Although a far cry from the near-40,000 capacity crowds that flocked to Hong Kong Stadium for the Real Madrid and Liverpool matches, the Hong Kong Football Association (HKFA) declared itself content with a crowd of little more than 2,000 for Saturday's opening fixture of the new domestic league season.
The official attendance for the repeat of last season's final day title decider between Happy Valley and Sun Hei was 2,071 with 1,233 having paid to see the defending champions Valley winning 4-2, compared with an average of 971 for the 51 match days across the four competitions last season.
However, HKFA general secretary Martin Lam declared that considering temperatures crept up to 33 degrees Celsius on Saturday and that the game was broadcast by TVB Jade the crowd was satisfactory. 'It was live and it was a hot day so in terms of the numbers we're quite happy,'' said Lam. 'We're particularly pleased that we had a lot of kids with their parents. We've been trying to widen our base and that's our target group.''
More reassuring was the sight of green-clad Happy Valley fans soliciting members for a new supporters club, which Lam says will be a feature this season as the teams desperately try to attract people back to the local game. 'We've encouraged every club to do that, to initiate something. Happy Valley also introduced the children that played on the pitch at half-time. I think we can always encourage members' activities during half-time,'' he said, before conceding the FA had not yet worked out the best way to co-ordinate the clubs' efforts.
'This should be a collective effort. We need to work out what the clubs want to do and what the FA needs to do and get consensus.''
