England - 75,230
  2. France - 66,168
  3. Poland - 54,645
  4. Ireland - 48,416
  5. Netherlands - 44,209
  6. Germany - 42,865
  7. Sweden - 39,524
  8. Portugal - 38,352
  9. Belgium - 36,775
  10. Scotland - 35,613
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8 minutes ago, Clyde1998 said:

Top ten for the World Cup qualifiers:

  1. England - 75,230
  2. France - 66,168
  3. Poland - 54,645
  4. Ireland - 48,416
  5. Netherlands - 44,209
  6. Germany - 42,865
  7. Sweden - 39,524
  8. Portugal - 38,352
  9. Belgium - 36,775
  10. Scotland - 35,613

I'm surprised - it may have been the 2016 qualifiers when I saw it ?

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