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Yesterday's gate can be considered shocking, especially since around 1,000 free tickets were on offer.
A free ticket was on offer to every season ticket holder, with Graham Turner quoting sales figures at the Fans Forum in early August as 'not far short of 1,000', but the gate rose by only 80 home fans. The figures suggest that the free tickets either went to existing supporters, or that publicity on the deal was limited causing hundreds of tickets to be left unclaimed.
With two more games intended to be named for free tickets, it would be interesting to see if the club release figures on uptake of the offer.
The size of the gate could be blamed on the various England sporting events yesterday. With the football, cricket, and rugby teams all in action it was easy to stay at home after struggling to two home draws in the League so far. However of the 3pm kick-offs across the Football League yesterday, there appeared to be little difference in gates to their previous matches although gates across the board seem to be down on this stage last season.
It's much worse at Accrington however. Last Saturday they bemoaned the size of the 1,484 crowd, which contained around 1,250 Accrington fans, and warned of dire financial consequences if finances did not improve. Yesterday, the gate shrank even further to 1,350 - with over 300 Grimsby fans in attendance - leaving barely 1,000 Accrington fans to watch their first home win of the season.
With only around 100 season ticket holders Accrington are likely to have taken a similar amount on the door as the Bulls yesterday, but would be severely lacking the £200,000 in season ticket sales the Bulls would likely have taken on the given figures. Harsh times, again, could be just around the corner for Stanley.
