Rangers fans in the early 80s

[MacBoyd 5,431]

One for the older bears maybe. Why was attendance so poor? I know we were shite, but look at the last decade and obviously we had bad years before the 80s. Was football in general attended less then? Just watched some old footage, Ibrox so empty looks bizzare.

[wearthefoxhat 13]

Arrived in the Main Stand with my Dad, waited for the coin toss then ran along the centre concourse to the end we were shooting into. Half time, changed ends. The JG management years were brutal.

[BallochBear 1,613]

You think the Ally years were bad. The 80's was awful, rank football, poor matches, crap players.

[gmcf 34,090]

I think generally football was poorly attended back then other than the odd ' big ' game . 

It wasn't till Graeme Souness came , where instead of buying the best of Scottish , we'd suddenly be signing the best of British , followed by some of the best in Europe, that attracted all the attention.  The rest of the country then had to keep up . 

[Rangers#1 5,459]

Fewer season ticket holders.

[LochendBilly 8,410]

We were shite, simple as.

[dummiesoot 15,990]

It is not as simple as we were shite, football was poorly attended in general. Even if we were successful, still reckon we would only have another 10k attendance. 

Sellik games were well attended of course but the rest? Odds n sods tbh.

No idea why, perhaps folk were skint.

[SheriffHood 536]

£1.50 for a child ticket, pay at the gate, sit where you want. £5 a week pocket money was enough to get to the game, half time scoffs and get back home, and still have money left over. 

As for being empty, probably because we were really shite. 

 

[Roy Hobbs 2,159]

19 minutes ago, gmcf said:

I think generally football was poorly attended back then other than the odd ' big ' game . 

It wasn't till Graeme Souness came , where instead of buying the best of Scottish , we'd suddenly be signing the best of British , followed by some of the best in Europe, that attracted all the attention.  The rest of the country then had to keep up . 

This. We still had the highest average attendance in Scotland over the course of a season.

[MacBoyd 5,431]

Just wondered if there was more too it, looks under half full some games 

[Unionblue 3,449]

It was a bit of a slump in terms of attendance, as said above, Souness arriving brought the fans back in  droves and the days of  sometimes even under ten thousand were over.

[gmcf 34,090]

8 minutes ago, Roy Hobbs said:

This. We still had the highest average attendance in Scotland over the course of a season.

We did , which is quite incredible when you think how poor we were in the league most seasons , although tbf , we did have some success in the cups.  

[East Enclosure Row N 2,820]

29 minutes ago, gmcf said:

 

It wasn't till Graeme Souness came , 

Post Souness, numbers at European games were often woeful, even for big teams.

McCoist as manager drew bigger average gates against Stranraer, Queens Pk etc than our home games did in the late 80's, even when the expanded ground was taken into consideration. Don't ask me why though?

[gmcf 34,090]

1 minute ago, East Enclosure Row N said:

Post Souness, numbers at European games were often woeful, even for big teams.

McCoist as manager drew bigger average gates against Stranraer, Queens Pk etc than our home games did in the late 80's, even when the expanded ground was taken into consideration. Don't ask me why though?

I'm not sure why that would have been - was our crowd limit not 40,000 back then ? 

Another factor to take in was some poor decision making on pricing  . Cant remember the season , but we ended up playing CL games to a half empty stadium because the prices were so extortionate.  

[RS4_wul 4,107]

I remember it was £1 for a child 84 or 85 season, pay at the gate, £1 for a train ticket that got you from Dumbarton East to Partick, on subway to Ibrox and back again.

2 quid to get to the game, pay for admission and back home again FFS  I wasn't on the bevvy then so it was a cheap day out.

We were mostly brutal back then and a lot is made of the handful of piss poor attendances we had early eighties but they had as many piss poor attendances also.

[BlueAvenger 10,204]

I blame the Centenary Stand ! 

[Fred H Crawford 1,182]

26 minutes ago, gmcf said:

I'm not sure why that would have been - was our crowd limit not 40,000 back then ? 

Another factor to take in was some poor decision making on pricing  . Cant remember the season , but we ended up playing CL games to a half empty stadium because the prices were so extortionate.  

Murray's decision to hike up the prices and sell as 3 game packages , had a big bearing on the Euro attendances during the latter years of the 9IAR . That and the realization that 92/93 was a blip and poor results were more the norm .

Pre Souness , a lot of the support tended to pick and choose which games to go to , especially since it was cash at the gate and in most instances you could arrive at the ground at ten to three and still have time for a pish and a pie & bovril before taking your choice of seats . 

[G13 3,038]

1 hour ago, MacBoyd said:

One for the older bears maybe. Why was attendance so poor? I know we were shite, but look at the last decade and obviously we had bad years before the 80s. Was football in general attended less then? Just watched some old footage, Ibrox so empty looks bizzare.

Over the last decade, especially the early part of our comeback a lot of it was just pure defiance, even though we were pish we had a fuck you mentality and everyone knew we'd be back one day.

The early 80's we were horrific but the difference back then was you just couldn't see any way out of it. Apart from some games in Europe and the scum game Ibrox had a pretty poor atmosphere. Not a lot of season tickets, pay at the gate and sit where you liked, it wasn't a great time tbh, then we had (and I'm trying hard to remember correctly) John Paton out and David Holmes in, he brought Souness, Souness brought Murray and the rest is history. 

[the blue plumber 743]

2 minutes ago, G13 said:

Over the last decade, especially the early part of our comeback a lot of it was just pure defiance, even though we were pish we had a fuck you mentality and everyone knew we'd be back one day.

The early 80's we were horrific but the difference back then was you just couldn't see any way out of it. Apart from some games in Europe and the scum game Ibrox had a pretty poor atmosphere. Not a lot of season tickets, pay at the gate and sit where you liked, it wasn't a great time tbh, then we had (and I'm trying hard to remember correctly) John Paton out and David Holmes in, he brought Souness, Souness brought Murray and the rest is history. 

DAvid Holmes was the man who started it all bringing Souness in. Scottish football was lethargic and just ticking over but other teams had to try and react to what we were doing under Holmes/Souness and then David Murray who actually tried to take Ayr United over before us but they knocked him back.

[hammer93 15,056]

That's when I started getting to games on a regular basis, I remember when big Jock arrived back, not certain on exact dates but I remember we won 2-0 at Tannadice the next home game we beat hibs 1-0 in front of 21,000 I'm sure the next home game was against Aberdeen and the crowd had risen to 37,000, not so sure a slump in the crowds in a whole is accurate as the sheep were regularly getting 20-24k, Dundee Utd 18-22k and Hearts were not to bad especially the season they should have won the league, it all points to them having decent sides and we were struggling....better times certainly equated to bigger attendances 

[pcbear 10,913]

My first season ticket was 40 quid, it was called The Rover as you could sit in any seat in any stand apart from the main stand, we were not very good at that time, crowds were shite sometimes single figure thousands.

[the blue plumber 743]

Started as a young boy up the Broamloan at no6 in the 60s then when I started going with the mates we would stand in the Derry which is now the Govan stand, packed last led sardines but the crowds started to wane a bit

[Brubear 2,905]

1 hour ago, Rangers#1 said:

Fewer season ticket holders.

Probably the biggest factor. Stadiums were never full so no need to have a season ticket. You could pay at gate. This meant crowds fell away very quickly when team was playing badly and if the league was "gone". I left Scotland in 85 and thought I could always pop into Ibrox anytime I was home then Souness arrived and you couldn't get a ticket very easily as ST numbers climbed. Ended up seeing very few games for the next 15 years I was out of Scotland. 

[Old No7. 790]

Imagine the pandemic fake crowd except back then, we actually were real fans. Me and my mates used to sit in different stands every home game we went, no reason for it you just could.

Football on the pitch wasn't great, back then that's when the sheep and the arabs were at there peak.

[harlands plater 16,957]

It was pretty poor sometimes, you could walk in at 2.55 and pick your seat. After the club invested in rebuilding the stadium it was half full or less for a lot of games.

 I remember Jock Wallace’s first game back in 1983 against Dundee United and the crowd was a well above normal 27,000.