i like the sentiment of your post, and can see where your coming from, we are a little club trying to compete in a competition full of bigger clubs, Like Bolton for us to win something it would take a miracle too the only thing is Bolton will only ever be a team making up the numbers, happy to be in there but never likely to do anything, is that us too?

Did you go to Bolton to see City?. The figure you give suggests it has a larger population than Hull, and anyone who has been there knows that Bolton is nowhere near the size of Hull. The last cenus showed it as 139,000. Considering the stadium is miles out of town and that within an hour or less you can watch the likes of Man U, Man City and Liverpool it isn't a bad crowd. although, years ago in the early 60's I was at a game there with over 50,000 in their old stadium.

Sutton Robin,

There are 139,403 people in the town of Bolton and 261,037 residents in the borough of Bolton according to the 2001 Census.

Last season's Bolton Wanderers average was 22,680 per match, with the lowest being 18,139 and the highest 26,881.

I would suggest that for Bolton, there is massive competition for the sporting £ with the likes of Manchester United, Manchester City, Blackburn Rovers, Wigan Athletic, Bury, Preston North End, Burnley, Oldham Athletic, Oldham RL, Sale Sharks RU, Salford City Reds, Swinton, Leigh Centurions, Macclesfield Town, Stockport, Wigan Warriors, Warrington Wolves and St Helens all within an hour's travel and the likes of Liverpool,Everton and Blackpool only slightly further away.

This seems to compare to only a handful of alternatives in the Hull area.

Also Bolton's catchment area includes places like Radcliffe and Kearsley both have a Manchester postcode whilst the likes of Atherton are closer to Wigan.

There is also a double digit % of non-English heritage people, mainly Asian, and they are far less likely to support where they just reside versus a glamorous alternative - it is rare that they support Bolton and typically prefer one of Manchester United, Manchester and Liverpool, top foreign teams like Barcelona or their own cultural nation in the cricket as opposed to Bolton itself.

Given that Bolton were in the fourth division less than 25 years ago, with crowds of about 5000, they may well have lost an entire generation like Notts County in the Brian Clough years but I think the club has done pretty well to grow so big (Blackburn didn't get as many supporters as us when they won the league with Shearer etc) but albeit still enjoying a lot of scorn from the southern based media, who do not like to think the the likes of Okocha, Djorkaeff, Hierro, Campo, Anelka and Stelios sent down the Academy of Football and got in amongst their favourites.

With kind regards
Mark

I'm a Bolton Wanderers supporter (don't ask why being from Wrexham and living in Wrexham all my life) and I understand your post here. Although 5/6 years ago under Sam Allardyce we were in Europe on a few occasions, now and in the next decade or so, me and most others will be happy with mid-table finishes in the Premier League and not having to look down towards the relegation zone with a few games left. In many respects you're right comparing these two sides in their respective sport/league.

In regards to what type of fan I am, probably a realist, well, so I like to think LOL.

I don't really like to talk about Football, it does rather bore me compared to that of Rugby League, but as Matt says above, its very hard for clubs like Bolton to attract fans. We haven't really got a lot of glory supporters really. We didn't even sell out our application of tickets for the FA Cup Semi-Final last season and it was roughly our fans who attend all home games that were there. This to me shows that our fans are there whether its a league match, cup match or a friendly.

Zzzzzz.