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What's In A Number? Our Crowds...
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Another rant from Dean Brennan prompts us to dig into the numbers and see what the hell is going on?
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By:
Eric Hitchmo
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29/01/2026
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This article has been viewed 763 times.
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Interest in lower league football has been surging for a good while now. It was starting to trend upwards in the mid-2010s, but since COVID there has been a marked increase in crowds attending matches at our level. This could be for several reasons, one of them being that the Premier League is pricing people out, but in general every club is seeing crowds beyond anything they have seen for many years, or ever.
Take League Two for example. Historically, League Two average crowds have been in and around the 4-4,500 mark. This was steadily the case from the years 2000-2020. In the last two seasons it has been upwards of 6,000 and this year it is around 5,500. This doesn’t appear to be some flash in the pan. League One crowds have moved from ~7,500 to upwards of 10,000 and the National League average has gone from under 2,000 to 2,500+ with a couple of seasons upwards of 3,000 when Wrexham and Notts County were still around.
It’s across the board, name a club around our level and there’s generally massive jumps in the last few years. Yes, there’s some upward movements in leagues but even clubs who are struggling are managing attendance growth. But then there’s us. We’re static, or worse. Would you like some examples across comparable clubs?
| Club | 2010–2020 | 2022–2025 | Change |
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| Barnet | 1,996 | 1,935 | -3% | | Barrow | 1,282 | 3,470 | 171% | | Bromley | 1,022 | 2,569 | 151% | | Cambridge United | 3,757 | 6,297 | 68% | | Chesterfield | 5,647 | 7,412 | 31% | | Crawley Town | 2,553 | 3,298 | 29% | | Grimsby Town | 4,107 | 6,101 | 49% | | Morecambe | 1,965 | 4,114 | 109% | | Newport County | 2,788 | 4,240 | 52% | | Notts County | 6,322 | 9,140 | 45% | | Oldham Athletic | 4,286 | 6,155 | 44% | | Southend United | 6,425 | 6,411 | 0% | | York City | 3,017 | 4,704 | 56% |
So why is this important? Or why is it worth writing an article about? Well, as we know, Barnet are not a well-supported club. We never have been. We have Arsenal and Tottenham Hotspur to compete with directly on our doorstep, and to an extent the likes of Watford, Chelsea, and West Ham United within reasonable reach. Even with our recent successes and a large increases year-on-year, we are 23rd in the average attendance table in League Two. Our highest ever average crowd is 3,719 achieved in 1991-1992. Hmm.
Playing at The Hive has not helped this conundrum. We are stuck away from our core fanbase. A recent poll on our Twitter/X account showed that of over 200 respondents, nearly 50% of fans are travelling over an hour from home or work to get to midweek matches and ~75% are taking more than 40 minutes. I think is a fair sample of the general situation for Barnet supporters and is likely to be the case on weekends too when you consider the disaster of road traffic in the area. We have not pulled in enough people from the local area to cover for those who cannot travel midweek or those whose support we lost when we left Underhill. This is not sustainable.
As we know, crowds don’t win football matches. One of my favourite regular social media interactions we get on DSH is when fans of a ‘bigger’ club come to The Hive and post a picture of the half-empty Legends Stand and bemoan the fact they are losing to “clubs like Barnet” who have “shit support”. I find it hilarious, but also on some level a bit embarrassing when we are enjoying the levels of success we are at the moment that we cannot get more people through the door.
I’ve decided to talk about this now as once again we’ve had a barbed comment aimed at us by Dean Brennan. We all remember the Altrincham rant in 2024 which went viral, but this is not the only time that Brennan has dug us out on our attendance or lack of it. Yeah, we all had a good laugh at the “character” rant after people were whinging at him for going a goal down, but these remarks after the Tranmere game have riled me and many others I know. Watch it on Barnet FC TV if you like if you haven’t already.
Our crowds are back on the rise, there is no doubt. The table above doesn’t factor in the increase we are going to see this season with an average close to 3,000. The most important metric in my mind is the number of “home” fans, i.e. the total crowd minus away fans. Away crowds have grown big time since the return to League Two as you’d expect, currently averaging 640 vs. roughly half that in the National League. So, when we look at Barnet fans at home games only, this is a slightly better picture.
| Season | Average Barnet Fans At Home |
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| 2025–2026 | 2,147 | | 2024–2025 | 1,992 | | 2023–2024 | 1,529 | | 2022–2023 | 1,583 | | 2021–2022 | 1,139 | | 2021–2026 AVERAGE | 1,678 | | 2010–2019 AVERAGE | 1,540 | | Change | 8.9% | | 2003–2010 AVERAGE (Underhill) | 1,811 | | Change vs. 2021–2026 | -7.3% |
These numbers are absolutely moving the right direction and if they continue this path, we’ve not got that much of an issue here. The question is, will it continue while we’re at The Hive which is so inaccessible for most fans whether it be weekday or weekend? The fact is the average remains behind comparable seasons at Underhill where we have records back to 2003. Again, this is not about Underhill Underhill Underhill o lord please take us back to Underhill. Midweek crowds there were historically pretty bad as well, to be clear.
For the record, our away travelling average as a proportion of our home support remains very good and probably one of the best in the division on that metric.
Is this all much ado about nothing? I don’t think it is. The direction of travel is clear. Clubs at our level are mopping up local support and growing crowds exponentially. This will hit a ceiling of course, but is there any reason to believe that these numbers won’t sustain themselves as time goes on? The trouble is we are not moving forward at anywhere near a comparable rate despite the club enjoying its most successful on-field period in years.
It is our view that the one key factor above all is the location of The Hive. Call this speculative if you like, but I would wager that we would have at least seen some of the benefit of the massive crowd increases in recent years were we still playing in the town of Barnet. That is why we have thrown our full weight behind the Bring Barnet Back campaign. We fully believe that being back in the town of Barnet is the only way this club can have a sustainable future, and we hope that the work that is going on behind the scenes will bear fruit in the not-so-distant future.
I understand that Dean Brennan must wonder what else he must do to get people through the door. I understand how deflating it must be to be delivering way beyond expectations and way beyond our means on the field only to see a half empty Legends Stand in front of him. But to dig out loyal fans, however few there may be, in emotional rants is hardly productive or useful to anybody. What is this designed to achieve, other than being a kneejerk angry rant?
To me it shows a lack of understanding of the nuances we are experiencing at Barnet which is puzzling when he knows the club so well. He has endorsed the Bring Barnet Back campaign through videos and was at The Odeon in 2024 for the screening of the terrific Underhill movie. When nearly 50% of respondents say it takes them over ONE HOUR to travel to a HOME match, what do we expect? How many other clubs would have that proportion of their fanbase travelling that far to their home matches? Forget about matchday experience for a minute – this fundamental issue around travel is a major blocker to growth.
We have been at The Hive long enough to know that we won’t grow crowds here. That’s why we want to go home. That’s why the club has recognised that we need to go home. That’s why Bring Barnet Back is not only desirable, but necessary. Hopefully one day that dream will become reality and this conversation becomes a thing of the past.
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