A Call To Arms At St Mary's
Thursday, 28th Feb 2008 08:49

Its time to get the Spirit of the Dell back into St Mary's

Over recent weeks its been doom and gloom amongst Saints supporters as their team has slipped from one disaster to another both on and off the field, however it is time for all true saints supporters to stop whinging about the situation and get behind their team, to paraphrase the words of a famous quotation from history.

" Ask not what your Club can do for you but what you can do for you club ! "

What this basically means in Saints terms is that now is not the time to sit back and bemoan the situation that Saints find themselves in, now is the time to help the cause in whatever way that you can.

In simple terms the help needed is the supporters through the turnstiles, the club has too major problems at the moment, dragging itself clear of relegation and cashflow, both can be helped short term by the supporters pouring into the stadium, it has a dual effect, it creates the right atmosphere to help the players win games and pull clear and at this moment 5,000 extra supporters through the gates is a vital cash injection.

Its the classic chicken and egg situation, the supporters are staying away because they arent happy with results and the quality of the team and the team struggles to win because its playing in front of a half empty stadium and doesnt have the money to bring in loan signings to improve the performance on the pitch.

Its time for that circle to be broken and the only people to do that are the missing fans, over the past decades their isnt one supporter that hasnt had value for money from this team and been given some good times, be it the cup run of 2003 or just the pleasure of watching the legends that have played for the club from Paine to Channon to Keegan to Le Tissier, it is now no excuse to sit back and churn out the same excuses I hear week in week out.

Yes there are some fans that have a genuine reason for not being able to go, but of the twenty thousand or so supporters that used to be regular attenders a few years ago and no longer go it is a very small minority, all I hear from many of them is "I can no longer justify paying out that money to watch that dross" or words to that effect.

Well if you love Southampton Football Club as much as you claim, or in some cases as much as you claimed in May 2003, then give something back to it in its hour of need, there are six home games left, if all of those 20,000 missing fans just came to two of these games each, it would push the attendance up towards the 28,000 thousand mark,

In real terms this would mean a 90% full St Mary's getting behind the team and extra income of around £130,000 per game, hopefully it would create a snowball effect, the team would start to win on the field and pull clear of relegation and the extra revenue would fund at least one more loan signing.

The future of Southampton Football Club is in the hands of the fans, make no mistake, we can all sit by idly and watch it die or we can rally around and start to help it recover, does any Saints supporter find any pleasure in our current situation, I would hope not, so tme to do something about it !

I appreciate that some of you will be reading this and thinking this doesnt apply to me, I go to all the games etc etc, but it does, if you can persuade a friend to go to a game do so, take the bull by the horns, go down and get the ticket for them if necessary, dont give them the excuse not to go.

And finally e mail this story to every Saints supporting friend that you have, prick a few consciences, lets get our pride back into our football club.

I know its not quite suited to our situation bt the sentiments of my final quote are perhaps easily adaptable to our current plight.

"It only takes good men to sit back and do nothing for evil to flourish"