Underachievers

A chat with a mate of mine from Wakefield the other day got me thinking about areas of the country where football has never taken off in the way you'd expect.

How, for instance has a city the size of Wakefield (population 325,800) never had a team in the football league? Bristol is a major city and the more successful of it's two teams has nine years top-flight experience. Bradford is huge yet City are a relatively small club. Cornwall is quite sparsely populated but you'd expect at least one football league club nonetheless.

Can you think of more examples and explanations?

Wakefield is a rugby league town. The whole town revolves around the rugby league club. Same with Wigan until about 20 years ago - Wigan Athletic's rise through the leagues is remarkable really in that light.

Other examples I can think of, towns and cities without a football league club -

Dudley, Poole, Slough, Telford, Lancaster, Sutton Coldfield, Eastbourne, St Helens and Woking all have populations over 100,000 and no league club.

Same was the case for Crawley and Milton Keynes until recently.

Gloucester has a population of 123k and no football history. Compare that with say Norwich (132k) or Preston (114k).

Population figures from Wikipedia.

I can't believe that Wakefield (city) has a population of over 300,000, it's no bigger than Burnley.

Surely that has to be the district?

I was going to say Milton Keynes but they've nicked a club.

How about Salford, okay Man city and manu are close by , but the Salford boundary also borders Bolton....I know they've a rugby club.

Cumbria is massive, with just one lower league team to show for it. Did I ever mention my vision for Kendal Wanderers?

What about the Isle of Man or Isle of Wight, they're bigger than some towns that have football clubs. Or even Guernsey - I think Matt Le Tissier came from there originally along with a few other useful players.

Perhaps they had teams at one time but they were sunk in some horrific boating accident.

Graeme Le Saux came from Jersey as well. Lancaster City has a small team that plays in some obscure league and yet they are dwarfed by Morecambe which has a much smaller population.