Kingsmills

I agree with Charles that,given the experience of other smaller provincial clubs who have won the trophy, an extra 500 or so regular attenders is a realistic target. Roughly 10,000 extra bums on seats in the course of a season which would fund a couple of extra first team players with a few bob to spare. What is essential is to strike while the iron is hot....

I think we should be wary about throwing stones from our glass house and, to be fair,those non fans of theirs made a hell of a noise when they scored.

I agree with the gentleman inhabiting the Howden End in the sky....

No. It was your eyes watering. We had a great support and huge numbers but they had a few thousand more but, from my vantage point in the South Stand, we had, by far, the better card display and the other thing that we had in the end that they didn't was the cup...

Man of the match in my view despite being on the losing side. However,he's firmly put himself in the shop window and will have wealthier, if not necessarily more attractive suitors than us.

14,000 give or take. We now have a great opportunity to quickly re-engage with the hoards of new fans by offering the opportunity to be part of the next piece of history by attending our first European match. If we can persuade half of them to make the much shorter journey to the Longman then the stadium will be packed and bouncing.

There was a review of the final between 7.20 and 7.30, which consisted of replaying radio highlights and then an interview with Barry Wilson, during which they mostly asked him about whether we could keep the squad together. To be honest, I don't have too much of a problem with them leading with the Rangers story as they would already have covered our win on yesterday's programme, and there was the issue of potential police involvement to discuss - i.e. it's still an evolving news story. However, they spent far, far too long on Rangers and their situation, and the ICT coverage was pretty perfunctory - if they were so desperate to keep Rangers involved in the discussion, then they could at least have considered the idea that top-flight Scottish football might have benefited from their absence and looked at our story in that context. But no. Chick Young was absolutely doing his nut, more or less saying that any Scottish football supporter who was glad that Rangers were staying down was ignorant and wrong. Proud to count myself among the ignorant and wrong....

Tuned in to Sportsound to hear what they were saying about the momentous and historic events at the showpiece conclusion to the season. Gave up at seven after half an hour of nothing other than a lower division side's failure to win a play off match and the unsporting and petulant of at least one of their players. Does anyone know if they ever got round to mentioning us at all ?

Disappointing certainly but, given what we have just achieved, the moving on of individual players, even ones as influential as Marley has become, is far from devastating.

Horribly strange to see that list without Graeme Shinnie featuring at all.

Finished for the day. About to set off for the Dear Green Place. See you all at Hampden tomorrow......

Odds on for at least one more season of this wonderful Armageddon. Wish we'd thought of it years ago. Now, if only we could find a way to rid the the Premiership of that other lot what a great league we would have.....

Have you not heard about the huge play off game on Sunday. Where on earth are they going to find the resources to cover our wee match as well ?

Tickets will be on sale at Hampden tomorrow.

I suspect that a good few more tickets would have been sold, especially to neutrals, if the national public service broadcaster and the Weegie press gave a little more oxygen to the annual showpiece event and a bit less to a routine league play off match. Who would have thought so many journalists were so obsessed with Motherwell........

Graeme Shinnie has been a great servant and is likely to go on to great things but, while I perfectly understand his motives for leaving and joining his home town club for significant increase in salary the fact is he has chosen to leave early in his career and join one our major rivals. For that reason, while I will cheer his every move and help raise the Hampden rafters if he goes up to lift the cup, I think a special round of applause is a bit much. If anything, a round of applause on 12 minutes for Dean Brill would be more appropriate.

I'm still waiting to see what Maarlon's got to offer....Inverness Cup Final Steady on....I remember when the the final of the Inverness Cup was one of the highlights of the season.....

our central midfielders are not slow and one is 25, the other is 21, both will last the 90mins no problem Thanks for the inside information

Hence my previous reference to engaging fewer than a fifth of the population.

Great thread by the way Renegade...

Great to hear the level of sales but IMHO that begs the question(s) ... Should more stock have been bought? ... Should limited edition shirt prices have been set slightly lower for proportionately better total sales (much more units x slightly lower price)? The fact is win or lose (obviously hopefully win) that stuff could be sold after Saturday. I bought stuff and could have bought still more after the League Cup Final ...just saying. The club did their homework in advance and spoke to other clubs of similar size to ourselves to try and get a handle on what the demand might look like...then ordered a bit more, just in case. Sales have been way beyond that and....due to advance planning....the club were able to bring in more, which has also sold. On some things, the manufacturers have simply not been able to keep up with demand despite putting on extra shifts at production facilities. With shirts there was the same issue as has always cropped up with Errea in regards to their turn around times and the club got as many extra shirts in as they possibly could. I don't know the figures, but if I was to hazard a guess from just seeing the amount of stock passing through and how busy staff have been, I would say that the club have turned around 4 or 5 times the merchandise that we did ahead of the League Cup Final last year. Great news and credit to all those working their socks off to both satisfy fan demand and maximizing income for the club.

....and still time for some last minute waverers to decide to go. One thing is certain, for the first time in our history the team will have the backing of more fans than we could squeeze into our own ground (even if we used Grant Street as an overspill)

Maybe once upon a time. Now they are just tedious, repetitive and increasingly inaccurate.

This but from a red and black perspective. Reluctant supporter of the merger but, win or lose on Saturday (Hope to Hell it's the former) we have achieved what we could only dream of in the Highland League days. Added to that I have a long nursed, Scottish Cup related, score to settle with Falkirk. Back in the frozen winter of 1979 I bunked off school for the afternoon to make the short journey from Midmills to Kingsmills to watch the mighty Jags take on the Bairns in the 29 times postponed cup tie which finally kicked off at half past one on a Thursday due to Falkirk's refusal to play under our rather good floodlights. If memory serves, we were three down and well and truly out of the match after 15 minutes and a further goal adrift by half time. My misery was compounded the following day by incurring the wrath of the formidable deputy rector Mr 'Abdul' Johnston for my unauthorised absence. Revenge, they say, is a dish best eaten cold.

One further consideration is that while the marginally interested might make the effort to travel 10 - 60 miles from Paisley, Kilmarnock, Falkirk or Perth, the 175 miles from Inverness will probably be a disproportionately deterring factor. The 185 mile trip didn't seem to disproportionately deter the good folk of Dingwall. Quite the reverse. Gretna also took far more than the population of the local community despite a 100 mile journey. I am not convinced that geography is a significant factor.