Witham Town football club, in Braintree, Essex saw its largest crowd ever as they broke their attendance record of 1,205 supporters coming together on Saturday the 7th of March.

With the Simarco Stadium only having a previous attendance of 890, you may ask how and why this happened.

Ellis Platten, also known by his channel name ‘AwayDays’ is a popular YouTuber with nearly 600,000 subscribers and 948 football based videos containing in depth game and club reviews.

However, this particular video was slightly different, as it was the first in which he got his subscribers involved, including some from the USA, Canada and South America! 

Platten spread the message from early February that he needed help to create ‘history on YouTube’ at the non-league Witham vs Gorleston match in March.

With the capacity of 2,500 and an average attendance of just 220, it may have seemed impossible, but in just 10 days, 400 plus tickets had already sold.

On the day, Ellis said he “wasn’t expecting this sort of response, it’s really amazing to see how many people have got involved with this, I just didn’t expect it, so it’s really cool…we sold 800 tickets which is just crazy”.

When asked why he chose the small town of Witham, Platten said, “I wanted to find a team that were lower on the pyramid, didn’t average many fans, so that the game would make a difference to them”.

He also stated, “It’s quite a hard place to get to if you live in the north so I wanted to see how many people would travel for it”.

By half time, the score was 2-1 to Gorleston, but this did not stop the electric atmosphere of the stadium.

There was so much excitement in the unusually long queue, with the small café hatch overwhelmed with orders and the merchandise stand raising plenty of money for the club.

The message of the ‘AwayDays’ challenge was also spread by renowned die-hard fan of Witham FC, James Beardwell who was amongst the large crowd of supporters.

Beardwell stated at half time “first half there is plenty of positives to take from the team…played some amazing football…our Witham town supporters kept singing throughout the 45 minutes…it’s the largest crowd since 2014”.

The YouTuber certainly didn’t have any trouble with people travelling for it, It wasn’t just the locals who wanted to see the making of their clubs history. Others had travelled as long and far as Canada, simply to come and watch the game.

A Canadian subscriber of ‘AwayDays’ stated he travelled “4,000 miles”. When asked why, he said “For this, for football culture, lower league football, for AwayDays, I’ve watched their channel, enjoyed their videos, and thought why not be apart of one and try and help to break an attendance record”.

The crowd were teased with a close match until the last few seconds of extra time, with brilliant football and a final score of 2-2.

Witham Town will next be taking on Concord Rangers on the 21st March.

The score may be similar, but will the stadium be as full? And which team will ‘AwayDays’ create memories and history for next?

AwayDays have now released the full edited vidof the day, footage which many fans have been excitedly awaiting.

Image credit: Olivia Fay