St Johnstone’s home games against Ross County and Inverness Caley Thistle in November attracted crowds of around 2,500.
So 800 is a reasonable guesstimate of the numbers the Perth club’s marketing campaign put on the gate for Saturday’s match against a side with a similar size travelling support. The attendance was just shy of 3,300.
This really is a good news story for Scottish football.
It was a great idea and superbly executed. Saints reached out to local schools, put a lot of effort into making it a day to remember and the players were game for a laugh in a video that only true curmudgeons wouldn’t smile at.
We’re forever being told that nothing can be done to bring fans back to our football grounds. That it’s an irreversible decline.
Saturday at McDiarmid Park proved this wrong. 800 out of 3,300 is no small percentage. It’s just under a third of the crowd Saints would have normally expected for a Hamilton match in January.
And it was on a freezing, dreich Perth afternoon.
Can you imagine what the uptake would have been if the sun was in the sky and the temperature more bearable.
The opportunity to regrow Scottish football is still there and the case for summer football is getting ever more convincing.