ATTENDANCE DROP

REGULAR season attendances dropped by 7.4% in 2011/12, one of the largest falls ever recorded in the 20-year history of the Welsh Premier League.
The average attendance at the 192 games was 314, compared with 339 in 2010/11, with five clubs - Aberystwyth Town (1.8%), Bala Town (19.4%), Newtown (6.2%), Prestatyn (6.2%) and The New Saints (27.9%) - showing an improvement.
The biggest fall came at Neath, where the number of spectators through the turnstiles at The Gnoll fell by 32.2%. There were also significant decreases at Carmarthen Town (9.9%) and Bangor City (8.8%) despite a league record attendance of 2,593 for the last-ever game at Farrar Road against Prestatyn.
Apart from that fixture, the only other four-figure attendance was at Park Hall on Saturday when 1,468 watched TNS play Bangor in the title decider.
The Citizens were again the best-supported club both at home (727) and away (436) while Llanelli had the lowest home average of 205, an 8.7% fall on last season.
The Reds also attracted the lowest gate of the season, just 95 for the visit of Bala Town.
Attendances at the festive games were generally lower than in previous years, while the loss of Easter local derbies for most clubs since the advent of the 12-club league has also had an effect.
Overall 60,291 spectators watched Welsh Premier games compared with 65,107 in the previous campaign - the mid-season split seems to have a reverse effect on attendances than intended with an average of 337 before the winter break and only 311 in the second phase.
• To judge the success or otherwise of the 'Super 12', we have compared attendances on a like-for-like basis of the 10 clubs currently in the Welsh Premier who were in the league in the last season of 18 clubs.
Six of them have lower attendances than in that season 2009/10: Aberystwyth, Carmarthen, Llanelli, Newtown, Prestatyn and Port Talbot

Despite all the TV coverage by S4C, the Welsh Premier league has never really grabbed a mass public interest of the football supporters in Wales; although I must admit that from what I have seen on S4C, the standard of football has improved in recent years. Mind the Southern League Division one South and West is nothing to write home about; Poole are the only team to average more than 300 with 351, and 5 teams had an average of less than 100; gone are the days when several teams at this level could boast average attendances of over 1,000. The Town will probably be in the top three or four of the best supported teams in the whole of the Southern league set up; lets hope that we are successful, and are the top supported club, and get promotion first off!