Supporters
In the club's early days Athletic struggled to attract crowds of over 150, but by the time the club reached the Conference, crowds at Crabble were averaging around 1,000. After the club's relegation to the Isthmian League Division One South, the average attendance fell to just over 800, but when the club returned to the Premier Division for the 2008–09 season, the average attendance at the Crabble was 1,293, the highest in the division. The highest home attendance in the club's history was 4,186 for a match against Oxford United in the first round proper of the FA Cup on 16 November 2002. Although Athletic's improved monetary position means that the Supporters' Trust is no longer required to financially support the club, it remains active as a fundraising organisation.
Read more about this topic: Dover Athletic F.C.
Famous quotes containing the word supporters:
“His [O.J. Simpson’s] supporters lined the freeway to cheer him on Friday and commentators talked about his tragedy. Did those people see the photographs of the crime scene and the great blackening pools of blood seeping into the sidewalk? Did battered women watch all this on television and realize more vividly than ever before that their lives were cheap and their pain inconsequential?”
—Anna Quindlen (b. 1952)
“The opposition is indispensable. A good statesman, like any other sensible human being, always learns more from his opponents than from his fervent supporters. For his supporters will push him to disaster unless his opponents show him where the dangers are. So if he is wise he will often pray to be delivered from his friends, because they will ruin him. But though it hurts, he ought also to pray never to be left without opponents; for they keep him on the path of reason and good sense.”
—Walter Lippmann (1889–1974)
“No Government can be long secure without a formidable Opposition. It reduces their supporters to that tractable number which can be managed by the joint influences of fruition and hope. It offers vengeance to the discontented, and distinction to the ambitious; and employs the energies of aspiring spirits, who otherwise may prove traitors in a division or assassins in a debate.”
—Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881)