Capacity
The ground has an all-seated capacity of 32,689, including the press and directors boxes. Because of the segregation between home and away fans in the Northam Stand, it is unlikely the full capacity will ever be reached for a competitive match.
The current record attendance was for the match between Southampton and Coventry City on 28 April 2012, when 32,363 spectators attended. The lowest league record was Southampton versus Sheffield United, when just 13,257 attended.
In recent seasons the club's lower league position has had an impact on attendances, although the visit of Exeter City on Boxing Day, 2009 in a League One fixture attracted an attendance of 30,890. During the 2009–10 League One campaign, attendances increased significantly, attracting 29,901 against Milton Keynes Dons in the Football League Trophy and then, just 4 days later, 31,385 in a South Coast derby against Portsmouth in the FA Cup. The overall average attendance for the league season was 20,982, a near 3,000 improvement on the previous season despite being a league lower. During the 2010-11 League One campaign, the team was strongly backed by fans and attendances rarely went below 18,000. The lowest league attendance during this season was 18,623 against Yeovil, while the highest league attendance during the season was 31,653 against Walsall.
Read more about this topic: St Mary's Stadium
Famous quotes containing the word capacity:
“Forgetting: that is a divine capacity. And whoever aspires to the heights and wants to fly must cast off much that is heavy and make himself light—I call it a divine capacity for lightness.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“What distinguished man from animals was the human capacity for symbolic thought, the capacity which was inseparable from the development of language in which words were not mere signals, but signifiers of something other than themselves. Yet the first symbols were animals. What distinguished men from animals was born of their relationship with them.”
—John Berger (b. 1926)
“What man or woman of common sense now doubts the intellectual capacity of colored people? Who does not know, that with all our efforts as a nation to crush and annihilate the mind of this portion of our race, we have never yet been able to do it.”
—Angelina Grimké (1805–1879)