WE have been crunching the numbers here at the T&A, and there is some good news for three of the biggest football clubs in Bradford.

Leaving Bantams-related matters on this to our chief sports writer, Simon Parker, we took a look at home attendances for Thackley, Eccleshill United and Bradford (Park Avenue).

Using similar time frames, the seven months of football action before the first Covid-19 lockdown in March 2020 (so the 2019-20 season in its entirety before curtailment) and the last seven months, following the abandonment of the work from home directive in late-January 2022, we wanted to see what happened to average home attendances at the three sides.

Would they have gone down, as people dealt with that new sense of nervousness in big crowds post-Covid lockdowns and the current cost of living crisis?

Would they have gone up, as people welcomed the chance to get back out to the football after time away and realised the importance of the sport in their lives?

Or when all factors were combined, would they stay around the same?

The most relevant data set was simply to compare the two periods for each team, with Eccleshill, Thackley and Avenue all seeing an increase in 2022 from 2019/20:

But just so we didn't have a data piece with a single graph, we broke those results down a little further.

Our second data set looks at home derbies for the sides, so for Eccleshill and Thackley, this meant games against each other, as well as any against Campion, Silsden or Albion Sports.

For Avenue, this was home games with York City, Guiseley or Farsley Celtic.

Here was what we found:

It seems obvious that more people would attend games on weekends (in which we have included Bank Holiday Monday games here), given they are off work and the matches are during the daytime.

Here were the results if we just compare games the Bradford trio played on weekends during the two separate time periods:

Despite that, many love a game of football under the lights, and it can act as something to look forward to after a long day at work as well.

On top of that, there could be mitigating circumstances as to why more fans went through the turnstiles in midweek.

The main one is whether derbies have taken place then, and a perfect example of that is the fact that Avenue's only two midweek games in 2019/20 were against Guiseley and Farsley.

With that in mind, here is the midweek data set:

Mitigating circumstances, or things to consider, were important to bear in mind in these data sets.

The pre-lockdown and post-lockdown comparison seemed the most obvious, but other factors had to be thought about to.

As we mentioned above, did the current cost of living crisis negatively affect the 2022 attendances? Surprisingly, it seems not.

As Eccleshill's chairman Adrian Benson pointed out, Thackley have played several more home derbies in 2022 than his side, which might naturally skew the data somewhat.

That was partly why we wanted to compare the two periods for each club, rather than pit one club against another, particularly in their case, as they play in the same division, so would maybe expect similar average attendances as each other.

League positioning might have had a factor too.

For example, Eccleshill were a mid-table side in 2019/20, whereas they have been promotion contenders throughout 2022.

Avenue looked nailed on for relegation from early on in the season immediately pre-Covid, whereas they have generally been a little more competitive in 2022.

But it is probably fair to say that at most levels, except maybe the elite clubs who want to make a protest against ticket prices or the board, fans tend to turn up regardless of how the team are performing, so it wasn't a factor we felt was worth great consideration.

We could even look at off-field work, like Thackley renovating their clubhouse between 2019/20 and 2022, but while that was a great project, done very well, would fans really be more likely to turn up because there was somewhere a little more spacious to have a half-time pint?

They are there for the football match and what happens on the pitch at the end of the day.

Either way, this piece was never designed to praise or criticise any of the three Bradford clubs, instead it was to simply analyse attendance data.

But given the increase in fans through the turnstiles at Eccleshill's Mitton Group Stadium, Thackley's Dennyfield and Avenue's Horsfall, between then and now, the trio will no doubt be very happy to see the results.