Debates about our historic playing level crop up on here from time to time and my opinion is firmly in the mid third division band.
This leads into the various underachieving/overachieving comments in relation to that.
If someone asked me the question “what percentage of the time that you have been regularly attending WFC games have they spent playing in the third division?”, my instant off the cuff response would be 90% or higher. It just seems like it.
The actual divisional split over the time that I have been regularly attending surprised me, in that over the 53 seasons since 1968/69, 39 (73.5%) have been in the third division, 9 (17%) in the fourth division and 5 (9.5%) in the second division.
In purely percentage terms, our time in the third division is less than I instinctively thought and therefore it follows that our time in both the second and fourth divisions is more than I thought. It just doesn’t seem to me, for example, that almost 10% of my regular supporting time has been watching second division football.
On one hand perhaps I shouldn’t have been that surprised because I often tell aquaintances who support other clubs that we usually have a bit of success once a decade.
You who have attended games for longer than I have will possibly have seen a greater percentage of “success” than me when the late fifties/early sixties are taken into account. Indeed those supporters of more recent years will have a great record of “success”.
Getting precious little enjoyment out of my support for the last couple of years, but that’s for another thread.
), Bolton, ManYoo during that time.