Season notes
A Championship commercial meeting will often open with one home-gate figure and a sigh. That number mixes a sold-out away paddock, a family stand that emptied after the school term started, and padded seats that only fill when a former player returns.
We ask for turnstile extracts by block, not a total from the club’s public announcement. If the extract cannot split the west end from the Kop, we say the report cannot be written honestly. Guessing from photographs of the bowl is how you end up changing hospitality prices for the wrong people.
Once the split exists, patterns are usually local. Tuesday nights drain the family block because parents will not leave a Year 8 at the ground until 21:40. Saturday 15:00 still fills it. Pricing the whole stand as if it were one crowd wastes a winter.
Cup replay gates tell another story again: the same seat can be a season-ticket holder on Saturday and empty on a wet Wednesday because the replay was moved for television. We put those two lines on the same board so the argument does not pretend they are comparable nights.
James keeps a column for correspondence themes only when the SLO supplies a coded sample. We do not quote supporters by name on a board that sits in a commercial meeting. The useful distinction is stewarding, travel, and catering — three inboxes, not one mood.