Middlesbrough’s televised fixture against Doncaster Rovers at the Riverside Stadium on Friday 25 October will be priced at £12 for adults and £7 for concessions in a bid to repeat a 28,000+ gate that watched the similarly priced Sheffield Wednesday game last season.
The theme for the evening is the ‘Spirit of Teesside’ and the club’s official website takes up the story:
‘Retired workers from the key steel, chemicals and shipbuilding industries will join representatives of a wide range of organisations from across the area as guests in the Middlehaven Suite, which will be renamed The Spirit of Teesside Suite for the night. In addition, match tickets will be given to apprentices from Middlesbrough-based TTE Technical Training Group – a charitable organisation that supports some 600 youngsters through apprenticeships each year.’
Attendances have been the theme of the week for Boro after 12,793 watched Tuesday night’s game against Huddersfield, the lowest ever league gate at the Riverside
Manager Tony Mowbray called those who were there ‘the true Boro fans’ but a Tuesday night game in the Championship is always a hard sell when a team is struggling slightly and another home fixture follows on a few days later.
Boro have always worked hard to engage and involve their community but prolonged exposure to the Championship without a sniff of promotion can gradually see a hard core of fans being chipped away at season-by-season.
My club Coventry City experienced this from their first season at the Ricoh Arena through to relegation in 2011. A few hundred fans each year decide not to renew season tickets or go to many games but the cumulative effect is not always noticed until later on.
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