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This is what we've unearthed on this lot so far. If you've got anything more, 
give us a shout at [email protected].

The year they won the First Division makes interesting reading:

mackems v Portsmouth
Division One 12/09/95
Attendance: 12,282

mackems v Crystal Palace
Division One 3/12/1995
Attendance: 12,777
(They went 2nd with a 1-0 win in this game)

mackems v Southend
Division One 9/9/1995
Attendance: 13,805

Of the 22 attendances in their promotion year, 17 of them were sub 20,000.

From a reader:

"In addition to the free tickets they need to fob off in the Metro, my mother who is a secretary at an Ovingham school, receives 10 free tickets every week to Sunderland FC (registered charity 546365756863452) matches. Nobody ever wants them so she just sends them straight back."

"When I was studying in York 2 years ago, they were trying to recruit mercenary fans by advertising on the side of buses there."

Their Hall of Shame....

General

"Try: 78,000 as the highest ever attendance in the north east at...ROKER PARK!!"

First off, that's just wrong. But it was good of him to point out that despite having a bigger ground they still had worse attendances....

- Newcastle United have been the better supported club over the last century. Barring the war years (ten) Newcastle have been the better supported club no fewer than 76 times, which is 56 more than Sunderland's 20.

- Newcastle's aggregate League attendance at St James' Park totals 58,500,000. Approaching TEN MILLION more than Sunderland's aggregate attendance.

- It is interesting to note that when Sunderland won the League Championship in 1901/02 and 1912/13, Newcastle had the higher average gates. In the latter case United only finished 14th yet their average gates were 7,000 higher than Sunderland's.

- Newcastle have finished as the Football League's best supported club on no fewer than 10 occasions, whereas Sunderland have never finished as the League's best supported club:

Man Utd 34;
Everton 13;
Arsenal 12;
Newcastle/Chelsea 10;
Aston Villa/Liverpool 7;
Spurs 6;
Man City 3.

- Between 1895 and 1934, a total of 39 years, Newcastle were the better supported club, compared to Sunderland's best sequence of 5 years between 1961 and 1966.

From a reader: "Premier League AFTER the footy boom 96-97. Could they fill 22,500 capacity Roker? Could they sh*te. New ground new fans. [They had five sub-20,000 league attendances that season. The previous season when they won the First Division 17 of the 22 attendances were sub 20,000.]. Oh, and some of the 86-87 season gates are well worth a look." [See above] 

......a letter from an edition of True Faith: "I've long taken the piss out of an SMB I work with on account of the Mackems giving away thousands of tickets for their games. Now I have definite proof. The Metro's free paper (17/8/00) carried a competition for 2 free tickets. Because the papers are free I blagged 10 copies of them and the Mags at work all filled in the competition (dead hard question - who did the SMB sign from Everton in the close season?) Guess what? The very next day we ALL got phone calls from some bint at the SoS telling us we'd won tickets. The Mackem I work with (who has always denied the free ticket crap) was gutted. Top dogs, eh? Mebbee not. Frankie, Chester-le-Street."

These figures are from the Sunday Sun 1993-94

Best ever season 
Newcastle 56,299 47/48
mackems 47,785 49/50
smoggies 36,123 50/51

Worst
Newcastle 16,835 90/91
mackems 13,600 86/87 
smoggies 5,135 84/85 

Post war average
Newcastle 33,133
mackems 28,357
smoggies 19,672

Top flight average
Newcastle 35,574
mackems 32,891
smoggies 25,165

Second flight average
Newcastle 28,252
mackems 23,701
smoggies 16,555