for the first and probably last time i find myself in agreement with obafemi.
its not a case like kev says, of pay or dont pay, if only it were that simple.
before this season i hadnt missed a home game for 8 years.
i didnt get a season ticket for myself this time around as i couldnt really afford it once they took away the discount and stuck on the increase, so i have been paying as i went along.
i now find myself working for just above the minimum wage. when you are taking home less than 800 quid a month, as a lot of folk are doing in the town, and your outgoings are over 600 you are left with about 40 quid a week to live on.
there are 4 pools home games this month. to sit and watch all of them would cost me 80 quid and i simply cannot afford that. im not going without food to watch blokes on 60 grand a year kicking a ball about.
i did warn at the start of the season that by whacking up seats to 20 quid and by removing the early season discount the club was running a big risk of seeing sub 4000 attendances if the team wasnt performing well.
i got shouted down by a lot of people who accused me of being an idiot and scaremongering. " its only an extra couple of quid " they said, nobody is going to have an issue with that.
well clearly people do have an issue with it because attendances have slumped.
under normal circumstances following a 4-0 win, with a decent away following expected, and with the manager talking about the play offs you would expect a crowd of getting on for 5000 tomorrow night.
it may struggle to hit 4000.

It's another example of what was the workingman's game now outpricing the workingman out of the game. Tell you what, imagine what Boro fans must have been feeling yesterday. Their best chance ever to win the FA Cup and their millionaire players played like they didn't give a fuck. No wonder the workingman is questioning whether he can justify paying out so much money. If Pools keep increasing prices at the rate they are, I can see more and more people watching Northen League football. And who are people supposed to be able to afford to bring two or three kids? Those are your next generation.