It is interesting to speculate on how many 'currently contented' fans the Toon has around the World.

".com" recently reckoned they had over 500,000 hits on one day - it was after one of the recent away games.

On the basis that very few of those people accessing the site will have visited more than once that day, it seems that in excess of 400,000 were interested enough to log onto the net to find out about the Toon's performance, and thereby must at least be closet/armchair fans.

I doubt more than say 1 in 10 Toon fans would be internet anoraks, so it seems reasonable to postulate that we have at least 4 million fans, and probably considerably more worldwide - perhaps as many as 5-10 million.

Any thoughts?

-- Anonymous, December 27, 2001

Answers

Roll on the days when the rest of the world acuse us of having only 0.01% of our support from genuine North Easterners.

I'd love to be in the position of having to cope with the willick sandwich brigade. :-)) Eat your heart out manure.

-- Anonymous, December 27, 2001

......whey aye, who needs prawns when we've got willicks by the bucketful! LOL, PB.

-- Anonymous, December 27, 2001

...well, I met A Mackem in New Zealand the other day so, I reckon clarky's figures (postulations) are about right.

-- Anonymous, December 27, 2001

When the club pre-seasoned in Holland under TDO I was pleasantly surprised at the amount of young Dutch fans turning up at the matches.

Some may dismiss them (+ myself for that matter) as armchair, long- distance supporters but they obviously cared enough to travel from all over the country, in club colours, to cheer the lads on. They were frequently well informed about the team, lyrical over the 'Toon Army', and its difficult to label them mere 'Glory Hunters' when none of them were around the last time the club actually won anything.

The SJP faithful will always be the backbone of the club's support but there are evidently a few million who share some of the affection.

-- Anonymous, December 28, 2001

Clarky, not disputing the end result, but not sure about the assumption that an individual only 'hits' .com once a day. I'm constantly logging on and off the internet, and might refer to .com a few times if I don't read everything in the first sitting. I also suspect that neutral journos browse things like .com, especially for background info.

-- Anonymous, December 28, 2001

I think often the 'background info' becomes their story

-- Anonymous, December 28, 2001

Peter - it's all debatable. I took a view that 400k of the 500k hits was likely to be different individuals, but could be wrong.

-- Anonymous, December 28, 2001

Also depends on how they define 'hits'. Potentially every single graphic on the site becomes a hit, if it's measured in actual hits to the server. Or maybe they're inflating an overall hit meter and just crossed the half mil mark on that day?

-- Anonymous, December 28, 2001

I think the answer is 6. Do I win a prize?

-- Anonymous, December 28, 2001

The Guardian did a poll of under18s around Britain and while the clubs that were best-supported were Man U, Arsenal and Liverpool, the Toon came in at an incredible 4th. So, while we are ignoring the support of local bairns, we are at least developing it in Bournemouth :o(

-- Anonymous, December 29, 2001

......whey aye, who needs prawns when we've got willicks by the bucketful! LOL, PB.

-- clarky (al_k_traz@yahoo.com), December 27, 2001.

I'm a seafood lover but those are disgusting.

-- Anonymous, July 22, 2004