Afternoon Pilgrims,
I was going to congratulate you on your promotion anyway, but waiting to see if we (Millwall) would be playing you next season first. As a visit to Plymouth would have been one of the few highlights!
As for our turn out Wembley on Saturday. What you have to remember is that Millwall have played at Wembley 5 times in 8 seasons, or 6 times in the last 18 years. When we played Wigan in the AWS Cup in 1999 49,500 Millwall fans went, when we played Scunthorpe in 2009 in the L1 Play-Off Final we took 49,500 again. 44,000 went to the following year's final v Swindon. We played there last season. The point being that every Millwall fan or person connected to the club has watched Millwall at Wembley now.
Therefore, another way of looking at it, is that 28,000 in the stands and 5,000 in the executive seats & boxes represent Millwall's 'hardcore' support for a League One final at Wembley. That is pretty damn good. If you consider that when the club enforced a members only policy for home games after the Birmingham riot & you had to hand in a passport picture & utility bills to join (so a lot of hassle) and 24,000 did, that statement is about right.
The majority of tickets not sold out for our visit on Saturday were the £80 ones. And again that makes sense, all Millwall fans & their families have seen us at Wembley, most people with only a passing interest passed up an expensive day out. I don't think many people took all their family this time, as it is a very expensive day out & as outlined above, every single person with any connection to the club must have been to Wembley in the last 8 years. And afterall, it was only a Third Division game at the end of the day. When you looked around & heard people talk it had the feel of just a very big home game - i.e. it felt like most were proper Millwall fans that at least try and get to one game a season. Over 210,000 people came to The Den last season - so 20,000 individuals is about right.
And yes, the 200 who went on the pitch are idiots. I imagine the club will only sell tickets to sths and members of if we are lucky enough to get to another final, maybe 2 each, so that would restrict us to circa 22,000-24,000 at the moment. But, at least it would all be accountable.
As for the person saying Millwall aren't surrounded by big clubs, just Charlton & Palace. Well, both have played in the Premier League, they do restrict our catchment area to Southwark & Lewisham; and even then Palace do encroach in the south of Lewisham & Southwark, and Charlton in the east of Lewisham. However, both Arsenal and Chelsea play no more than 7 miles from The Den, or a short tube journey away. So, if both of those two clubs played just 7 miles from Home Park you think it would have zero affect on Plymouth gates? Furthermore, West Ham (while not everyone's cup of tea
) can be reached on the Jubilee Line and so can attract the uncommitted from our side of the river too. Thankfully, Tottenham Hotspur are 'only' 10 miles away.
So, if Arsenal moved to Saltash and Chelsea to Roborough and Spurs to Yelverton that would have no affect on Plymouth Argyle's potential to attract fans to watch lower division football? Come on. Remember, the London Borough of Southwark (Millwall's main hotbed of support) only has a slightly larger population. As a Spanish friend from Madrid said to me once, clubs like Millwall simply would not exist in Spain, and they certainly wouldn't average 8-12,000 most years or take 28-49,000 to Third tier Finals. We are so busy willy waving about crowds in this country these days, we forget how great England is at supporting all its clubs - the fact that Rochdale exist & have a loyal following is amazing, but I guess it's easier to say 'they only get 3,000, how crap'.