A change of ownership seems to have invigorated the Saints supporter base as following on from the sell out Premier League games against Man City & Spurs, the FA Cup tie against Coventry City has now also sold out.
With four days to go before the game against the Sky Blues is due to be played, St Mary's is also a sell out, yes Saints did give the visitors a slightly higher allocation than they we entitled to, but this was only another 325 tickets, so the game would have sold out even if that had not been the case.
Of course the reduced price tickets have helped the cause, but Saints have usually done that for home games in the early rounds of the FA Cup and not sold out, two years ago just prior to the emergence of Covid we played Tottenham Hotspur in the same round and again tickets were reduced, but only 29, 282 were in attendance, around 2,000 less than had attended the League fixture a month earlier.
Indeed in that same season in the 3rd round against Championship opposition, this time Huddersfield, only 20, 091 turned out.
Cup fever is seemingly back for the first time in a number of years, perhaps for the first time since Ronald Koeman's two seasons when in his 3 home FA Cup ties, against Ipswich and then two subsequent defeats against Crystal Palace, over 30,000 attended each game.
Since then the Cup has not had the same magic it seems, under Claude Puel, despite being in the top 10 and having just beaten Liverpool at home in the League Cup semi final 1st leg, only 13, 517 turned out for a 3rd round replay against Norwich City, in fairness it was a cold night and it was our fourth home game in 3 weeks with another to follow at the weekend, we sold out for the 4th round defeat to Arsenal.
Mauricio Pellegrino started a cup run that would take us to Wembley for the semi finals, a full allocation and more travelled to Fulham in the 3rd round, but in the 4th at home to Watford, the gate was 25, 195, decent enough but still way down on the Premier League average.
Despite the previous seasons cup run only 17,095 turned out for a 3rd round replay against Derby despite the attraction of VAR being used at the stadium for the first time and out we went to the Rams.
So it seems that the arrival of Sport Republic has given the fanbase some renewed optimism and that is not a bad thing and that has reflected in the surge in interest in not just Premier League games at St Mary's but the FA Cup games where this will be our first sell out tie at home in 8 years.
It will hopefully be a Cup tie atmosphere, Coventry will be roared on by 5,100 travelling fans and for them they are themselves full of renewed optimism, they were back in the 1990's alongside us one of the perennial relegation strugglers, they went down in 2001/02 and since then have struggled badly under the ownership of SISU who bought the Sky Blues in 2007 after being rebuffed by Saints, who were on the verge of a deal before former Chairman Rupert Lowe rallied shareholders to veto the deal.
Since then they have gone to the dogs, after losing to us in what was a record crowd at St Mary's in the final game of the 2012 season where we went up to the Premier they spent 8 seasons including 1 in League 2, in the bottom two divisions of the League and also were homeless for 3 seasons having to play at Northampton and Birmingham.
So if you want to know what could have been the fate for Saints as well as what real turmoil in a club is, ask a Coventry fan on Saturday.
In the meantime it will just be nice to see a full stadium, with two sets of fans roaring on their teams.