Remarkable Boxing Day Attendance Record-Best for 43 years

Also, Plymouth had a 12,000 attendance too.

Fans are starting to turn up at Mem. Long may it continue..

But it was the lowest home crowd against Coventry since the 2nd World War:-

21/02/1953 28,614
13/04/1963 13,145
04/04/1964 12,006
26/12/2016 11,200

And here's the point - the previous crowds were at a stadium which, at the time, has a capacity around 35,000.  We'll never know for sure, but if we had a 20,000 capacity stadium, it would have been close to capacity on Boxing Day in my opinion.

I would like to see some Gas Macc type analysis of Rovers attendances,however I think that it would be quite difficult comparing crowds in different eras and different stadiums.
You could interpret the OP differently and say 'Rovers Boxing day crowd only 50% of the attendace of 43 years ago', probably nearly half of the people at the Plymouth game are dead by now anyway.
The crowd these days (and not just at Rovers) seems to be much older than in the 60s and 70s when lots of the baby boomers were going to matches as youngsters.
I know younger blokes at work who only watch football on TV and they would never go to watch Rovers or city.
We went out on Christmas Eve and 2 of them were talking about going to Man Utd ( one of them goes with his mate sometimes as his mate has corporate seats) the other one (says he is a Man Utd fan,been to OT once) said he would love to go in a box there as 'you can go in hours before the game and take your Play Station with you'! not saying these blokes are typical but I wouldnt be surprised if they are.
I know that people say that all this new housing being built will bring in more supporters but I doubt that for many reasons.
Sorry its a long post but its a subject that interests me.

I'll give it some thought! 

In the meantime, here's a quote from an interesting 2013 article from "When Saturday Comes" on the subject of average crowds.

According to the Deloitte 2012 Annual Review of Football Finance, clubs collectively invested around £3 billion in grounds and facilities, including the construction of over 30 new stadiums, over the previous 20 years. After decades of neglect this spending served to drive up attendances – the report mentions that Brighton's recent move to Falmer resulted in attendances increasing by 172 per cent, referring to this as the "new stadium effect".

Crowds

Brighton are an odd one,when they are doing well they get very good crowds,in 77 and 78 in the then 3rd and 2nd divisions they averaged 20,000 and 25,000.
Their catchment area seems massive but I think the 172% increase in crowds when they moved to Falmer was mainly because they had low crowds at Withdean due to capacity?
I remember when Rovers were at Twerton people were predicting much bigger crowds if they could get back to Bristol,I suppose they are now but I wonder how much latent support there actually is ? very difficult to estimate.

It wouldn't have been all ticket at a 20,000 stadium, meaning more pay on the day supporters.  Whether that would have meant, 13,000, 15,000, 17,000 we'll never know!  There was no point people wanting tickets once the game was effectively already sold out, but plenty of people were on Facebook desperate to get their hands on tickets.  Success and better stadia bring in larger crowds and the evidence is clear from new grounds built in the last 30 years,  Even the sh*t are getting bigger crowds in spite of their current bad form.

The home atmosphere has been poor for some time now. Let's not kid ourselves. It takes a goal to get it going & when we concede first it absolutely goes to the dogs. You'll get the occasional quick Irene & some utter s***e about hating C**y & the IRA?

Never seems to be any problem on the road?! The Blackthorn/Thatchers//Filton Bank End need to get back to a slow version of Irene, chorus & verse. 100mph version plus the frequency (every 10mins id wager) has absolutely killed it.

Shame really, I recall Dwarfy Johnson Jnr once claiming that the mem was the most intimidating/hostile atmosphere he had ever played in (Rovers 2 - 2 Yeovil 2004) Comparable with Galatasaray & that's from the sheedhead leader himself.

Let's get back to that.

I'd seriously ban for life any Cnut who starts that IRA song, each and every time it's sung.

Sectarian horse crap has never had any place at Rovers, and adds precisely zero to what little atmosphere we have these days.