Premier League Preview

We’re seeing fairly good attendance for the most part in Major League Baseball here in the United States this summer. College football and the NFL will hopefully do well this fall as we approach that time of the year once again. But what about across the pond? How well will football do in Britain? The Evening Courier has a preview…

Football crowds predicted to drop as recession bites and ticket prices rise

Published Date: 29 July 2009

The number of football fans intending to turn their backs on going to live matches has increased as the cost of attending games becomes ever harder to bear for hardcore fans, according to Virgin Money’s authoritative Football Fans’ Inflation Index.

Research for the index shows that 30 per cent of regular match goers plan to go to fewer live games in the 2009/10 season because of the cost – up from 26 per cent in pre-season last year.

And of those out-priced fans, 22 per cent are intending to follow a less expensive lower league club in order to ensure they continue to get their regular fix of live football.

According to the index, which has tracked the cost of being a fan since January 2006, costs have risen 15.1 per cent year-on-year and by 29.6 per cent compared to when the index launched in October 2006.

Rail fares, ticket prices and pay-per-view expenses have also all increased significantly since last year, as have the price of match day goods such as food, alcohol and replica shirts.

The research was carried out among more than 4,000 fans representing all 92 clubs in the Football League.

In the Premier League, three of the Big Four are most at risk as 33 per cent of hardcore fans say they plan to go to fewer games. Birmingham, West Ham and Wolves fans are close behind at 31 per cent.

Premier League clubs that have the least to worry about include newly-promoted Burnley, Fulham and Hull. However, even they face up to one in five fans cutting down.

Grant Bather, spokesman for Virgin Money, said: “Clubs need to come down from planet football and live in the real world. Despite some efforts to cut or freeze ticket prices, for many fans attending just one game burns a big hole in their pockets. To attend 10, 20 or 30 games in a season is asking a lot when prices are so high.”

Virgin Money says supporters are only reacting to increasing pressures on their finances which have been caused by rising unemployment and increasing mortgage, food and fuel costs.

Malcolm Clarke, Chairman of the Football Supporters Federation, commented: “It is very worrying that ‘football inflation’ continues at a level way above standard inflation. Football fans are you, me and the bloke next door, not a different race, and with people losing their jobs and being worried about the future, it’s not surprising that going to the match – a leisure activity – might suffer.

“And in the middle of all this, fans see huge sums of money being paid in transfer fees and even a club talking of paying a player a million pounds a month, which many regard as obscene. A little bit of prudence – and a little bit of humility – from those at the top of our game, would not come amiss in the current climate.”

PREMIERSHIP CLUB PERCENTAGE PLANNING TO ATTEND FEWER GAMES THIS COMING SEASON
Arsenal 33%
Liverpool 33%
Man Utd 33%
Birmingham 31%
West Ham 31%
Wolves 31%
Portsmouth 29%
Sunderland 29%
Tottenham 29%
Aston Villa 28%
Stoke 28%
Chelsea 27%
Wigan 26%
Blackburn 25%
Everton 25%
Man City 25%
Bolton 24%
Hull City 23%
Fulham 22%
Burnley 19%

Linked by Blood:When Irish Eyes Are Smiling

Ancestry. Heritage. Whatever you call it, when we start looking into who we are and from whence we came, the further we look, the more we find… It seems that two people who have been in the news lately are actually related, as we read in this report from ABC News…

Harvard Prof Gates Is Half-Irish, Related to Cop Who Arrested Him

Two Men at Center of Controversy Linked by Irish Heritage

By NIALL O’DOWD
IrishCentral.com Publisher

July 28, 2009—

Henry Louis Gates Jr., the black professor at the center of the racial story involving his arrest outside his Harvard University-owned house, has spoken proudly of his Irish roots.

Strangely enough, he and the Cambridge, Mass., police officer who arrested him, Sgt. James Crowley, both trace their ancestry back to the legendary Niall of the Nine Hostages.

In a PBS series on African-American ancestry that he hosted in 2008, Gates discovered his Irish roots when he found he was descended from an Irish immigrant and a slave girl.

He went to Trinity College in Dublin to have his DNA analyzed. There he found that he shared 10 of the 11 DNA matches with offspring of Niall of the Nine Hostages, the fourth century warlord who created one of the dominant strains of Irish genealogy because he had so many offspring.

Ironically, James Crowley, whose name in Gaelic means “hardy warrior,” is also descended from the same line as Gates, having very close links to Niall of the Nine Hostages.

So the two men who took part in what is now an infamous confrontation outside the Gates home near Harvard this month are actually related through common Irish lineage — one of the more extraordinary aspects of the incident that has sparked worldwide headlines.

Gates is one of many famous African-Americans with Irish heritage, including President Barack Obama and award-winning author Alice Walker.

On the PBS series, Gates visits Trinity College to find his roots, and says to the genealogist, “Do I look like an Irishman to you? I’m here to find my roots. I’ve been looking all over Africa and I couldn’t find anybody, so I ended up here.

“I’m descended from a white man, he says. “A white man who slept with a black slave. And we know from the analysis of my DNA that … goes back to Ireland. So maybe you can help me.”

When the genealogist tells him he does indeed have Irish links, Gates says, “I find this oddly moving. It is astonishing,” he says, “that I have a kinship with someone (Niall of the Nine Hostages) dating back to the fourth century A.D.”

Millions of Irish Americans, especially those in New York, may be directly descended, like Gates, from Niall of the Nine Hostages, the most prolific warrior in Irish history.

A team of geneticists at Trinity College led by professor Dan Bradley have discovered that as many as 3 million men worldwide may be descendents of the Irish warlord, who was the Irish “High King” at Tara, the ancient center of Ireland from A.D. 379 to A.D. 405.

The story of Niall of the Nine Hostages is already the stuff of legend, which has been passed on to countless Irish schoolchildren over the years.

The supposedly fearless leader battled the English, the Scots, the French and even the Romans, and struck fear into the heart of his enemies. His dynasty lasted for centuries, continuing up until the Elizabethan conquest of Ireland at the end of the 16th century.

Legend has it that it was Niall of the Nine Hostages who, on a raid in Wales, captured a young slave and brought him to Ireland. That slave would later escape, and go to become Ireland’s patron saint, St. Patrick.

But one story not told to most Irish elementary schoolchildren was of Niall’s prolificacy.

When it came to the bedroom, it seems that Niall of the Nine Hostages was even more fearless and energetic than he was on the battlefield.

This warlord was responsible for the very common Irish surname “O’Neill” — which means “descendant son of Niall.” It is also the name of Irish pubs all over the world.

The researchers also found that as many as one in 12 men in Ireland have the same DNA as the Irish king — and in Ireland’s northwest, that figure rises to one in five.

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