Quoting an old chum, who said this phrase when talking about the aftermath of the 'team of the eighties'. This is how we went from massive crowds to tiny ones in the space of three years. After Bloye and Venables' exodus and the demolition of the Whitehorse End crowds dropped from average 29k in 79/80 (capacity 51k) to 19k (capacity 26k) in 80/81 and 9k in 81/82 after relegation. By the 83/84 season we were regularly witnessing crowds as low as 4000+ when hosting Carlisle, Shrewsbury and Barnsley. We didn't get back to decent crowd sizes again till the late 90s - I remember crowds of 10k and lower under Coppell or Smith in the early/mid 90s. Once the fanbase lost belief in the owners' desire for success they lost belief in the club and deserted it in droves. It might sound silly but I know a Hastings United supporter who stopped going when the team almost deliberately seemed to stop trying to get promoted out of the seventh tier one season. We talk about the team of the 80s and the Coppell era but not enough about the slump in between, how dramatic it was and what caused it. It's great that we only had a five year slump, so many great clubs disappear for a generation or just shrink. That massive fair weather support went a long way to making our dreams of success more realistic. It's why I think the new stand is so important - it's not a potential white elephant - it will be a declaration of intent. Without it the dream will die again, though maybe not as dramatically as when Noades took over.

My first match was 1980 Norwich so we were just starting the downward spiral I remember all those Shrewsbury hull Grimsby games with 4 thousand crowds and we could only pull in 9k for a Brighton game at selhurst when Paul brush scored a free kick

walking down the holmesdale road to see the palace aces!