Record Attendance: 82,905 vs Arsenal on 12 October 1935

 

How did we manage to have this many fans at the Bridge!!

 

Must have been helped by the fact that there was standing and no health & safety (would have packed them in like sardines).

 

Was football really this popular in the 30s? You look at the highest attendances at other stadiums like Highbury and they were all achieved during this decade? Why the 30s?

 

Also, where did our fans come from? Transport I assume must have been piss poor in those days so assume that EVERY man in west brompton and fulham would have gone to the game to reach this attendance. No chance of people from surrey or even west london suburbs attending.

 

Any idea on ticket prices? I assume football was TOTALLY working class in those days so expect tickets to be almost free to atttract that many people.

Edited October 2, 201411 yr by BarnetBlue73

You have to remember that in those days most of the ground was standing including the huge west terrace. The rest is probably down to the depression ending, no war for a good few years although that was about to change soon. Cheap to get in, probably pennies I'd have thought and probably everyone in the area supported Chelsea or Fulham, no Manc or Scouse glory hunters around in those days.

Record Attendance: 82,905 vs Arsenal on 12 October 1935

 

How did we manage to have this many fans at the Bridge!!

 

Must have been helped by the fact that there was standing and no health & safety (would have packed them in like sardines).

 

Was football really this popular in the 30s? You look at the highest attendances at other stadiums like Highbury and they were all achieved during this decade? Why the 30s?

 

Also, where did our fans come from? Transport I assume must have been piss poor in those days so assume that EVERY man in west brompton and fulham would have gone to the game to reach this attendance. No chance of people from surrey or even west london suburbs attending.

 

Any idea on ticket prices? I assume football was TOTALLY working class in those days so expect tickets to be almost free to atttract that many people.

Public Transport was actually good in them days good bus, tube, tram and trolley buses because hardly anybody had any cars

Public Transport was actually good in them days good bus, tube, tram and trolley buses because hardly anybody had any cars

 

You're right about the public transport. I was just being naive and assumed it must have been crap because it was the 30's. :P

Media is consantly telling everyone that football only became popular after 1990 world cup but these figures contradict that completly.

What they really mean to say is that 1990 is when companies began to realise there was a fortune to be made from the game.

Edited October 3, 201411 yr by BarnetBlue73

Yeh,only fans before 90 are proper, anyone else can f**k off back to there computer.

1/4 final fa cup against palace in 75  is prob biggest crowd ive seen at the bridge and a good tear up as well 

Stamford Bridge used to be a lot bigger. At Max, 120,000ish (Back when it was a Sports Center in the 1900s)

With all Seating Regulations and the Cramped area the Stadium is (let alone the somewhat poor design...) the Capacity is now Limited.

But as I said, the Stadium used to be huge!

1/4 final fa cup against palace in 75  is prob biggest crowd ive seen at the bridge and a good tear up as well

That and the Fulham Boxing day match the following season (55,003, I was one of the three). My first match was in '67, Boxing day against Arsenal and from memory that attendance was bigger than Palace of Fulham but ten years earlier when crowds were bigger anyway.

Have posted this already in another thread but I guy I know was at the Bridge in late November 1945 when we played Moscow Dynamo. It's estimated that there were 100,000 in the ground.

 

A slight aside but my Grand-father was at Hampden Park in 1945 when Scotland played England. The crowd was just under 150,000 which I believe is still the biggest attendance for a game in Britain. My Grand-father paid a shilling (5p) for a ticket.

I've posted this picture of The Bridge previously, here it is again. It is hung at the National Football Museum in Manchester, dated 1925 from memory.

 

A little bit of artistic licence there I think !

top picture there! can't believe the east stand (?) was that tall.

 

Surpirsed there were never more tragedies like Hillsborough.So many people and so little health and safety.

Stamford Bridge had a capacity of 100,000 when it was opened in 1905.

 

This made it the second biggest football stadium in England after Crystal Palace which had an official attendance of 121,919 at the 1913 FA Cup Final !

I read that when CFC played Dynamo Moscow in 1945 over 100,000 spectators came in attendance. I don't think there were seats in the stadium at the time & everyone was standing.

in the east stand there was

in the east stand there was

And on the top of The Shed roof.

 

one way of getting in i suppose 

Lets face it possibly a few spectators that day in 1945 had managed to escape from POW camps in World War 2

 

So this wall would have been easy to get over ! 

That's also one of the highest attendances in English football history. Only Man City bettered it at their own ground. Liverpool's record of 61,905 is pretty tame by comparison.
 

A lot of spectator sports were huge prior to WWII, bigger than they are now in terms of the live gate they could attract. This was an era when Charlton could get 40k or 50k for a match. As another example, this is the crowd for the Dempsey-Carpentier heavyweight title fight in 1921.

 

 

And here's a crowd gathered in Times Square just to listen to a bloke on a tannoy reading out updates of that fight!

 

Edited October 19, 201411 yr by Englishman