I have a theory on that one. One week I would be standing squashed in at the White Horse among a 30,000 gate, the following fortnight, same scenario, 20,000. Now this was the time when VAT was relatively new. At the time I worked near the old Millwall ground and our tea lady also did that job for local accountants who worked for the 'Ooolighans. It was suggested a clubs VAT on gate receipts would be 'estimated' at the seasons end. Then an average gate would be worked out over the season, an average entry price calculated. Times that by the number of home games and charge the 15% (I think that was the VAT at the time). Now if you could reduce the average gate...........

What I can't get my head round though is even before that in the old 2nd and 3rd division our crowds were bigger than when we went down in 81.

Yeah remember it well,hot sunny day penalty for us in less than a minute,then another one shortly after.
Then they got one and we just hung on for the win. Up until then I'd never seen selhurst that empty. Little did I know that was gonna be bumper crowd for us over the next 8 years.
Dark days indeed.

Your right come to think of it.
500 back then was a good turn out.
I remember going to Wrexham that season and it was the first time we had won away for 18 months,steve Lovell scored, and there was only about 150 of us on a terrace that held about 3000.

Was at that Cambridge first game too. Hinshelwood with a double pen.

One of the more memorable home games that season was the 3-3 draw against Luton who won the league that year. Think it was televised too but have never seen footage of it since.

The sudden drop in attendances was for a few reasons I think and certainly not to do with Alan Mullery becoming manager, as many have stated as fact in retrospect. For a start, Mullery didn't arrive until the following season.

Obviously our sudden drop in quality didn't help. The unbelievably exciting Team of the 80's being torn apart and the subsequent relegation and influx of mediocre players certainly made many walk away.

But the crowd reduction was not just a Palace phenomenon; it happened up and down the country outside the 1st Division. Coincided with prices starting to creep up - nothing major - but enough to make people look elsewhere especially with the early 80's recession and 3 million unemployed at that time.

Another factor was the hooliganism. Think a lot of dads thought twice about taking their kids. Going to football at that time in this country was almost deemed a lower class pursuit; a game for the riff-raff. You would certainly never hear a member of the Government or a Royal openly profess to supporting a side as you do now.

Football in the 80's was a totally different animal to what it was in the decades before and after, and in many ways what happened at Hillsborough in '89 was a culmination of this.

It does come across as quite a paradox, but I look back on going to football then as my favourite time. Palace were mostly cr*p; trouble in the air everywhere you went; grounds and facilities in total disrepair; treated like animals by the authorities; and yet, there was something real, creative, loose and invigorating about the whole experience.

There is more than a whiff of predictability and conformity about football these days.

'Better stop dreaming of the quiet life 'cos it's the one we'll never know'

It was a good day that.
I remember coming out the station and we all started singing england! england! england!
That was the first time id ever gone on the special aswell.