The Truth...can you handle the truth?

[Donnyjim]

Players, managers, supporters? We are simply not good enough to compete at this level. If we stay up, get your house on us going down next season.

Men against boys second half, I'm afraid.

Without some major investment this is where we are...I can handle it, can you?

[Dare to dream!]

We are good enough as a club and as a squad. We did it last time for 3-4 seasons but we had a good manager

[ctay]

Are we taking bets on who is the first to mention the told you so about the takeover?!

[Copps is Magic]

I can handle the truth but not the level of pretension in your post

[Donnyjim]

I can handle the truth but not the level of pretension in your post

 Head in the sand pal?

[mrfrostsdad]

I'll say it.
Watch Weeds fly next year with their new investor. Of course, we don't do things like that

[Donnywolf]

Unfortunately I think you will be right !

[ss1953]

The truth is that we are a pub team having a laugh. We have been punching beyond our weight for over 5 years. We have been in the second tier for longer than ever before, and before I can remember  supporting Donny.

Personally I have been in dreamland for the last 6 or 7 years.  I have only been to wembley and Cardiff to sport my home town team.  I could never have imagined ex international managers against us. Or playing at St James's Park ( Newcastle) not Exeter.

I'll be thoroughly disappointed if we go down this year. But it's been fab along the way recently.

Unfortunately we are going to stay the same until we have some more local support. We cannot survive in the higher tiers unless we have more local support.

Don't have a go at the management or the team. They are doing the best they can. Just come along and cheer them on. We are Donny, not Chelski et al.

[ss1953]

Ps I am now at Berwick and A bottle of wine down, and just getting realistic after my annoyance of losing 3-1 after being ahead at half time.

[Bessie Red]

Hit the nail on the head there SS. The lack of support from the local community is nothing short of disgraceful and is the one and only reason why we can't stabilise in the Championship. We are just not on a level playing field because of it. If you look at Burnley - much smaller population than Donny yet nearly everyone who likes football in Burnley supports their local team and look where its got them. (Granted they do have an excellent manager!! but the local support goes a very long way to creating the success they are enjoying.)

[Donnyjim]

Hit the nail on the head there SS. The lack of support from the local community is nothing short of disgraceful and is the one and only reason why we can't stabilise in the Championship. We are just not on a level playing field because of it. If you look at Burnley - much smaller population than Donny yet nearly everyone who likes football in Burnley supports their local team and look where its got them. (Granted they do have an excellent manager!! but the local support goes a very long way to creating the success they are enjoying.)

Agree with all of this. It's a shame because the atmosphere was good today.

[RJHeader]

The truth is that we are a pub team having a laugh. We have been punching beyond our weight for over 5 years. We have been in the second tier for longer than ever before, and before I can remember  supporting Donny.

Personally I have been in dreamland for the last 6 or 7 years.  I have only been to wembley and Cardiff to sport my home town team.  I could never have imagined ex international managers against us. Or playing at St James's Park ( Newcastle) not Exeter.

I'll be thoroughly disappointed if we go down this year. But it's been fab along the way recently.

Unfortunately we are going to stay the same until we have some more local support. We cannot survive in the higher tiers unless we have more local support.

Don't have a go at the management or the team. They are doing the best they can. Just come along and cheer them on. We are Donny, not Chelski et al.

This really annoys me. We are a yoyo club between League 1 and the Championship. That is where we are at now. Forget about the Conference days, we arent that club anymore. We are a well established top end League one/bottom end Championship club. We aren't punching above our weight anymore. This is our level ffs

[BillyStubbsTears]

Hit the nail on the head there SS. The lack of support from the local community is nothing short of disgraceful and is the one and only reason why we can't stabilise in the Championship. We are just not on a level playing field because of it. If you look at Burnley - much smaller population than Donny yet nearly everyone who likes football in Burnley supports their local team and look where its got them. (Granted they do have an excellent manager!! but the local support goes a very long way to creating the success they are enjoying.)

Burnley also have a history of being a top flight club, FA Cup and League winners. All a long time ago, but it MATTERS. It engenders a sense of home town pride in the club.

Don;t blame our current owners for us not having that. Blame the ones who owned us in the 1880s, 1900s, and 1950s.

[Bessie Red]

I agree with your points BST but even so a town the size of Donny should still have a higher average attendance which in my opinion would help tremendously to give us an extended stay in the Championship.

RJ - I believe that we are still punching above our weight being in the Championship and will be until we generate more income from local support.

[BillyStubbsTears]

Bessie.

We've been shite for 50-odd of the last 60 years. We lost several generations of potential fans in that time. We've been excellent (by our historical standards) for the last 6-8 years, but (just our luck) that has co-incided with the worst recession in more than a century. In normal times, we might have expected to have average home crowds above 10k while we have been in this division (even at the lower end), and to ratchet a good few of them away for life. But folk have been tightening their belts over the last 6-8 years and it's not quite worked out like that.

[Bessie Red]

Again I agree with your point BST, however the size of the population of Donny should still be able to generate an average home crowd of 10k +.

[AlonzoDrake]

Again I agree with your point BST, however the size of the population of Donny should still be able to generate an average home crowd of 10k +.

...not when the Doncaster Metropolitan Borough has some of the highest levels of unemployment, and highest levels of low paid workers in the entire EEC -- then throw in much of our shockingly poor playing record as a club in the 70s, 80, 90s, and in the Conference years. We had a great D3 squad back in 86/87, which was just outside of the play-offs, and we could hardly pull in 2,000 to watch the likes of the mercurial Tommy Gaynor.

[Bessie Red]

Now he was a player Alonzo!!

[BobG]

And Terry Curran too. He was another one. No brains. But oodles of talent, excitement - and frustration!
And very few people watched him either.

BobG

[PDX_Rover]

Apathy - that's the main problem. I started going to Rovers as a six year old in 1973/74 season with my dad and the gates were good if we managed 3000. Was like that for a long long time.

So, gates now are poor but there's always been that apathy.

Need to instill some your town, your club pride in the borough.

[belton rover]

Don't forget Carl Swan.

[Donnyjim]

Again I agree with your point BST, however the size of the population of Donny should still be able to generate an average home crowd of 10k +.

...not when the Doncaster Metropolitan Borough has some of the highest levels of unemployment, and highest levels of low paid workers in the entire EEC -- then throw in much of our shockingly poor playing record as a club in the 70s, 80, 90s, and in the Conference years. We had a great D3 squad back in 86/87, which was just outside of the play-offs, and we could hardly pull in 2,000 to watch the likes of the mercurial Tommy Gaynor.

This spot on. The only time we had average gates of 15k plus was after the Second World War. I've never bought that last generation shite. In 1985 our average gate was at its highest for years 4500. Look at it now?

[BillyStubbsTears]

Alonzo

Amen cocker.

Folk don't seem to realise that in a place with an economic situation like Donny, you are not going to get sudden and sustained increases in the fanbase without either an exceptional or a prolonged increase in on-field success.

Reading makes a good case study. For most of their history, they've been about as good as us. The town's about as big as Donny. We were both in the 3rd/4th Division for most of the 20s-80s. Since the 80s, our paths diverged. That followed the divergence in our towns' economic situations - we got f**ked over in the 1980s revolution; they profited from being a satellite town for them as couldn't afford to live in London.

Reading went from strength to strength and every time they improved on the pitch, they were able to ratchet more fans into their hard core support (although, that said, the turn-out today from they was f**king woeful given the stakes).

That is why Reading can afford Pogrebnyak, Gunter, Le Fondre, Hal Kanu, Gorkss, Bridge, Guthrie et al and we make do with Paul Quinn, The Artist Formerly Known As Billy Sharp, an alcoholic full back and a centre back who was last playing in  a moderate side in the Finnish first division.

Football strength is a product of economics and history. We have been dealt a shite hand on both. The fact that we have been competitive at this level should be a source of pride. If (IF!) we go down, we need to take a look round ourselves and realise that we are still doing better than our historic and economic hand should give us cause to expect.

[Townender]

Not forgetting, in those days if you wanted to watch a game of football, you had to go to a game, not sit in your chair and press a button.

[BobG]

I wish I had written that Billy. Spot on.

Another facet of the M4 miracle is the prices that clubs alongside it can charge. They make us look like cheap skates. Even bloody Swindon charge more than we do. I must check up on what TLO Woking and Aldershot and Farnborough charge too. They're in pretty much the same catchment area.

It makes a difference. A real difference.

BobG

[Bessie Red]

Once again I agree with your synopsis BST but I still maintain that there are enough working people in Donny with adequate disposable income to be able to establish a steady 10k support the local team. My point is that not enough people seem bothered to support. Now there are many reasons why that might be such as poor marketing, poor match day experience whatever but I believe the main problem is sheer apathy.
By the way, dont forget that Madjeski getting on board at Reading made a massive difference to them also. And once you get in the Premiership then you can afford the players you mentioned. Oh for Terry to say "There you go Gavin there's 50 million go and get us a team to try and get us into the Prem"

[DonnyBazR0ver]

Agree BST. I think we can handle the truth and are comfortable with it. I think over the season we could argue that the personnel we've had at the club should have been good enough to keep us up but, football isn't like that. It takes much more to sustain a 'team' and performance level that brings a consistency you need. You can't say there are many in this league that find that consistency.

For Donkeys years we've heard the same old about a town the size of Donny. We've done it to death. I can live with the truth. The home support today was very good, they couldn't gave asked for better backing by recent standards. 

[Bentley Bullet]

The high unemployment in the area doesn't seem to deter the thousands that go to Elland road once a fortnight. If we want bigger crowds we have to invest more in the team, and develop a decent Championship side, for starters.

[BillyStubbsTears]

BB

1) Leeds is 5 times the size of Donny.
2) Leeds have a history of success to attract fans.

What is your point?

[Bentley Bullet]

My point is that it is surely cheaper for Doncaster people to watch Donny Rovers than it is to travel to Leeds once a fortnight to watch Leeds. Therefore it is not necessarily down to the towns high unemployment for  the Rovers lack of support.