Dai Young was disappointed at the attendance for Cardiff Blues' 36-19 Heineken Cup win over Sale Sharks at Cardiff City Stadium on Saturday.
The 9,172 crowd at last season's Heineken Cup semi-finalists was 2,000 fewer than saw them beat Italian side Calvisano last season.
"You'd like to think it means hell of a lot to the region," said coach Young.
"But you can't say that we were pleased with the crowd - a 9,000 crowd is very disappointing."
The Blues' biggest home attendance in last season's pool stages was the 27,114 crowd in their 37-24 Gloucester triumph at the Millennium Stadium.
A crowd of 11,203 then watched them beat Italian side 62-20 Calvisano in the last round of pool games that led to the Blues opting to switch to the Millennium Stadium to face Toulouse in the 2009 quarter-finals.
The Blues beat the French side 9-6 in front of 36,728 on that occasion and 44,212 were there to see them fall to Leicester in a historic semi-final at the Millennium Stadium.
Young added: "We were hoping for a massive crowd to get behind us and it wasn't quite the case. We can only do, obviously, what we can do."
The Blues faithful have not warmed to their new Cardiff City Stadium home - being a tenant of the city's football team - while their performances this season are well below the standards of last season.
The reigning EDF Energy Anglo-Welsh Cup holders have attracted just 10,511 fans to watch Harlequins and just 10,511 to see French giants and three-time European champions Toulouse in their other home pool matches.
But the Blues are not the only Welsh region with concerns over crowd figures as the Scarlets' crowds have been disappointing.
Young hopes the Blues can reach the Heineken Cup knock-out stage again this season.
If not - and provided they qualify - he says the Blues will give a crack at the Amlin Challenge Cup quarter-finals their best shot.
They travel to Harlequins next weekend in the final round of pool games, with the London club facing Toulouse on Sunday having already been knocked out of the running for a place in the quarter-finals.
"We need to get that result next week and if we go to the Amlin quarter-final we'll give that a real crack.
"But that's certainly been our focus over the last week or so, that we want to get to a quarter-final of some kind, whether it's not in the main Heineken Cup, then certainly in the lower-tier Cup."
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