FROM the ridiculous decision to punish an assistant referee for telling players to thank fans for paying £62 to watch them, to Norwich City’s refreshing move to stick to the Football Association‘s minimum price guideline for FA Cup ties, ticket prices have provoked much recent debate.
This may not go down too well with Luton fans who donated a fiver to their youth scheme because they felt their club would lose out financially with the Premier League side charging £10 for adults and £1 for kids for last week’s fourth round tie.
But I want the FA to make those minimum prices compulsory from 2013-14. There is always criticism of individual clubs whatever price is set.
Some will think they are too high, and in this case, many felt Norwich’s were too low. Not, I would suggest, the two dads who climbed on the train I was on last Saturday lunchtime, with their ten-year-old sons dressed in yellow and green scarves and their boys’ club’s tracksuits.
The youngsters squeezed into the only free seats in front of a group of middle-aged Hatters fans, who asked if Norwich were going to beat their team?
“Of course we are,” replied one boy, before the Luton supporters engaged the pair in conversation about the club they play for, which position, whether they’d consider playing for Luton when they’re older, etcetera, etcetera.
It was the kind of good-natured football banter which those boys wouldn’t normally get to experience, with Premier League matches at Carrow Road sold out every week.
Last week’s Cup tie was too, bar the seats that have to be empty for segregation puposes, but if Norwich had charged £30 – as they did for a League Cup tie with Spurs that attracted only 16,465 – their dads probably wouldn’t have taken them to watch Luton.
And that is no disrespect to the Hatters, who were brilliant on the day. But even though they last played Norwich on a level playing field less than six years ago, are currently Non-League and although their 4,000 travelling f ans would willingly pay it, 22,000 locals would not.
Over the last five years, the evidence of crowd figures from games in which Non-League sides have travelled to League clubs with big stadia in the latter stages of the Cup back up that assertion.
Yes, Crawley played in front of 74,778 when they went to Manchester United two years ago, leaving just two per cent of the 76,100-capacity ground empty.
Ticket prices were over £40, but people fall into the tourist trap when it comes to the big-time Red Devils and they would most likely have paid double that to see Wayne Rooney & Co.
As the table below shows, some – like my own club Notts County‘s Meadow Lane – have been almost empty.
Ignoring the Carrow Road and Old Trafford games, the other 12 have been played out in front of 194,613 bare seats – that’s 51 per cent of the grounds’ combined capacity.
And before anyone points out that Middlesbrough charged £10, £7 and £5 for their third round tie with Hastings, the 12,579 who turned up was still 31 times the Ryman Premier club’s usual home gate.
If just 10,000 paying £30 had rattled around Carrow Road, would there have been the atmosphere to inspire the Luton
players? I doubt it.
Another young Norwich fan passed me on his way out after the game. This one, no older than seven, was bawling his eyes out.
But seeing your side humbled in the FA Cup is all part of a football fan’s education.
The crying shame for me would be for it not to be a maximum tenner for adults and kids for a quid at all ties past the fourth qualifying round from next August.
As Delia Smith may once have said, come on FA, let’s be ‘avin ya!
