Some thoughts from The Big Clootie

[Stones of granite]

https://www.thecourier.co.uk/fp/sport/r ... re-a-clue/

I was attracted by a comment from a rugby-hating, football-covering friend of mine this week.

Scotland V Argentina at Murrayfield: The Scotland players huddle ahead of kick off.
He was deeply troubled by the 11th successive 67,200 sell-out of BT Murrayfield for last weekend’s final Autumn Test against Argentina. That’s every game for two full calendar years..

Meanwhile over at Hampden, still your other national stadium, the only sell-out for international football over the last two years was – unsurprisingly – the England World Cup qualifier.

A mere 21,281 turned up for the Nations’ League match against Israel on a Tuesday night last week, and a direct comparison of the last 11 games at Hampden involving Scotland shows an average just a touch under 27,000.

Which means, of course, that 40,000 more people on average over the last two years have gone to Murrayfield than to Hampden for Scotland games.

....


Apparently, it's all down to Portaloos.

[Big D]

https://www.thecourier.co.uk/fp/sport/r ... re-a-clue/

I was attracted by a comment from a rugby-hating, football-covering friend of mine this week.

Scotland V Argentina at Murrayfield: The Scotland players huddle ahead of kick off.
He was deeply troubled by the 11th successive 67,200 sell-out of BT Murrayfield for last weekend’s final Autumn Test against Argentina. That’s every game for two full calendar years..

Meanwhile over at Hampden, still your other national stadium, the only sell-out for international football over the last two years was – unsurprisingly – the England World Cup qualifier.

A mere 21,281 turned up for the Nations’ League match against Israel on a Tuesday night last week, and a direct comparison of the last 11 games at Hampden involving Scotland shows an average just a touch under 27,000.

Which means, of course, that 40,000 more people on average over the last two years have gone to Murrayfield than to Hampden for Scotland games.

....


Apparently, it's all down to Portaloos.

There are several deeper routed issues in football that mean the national side has lost a lot of fans. Without getting into the whole debate there are a few reasons I can think of:
1. The fitba team is pish.
2. Who cares about Scotland v Albania and the likes. The rugby has on average one "smaller nation" play at MF per year and Italy every other year. Apart from that it is always good opposition that plays.
3. Rugby fans aren't as tribal. Could you imagine Scottish fans booing a Scottish player coming off the bench or touching the ball (even if it is one teams players)? Would we ever boo a national anthem?
4. As the article says, the SRU do a good match day experience the SFA don't.
5. A large part of the Scotland support would traditionally come from Rangers or Celtic. The cost of following those clubs are mental now. £30odd quid a ticket every week. I can see why people would save their cash.

The SRU do need to be very careful. The cost of tickets for the 6N is getting close to eye wateringly expensive. For the Italy game for 2 adults and 2 kids it would have been over £180. Before trains and any thing else.

[Tobylerone]

Re. 3. Recall Brendan Laney getting the boo boy treatment, and Dan Parks.
Small bunch of eejits, but still unpleasantly obvious.

[OptimisticJock]

It's just a couple of seasons til the scotsoun lot start booing Embra players. It's about the only thing they don't boo yet

[wanderingjock]

It's just a couple of seasons til the scotsoun lot start booing Embra players. It's about the only thing they don't boo yet

Haha