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Are Derby County Really a smaller club than Hearts of Midlothian ?


Alan Ramage 4 EVA

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Derby are as big as Hearts and Hibs put together. In Scotland, on a scale of 1 to ten, Rangers and Celtic are ten, then Hearts, Hibs, Aberdeen are about 3    

We definitely aren't bigger than them put together, nowhere near. 

The rest of Scotland is absolutely riddled with the gruesome twosome but Edinburgh is actually rather good for supporting their teams. I know a lot more Hibees than Celtic fans, and I barely know any Rangers fans. 

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Someone will doubtless do a financial analysis and supporter count but so much has to do with history and where you play that can't be changed. They won their top division 4 times and reached a euro 1/4 final .. Smaller ground than us fewer supporters but I'd say in ranking terms not vastly different. Their fans have seen triumph and disaster in equal measure and have their legends just like us .. Yes we are bigger on a global stage but dial in Scotland and the fact that Edinburgh is a capital city and it adds a shade of grey. I know ! lets have a Mackay trophy as part of pre season to sort it out once and for all ?

 

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Maybe not now SY but it's got me wondering what their crowd was when Dave MacKay played for them, might try and look it up later.

The Jambo's are alright with me, always liked the colour of their jerseys an' all.

26,248 was their highest average attendance when he was there. 1953-54 season. 

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1954: Following the modernisation of the terraces, the club architects said that the capacity was 54,359 but for safety reasons only 49,000 tickets was printed for big matches.

Just found that on their website.

Then this just a little further down the page,

1966: Although attendances had dropped since the League Championship was thrown away in 1964-65, a Cup match against Celtic on 5 March attracted 46,965. There was also a break-in of fans to see an exciting 3-3 draw.

Obviously, Dave was long gone by that time but they still could attract a big crowd for the big games.

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Mrs Mackay was probably relating it to the size of Edinburgh which is after all a European capital. Also the fact that it has two clubs with a fierce historical rivalry would give the impression of being "bigger". But I doubt Hearts FC could ever really have been a bigger organisation than DCFC.

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I think anyone who doesn't understand what his wife is saying here doesn't understand the huge leap of faith Mackay made by joining us and moving his family to Derby, or what a huge coup it was for Clough and Taylor in persuading him to join us.

When Mackay played for Hearts, they were winning league and domestic titles and playing in front of crowds we could scarcely dream of. Playing for Spurs, he won the Double, the FA Cup a further three times, and the Cup Winner's Cup. 

When he signed for Derby, he was joining a second division side whose only notable achievement was an FA Cup win 20 years before. It's also worth considering that both Hearts and Tottenham play in their respective nation's capital cities, while Derby in 1968 wasn't even a city.

By twisting Mrs Mackay's comments to make some butt-hurt point about even being mentioned in the same sentence as tiny winy Hearts, you completely miss the point about how much that one man did for our club. When he signed for us, we were the smallest club he'd played for by some margin, but through the team he led to promotion and later managed to a second league title, he was part of a movement in the late 60s and early 70s which elevated Derby County to another next level.

Most of the fans around me in the East Stand look the sort of age where they might have started watching Derby around that sort of time, and I suppose their outrageous levels of expectation and entitlement can hardly be blamed - nobody told them it wasn't always going to be like that. 

But without Mackay, and Clough, and Taylor, and all those players at the dinner tonight, we'd be half the size we are today. We'd still be going through the motions in the second and third tiers, wondering what it would have been like to watch Raich Carter or Steve Bloomer play in their prime - and we'd probably settle for it. The bigger playing budget, bigger stadium, bigger attendances, bigger expectations, bigger everything we have in comparison to Hearts today is just as much down to Mrs Mackay's late husband as it is Clough and Taylor.

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