Todays attendance

Quoted from White_shorts

One would expect those teams to be replaced in L1 eventually by the likes of Swindon, Tranmere, Bradford, Doncaster, Wrexham and Notts County.  Maybe Southend and Oldham.

The minute you added southend to this list your point became invalid, they’ll be lucky to be a club by Christmas…

As for an edge/out of town stadium, they’re dreadful and offer a woeful football experience, and given the owners are trying to build a community club, sticking a stadium on the edge of town suggests the opposite.

Either way, this thread was about attendance and once again, it was decent, especially after relatively excrement home form last year…

This location of stadium thing....
I can't imagine many Town fans looking past Notts and Bradford for best awaydays and they're both City Centre grounds.

Quoted from 1mickylyons

This location of stadium thing....
I can't imagine many Town fans looking past Notts and Bradford for best awaydays and they're both City Centre grounds.

Forget the opposition and just think about the day, pre game and then getting to the ground, all the good ones are ‘in town’ stadiums…

Bradford
County
Wrexham
Lincoln
Forest
Mansfield
Almost all premier league away days
Harrogate
Stockport
Exeter

To name a few in our league and a couple of others…

Then think of your dreadful away day experiences…

Bolton
Donnie
Colchester
Darlo (when it existed)
Franchise scum
Brighton (I know they’ve tried but it was a bit excrement)
Derby

Quoted from aldi_01

Forget the opposition and just think about the day, pre game and then getting to the ground, all the good ones are ‘in town’ stadiums…

Bradford
County
Wrexham
Lincoln
Forest
Mansfield
Almost all premier league away days
Harrogate
Stockport
Exeter

To name a few in our league and a couple of others…

Then think of your dreadful away day experiences…

Bolton
Donnie
Colchester
Darlo (when it existed)
Franchise scum
Brighton (I know they’ve tried but it was a bit excrement)
Derby

Brighton is a strange one. Absolutely bizarre place to have the stadium but it looks amazing coming in over the hill on the bus. Fair play to the club for having the P&R system up. Although the stadium is in an awful location there's still a great weekend to be had

Quoted from lew chaterleys lover

Why does any stadium need "good motorways access" for God's sake?

I have never ever been to any stadium thinking now this better have good motorway access or I'm not going to the game and support my team.

Stadia in the UK are in all sorts of weird and wonderful locations.

I didn’t say it needs good motorway access, I said that the site identified to me has good motorway access. There may be a plan to have the stadium and training ground in the same location, I wasn’t told that just that a site has been mentioned for a stadium development.

Quoted from aldi_01

Forget the opposition and just think about the day, pre game and then getting to the ground, all the good ones are ‘in town’ stadiums…

Bradford
County
Wrexham
Lincoln
Forest
Mansfield
Almost all premier league away days
Harrogate
Stockport
Exeter

To name a few in our league and a couple of others…

Then think of your dreadful away day experiences…

Bolton
Donnie
Colchester
Darlo (when it existed)
Franchise scum
Brighton (I know they’ve tried but it was a bit excrement)
Derby

It’s funny you mention Bolton because my first visit there sticks in the memory. It was our first away game of the 98/99 season, fresh on the back of the Wembley double and our new, club record striker was about to make his debut. Now, it might not be so cutting edge today, but 25 years ago the Reebok Stadium was like something from another planet. It was an absolute world away from any other ground I’d been to in terms of facilities and design. It was an exciting time to be a young Town fan.

However, I was only 13 years old and was yet to develop my raging thirst for booze that now grips me on match days (and most mornings) - a choice of McDonalds or KFC on the adjacent retail park seemed like options aplenty at the time.

Nowadays, if I’ve been successful in securing a pass from the wife to make an away day, or I’ve gone town the forgiveness rather than permission route, I want to make a day of it. Ideally, that means getting there by train and having a few beers and a bite to eat along the way. I don’t mind a taxi ride, provided there’s sufficient stuff near the station to keep me entertained. Tranmere might not be top of the great away days list, but it’s easy enough to get the train to Line Street, sink a few pints in Liverpool and then get an Uber through the tunnel and over to Birkenhead. They’ve just built a decent looking fan zone there too.

The problem with grounds like Bolton, and MK Dons, Colchester et al is that there isn’t sufficient redeeming features in the towns themselves to make a cab ride out to their grounds in the middle of nowhere worthwhile, and there’s sod all there once you get there. There’s no saving Milton Keynes, the football club is a mere reflection of the town itself - modern, plastic and soulless; but there’s no doubt that the likes of Bolton, Colchester, Shrewsbury, Derby and so on would have been infinitely better away days had the grounds been build centrally. The towns don’t have to be amazing; Hartlepool is a deceptively good away day despite not being somewhere you’d want to live; having a stadium in walking distance of a train station and 4 or 5 half-decent pubs makes a world of difference.

I think the conversation is little more than a hypothetical question at the minute, but should it one day crystallise into something more, any new stadium for GTFC absolutely has to be at the heart of the town and a catalyst for regeneration. It would certainly make more sense that chucking millions into a retail project that is doomed to fail.

I’d agree that the town has to have something about it but I think that’s why places like Hartlepool remain decent away days; stadium might not be the best but easy to get to and plenty of options drinking, eating and otherwise, as well as central access.

As you say, Bolton looks futuristic and at the time was but having visited several times now, the footballing experience I guess is dreadful.

I know people obsess over playing so called bigger teams and wanting to be in fancy stadia but the ground is pretty irrelevant so long as you have a decent day all round. We’ve got notts county tomorrow, no doubt it’ll be doubled up seats and over the top policing but in truth, whether it was a half decent stand or the ramshackle away end at Macclesfield, the experience and day will be better than say Donnie or Bolton,

I see Alexander Retail Park has recently been bought by a new management/development company. Would be a shame if the whole thing was to mysteriously go up in flames, like that crooked pub near Birmingham, leaving a nice big parcel of town centre land just off the a180.

Quoted from MuddyWaters

I didn’t say it needs good motorway access, I said that the site identified to me has good motorway access. There may be a plan to have the stadium and training ground in the same location, I wasn’t told that just that a site has been mentioned for a stadium development.

If it's got good motorway access, it's going to be miles away from me. I live in Cleethorpes, a couple of miles from the ground and can easily walk there. When the Great Cotes site was the plan, I couldn't help but think that my 30 minute walk would become a 30 minute drive on a matchday. Anywhere near the motorway would be similar on a matchday with thousands trying to get to the game.

I liked the idea of a Freeman Street site if it was accompanied by a major redevelopment, but it wasn't really realistic, IMO. One major road in and out of that end of town and I can only imagine how bad the traffic would be for busy matches. If the new site somewhere near the docks or the Humber bank, it would be tricky for a lot of fans to get to. There will be have to be some serious planning around transportation/parking if we do ever move.

It won't be retail.  That ship has sailed, sunk and now lies at the bottom of the sea.  

But for the life of me I can't figure out any feasible way we get a new stadium without a significant enabling development to support/fund it.  

Happy to be corrected but unless it's leisure or housing, there won't be any other enabling developments that are even pipe dreams for us.  Housing developments genuinely reach out from the centre.  Waltham will soon become one with New Waltham which before long will join Holten-Le-Clay, which in turn will be at one with Tetney...before we know it Louth will be part of the wider borough.  Centrally I can't think of many brown field sites that would take housing and a stadium.  

Leisure wise I think there's greater scope. Few areas that could, in theory, be redeveloped with entertainment facilities and a ground.   Won't happen but Grimsby Town Centre would have been an opportunity.  The high street is dead, none more so than Victoria/Bethlehem Street.  Freshney Place is getting turned into a cinema and I think they're trying to keep some retail units, albeit moving them to accommodate the cinema.  Would that area take a football ground and a cinema...I dunno.  But there's a lot around there that's absolute dead. Garth Lane, the 'bus station', large parts of Cartergate.   A bit of ambition and it could be something special, very central, very much within the community, as good transport links as you're going to get in NEL, not too far off the motorway, potentially loads of parking options, definitely ticks a huge regeneration box too.   Problem is this area lacks ambition and of course the finances to do so.  But I don't think it would matter if the latter were in place, the former is central to driving anything forward.