League of Ireland Attendances - Gameweek 5

This weekend the masses spilled into the country and out onto the streets to celebrate 100 years since the 1916 Easter Rising. It was five years after the events of that weekend that the League of Ireland was established. It was originally known as the “Free State Football League” and featured eight teams for that 1921/22 season. From those eight, two clubs still play in the league - Bohemian FC and Shelbourne FC. Many great players, moments and memories have been forged over the 95 years since.

On Good Friday, 35,450 filed into the Aviva Stadium to watch the Republic of Ireland play a friendly against Switzerland. The starting line-up and bench consisted of ten former League of Ireland players (Seamus Coleman, Stephen Quinn, David Meyler, Shane Long, Kevin Doyle, Daryl Murphy, James McClean, Wesley Hoolahan, David Forde, Stephen Ward).

On Saturday, 18 League of Ireland teams took to pitches across the country as they competed in the Premier and First Division of Ireland’s domestic league. The attendance figure across those nine games totalled to 6,836 people. The highest crowd of the weekend was in Inchicore where 2,150 punters watched St. Patrick’s Athletic play Dundalk.

President Michael D Higgins is a regular League of Ireland attendee and his club, Galway United, registered the second highest attendance of the weekend with 1,170. Unfortunately the remaining seven fixtures averaged 539 giving a total average over the Gameweek as 760 which is around half the previous lowest Gameweek average before this week.

Estimates in red

Gameweek 3 featured six Premier Division games and it managed to still record over 2,100 more than the nine games this week. Looking at fixtures for Gameweek 5 many of the clubs who would draw the larger home crowds were away from home. Cork City and Shamrock Rovers, two of the top three home crowd drawers, didn’t play. However, at the same time, Finn Harps' home attendance suffered a large drop from Gameweek 4.

With fve Gameweeks down, the table below shows the clubs average attendances to date. Dundalk, Cork City and Shamrock Rovers top the charts with UCD at the foot.