Next up: Kettering Town. Venue: Rivacre Park. Date: Saturday, February 26: SATURDAY'S match pits the Motormen against a team that will have to make the longest journey to Ellesmere Port this season.

Kettering's Rockingham Road ground, in Northamptonshire, is 145 miles from Rivacre Park and, unfortunately for Vauxhall, the gap between the respective club's attendances is also huge.

Despite offering the highest standard of football ever in Ellesmere Port, Vauxhall's gates this season have been hugely disappointing.

The Motormen's average attendance in their inaugural Nationwide North campaign is a dismal 226, less than a quarter of opponents Kettering's average of 937.

With these kind of massive differences in support bases within the same division, it becomes clear why Owen Brown is forced to operate on such a tight budget.

Although Vauxhall proudly boast that they're 'a club in the community for the community' and have more than 200 junior players on their books, it seems the community in which they play is, on the whole, not interested in them.

The Motormen have many factors going against them when it comes to attracting big crowds, many of which have been documented in the sports pages of this newspaper on numerous occasions.

An out-of-the-way ground, which is inaccessible without your own transport, a relativelynew club which has risen up the pyramid in a short space of time and swift motorway access to several nearby professional outfits all combine to ensure Rivacre Park is sparsely populated on matchdays.

It seems to be a common problem for other clubs within the Nationwide North who have come from the UniBond League.

All but one of the teams to have come out of the other feeder leagues in the Midlands are in the top 12 of average attendance figures.

The exception are Moor Green (average 310), whose ground suffered fire damage and who are small club in a large metropolitan area (Birmingham) competing for spectators against long-established pro clubs.

Along with Vauxhall, the other clubs in the attendance bottom four, Runcorn (256), Droylsden (295) and Ashton United (272) are all on the doorstep of giants of the game.

This is in stark contrast to Kettering, whose only full-time opposition comes in the form of Northampton Town and Rush-den & Diamonds while fellow crowd-pullers Barrow (893) and Worcester City (870) are both geographically isolated big fish in small ponds.

But Vauxhall, whose massed junior ranks are actually allowed to attend first team matches for free and yet are seldom seen at Rivacre Park, must realise that healthy crowds, drawn from the area, are a possibility.

Form guide: Feb 19 L 0-1 v Altrincham (H); Jan 25 L 1-2 v Worksop Town (H); Jan 22 L 0-5 v Southport (H); Jan 18 L 1-2 v Alfreton Town (A); Jan 15 D 0-0 v Alfreton Town (H).