The attendance at Town’s game at Accrington Stanley last Saturday was the lowest for a league game - other than during last season’s Covid-impacted campaign – since the club joined the Football League in 1938/39.
Only 2,600 fans watched the Blues’ 2-1 loss to Stanley, 846 of them Town supporters, well down on the 3,567 at the corresponding fixture two years ago.
All but three of Town’s matches last season were played behind closed doors with that trio of games having very limited capacities, 1,808 at Plymouth and 2,000 for the home fixtures against Portsmouth and Burton.
In a non-pandemic season, the previous lowest league attendance was 3,116 at the home game against Leyton Orient on Wednesday 25th May 1953 in Division Three South. Away from home, 3,173 were at Fellows Park for the Blues’ game against Walsall on Saturday 25th March 1952.
More recently, only 3,238 watched Town’s game against the old Wimbledon at Selhurst Park with most of their fans boycotting their fixtures due to the impending move to Milton Keynes.
The theme continued at Gillingham on Tuesday when only 1,116 fans, 224 of them Town supporters, were at the Priestfield Stadium for the Blues' 2-0 Papa John's Trophy win, the club's lowest cup attendance since Monday 27th February 1939 when precisely 300 supporters are recorded as having watched Town lose 2-0 at Port Vale in the Southern Section Cup.