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LeJuge

So... how big does Carrow Road need to be?

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Carrying on from what has been said above, I find the use of the attendances from the 60s and 70s as a fairly bogus way of trying to work out where our attendance figures would top out. People looking at our largest ever attendance 43,000 in 1963 and thinking that it was a one of should remember that Norwich as a City has grown dramatically in both size and popultation. As pointed out we are the only football team in the entire county and are likely to see an influx of new young fans if our success and status as a premire league team is retained over the next few years. We should think big... not irresponsable, but certainly with a view for Norwich to grow as a club and a stadium to reflect that.

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How do you think Under 16''s for example can afford to watch football for a Grade A game at £25?

We are in a recession, some adults cannot pay past £28 every game. I know other clubs charge high but why do we have to follow them?

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If prices and travel costs continue as they do rising at current rates and internet and live pub matches are increasingly available I don''t think a major  extension to capacity will be required. Nurturing of young supporters at a pittance a game will be a waste of time as they will disappear as soon as they have to pay full whack at 21. Top-level football is rapidly pricing itself out of average people''s pockets.  

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The question of ground expansion is going to be the trickiest decision yet for the new regime. Herewith some relevant quotes from McNally and Bowkett on the subject from January (ie before promotion):

 

McNally: “If there is no major investor we have to make the club self-sustainable and in the Premier League we would have to have 35,000." But he pointed out that it cost about £2,500 per seat in a “new build”, so it would cost £20m to increase capacity by 8,000. City would lose £1.4m in gate income from lost capacity while building work was in progress and it would take nine years to pay back the building cost, he said, adding that they would consider expanding the stadium only after two consecutive years in the Premier League.

 

Bowkett: "The obvious route is the Geoffrey Watling City Stand and whether you throw another layer on it, or you take it down and rebuild I don’t know. I think probably the sensible thing to do is bite the bullet, take it down and build a new stand but it means 18 months, possibly two years, without revenue. Then what do you do to the people in the Geoffrey Watling Stand, who tend to be the people who have been supporters for many generations? So it’s difficult.” Bowkett said City were confident there would be an extra 8,000 fans keen to see Premier League football.

 

What is significant is that both are saying we could fill a 35,000-seat stadium in the PL. Firstly, that raises the question of whether we should plan on the basis of being a more or less permanent PL club or whether it is more realistic to plan on being a yo-yo club, with then a 35,000-seat stadium being way too big some seasons.

 

The second question, though, is whether Bowkett and McNally are even right about getting 35,000 fans in the PL. According to David Cuffley, our highest ever average attendance was 28,652, in the old First Division, in 1972-73, when we could get more than 36,000 in the ground. A different era, of course. But last season we only filled the ground twice, for Ipswich and Leeds. An average of 25,386 when the effective capacity was 1,100-1,200 above that.  And a key reason for that was that we priced away fans out of the market. A pre-adult Forest fan could have watched two other away games for the cost of one at Carrow Road. And the club have not reinstated the pre-adult category for the coming season. A confident prediction is that we are not going to sell out the away area every time.

 

Against that we have a season ticket waiting list. Pretty hard to argue we don''t need some increase in capacity. But an extra 8,000? That could be overly optimistic. I suspect (based on the decision to install an extra 1,100 seats) that the club expected a higher average last season than it achieved and I wonder about the 35,000 prediction. Especially if the club continues the plainly mistaken policy of pricing our young potential fans out of getting into the Carrow Road habit. The pre-adult casual category needs to be restored.

 

Of course, if we are on the verge of a golden age, with European competition and FA Cup success (get your grandparents to explain what that is...) then some compromise at - say - 32,000 would be a mistake necessitating another expensive change. A very tricky decision indeed.

 

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