With plenty of tickets still available for the FA Cup Final against Chelsea on Sunday, the big question is why Saints fans would want to miss one of the few matches in their lives that offer a chance of glory.

Before we start I would like to qualify the article in that there will always be those that cannot go to a game for various reasons, including holiday's, family events, work and affordability, we all have those things crop up in our lives sometimes at the most inopportune moments, however in a supporter base as big as Saints, this would still only account for a relatively small number in the grand scheme of things.

So let's quantify just what an FA Cup semi final is, whether it is played at Wembley or anywhere else for that matter.

For fans of club like Saints, ie those who are not in the Big Six, there are actually very few occasions when your club actually plays a game that actually has a meaning on the day it is being played, yes in a league season they all matter, but in a collective basis, very few actually come down to a single game meaning something, the result being final and no chance in the next game to rectify it.

In league games that usually means the final game of the season, or at least near to it, when you cross the points total that means glory or if you are at the wrong end of the table when you play the game where defeat means you are down, but unless that is the final game of the season, even those sort of games do not have the finality that a Cup final or indeed a Semi final has.

I have been following Saints for 46 years now and in that time there are very few actual games I can put my finger on that come down to judgement day, in terms of League games I would guess at a dozen or so , mostly either a few last day scrapes around relegation and a few on qualifying for Europe.

In the Cup's I would say that if you take the FA Cup semi and final of 1976, the League Cup semi final(2nd leg) and final of 1979, FA Cup semi finals in 1984 & 86, the League cup semi final (2nd leg) of 1987, FA cup semi and Final of 2003, the League cup semi and final of last year, up to now that is about it.

So in 46 years in cup games I have seen 11 games that have actually mattered, please don't bring up the Johnstones Paint Trophy here, I have yet to meet a Saints fans with a JPT winners tattoo, it was a good day out nothing more than that.

So there we have it, in 46 years of supporting Saints , probably a total of around 2,300 games played in all competitions that mattered, only about 25 of them have actually mattered, been do or die so to speak, that is barely 1% of the total.

At least in my time I have seen shots at glory, but even in the last 30 years in the cups they have been rare, indeed since the League cup semi final 2nd leg of 1987 at Liverpool some 31 years ago, this is only our 3rd semi final in either the FA or League cup, again to quantify it, up to last season any Saints fan under 40 would have had the chance to watch only 1 semi of final that being 15 years ago in 2003.

You get my gist by now, when you are a Saints fan you don't sign up for glory, if you want that there are the likes of the Big Six who will give you varying degrees of that.

You sign up because in the main you are born to it, it is more than supporting a football team, it is about pride in ones City and indeed the area around it, you know that glory does not come around very often, you don't need to look at the record books to list our trophy wins, your own memory tells you we haven't spent much time challenging for even a cup final appearance let alone being in one.

So why on earth when one of those chances comes along as it has this weekend, would you want to cut your nose off to spite your face and miss it !

I hear to reasons why Saints supporters (with no valid other reason as detailed before) are not going to Wembley.

The first is cost, I agree with you some of the seats are expensive, but these are the seats that are now all sold out, the tickets left are mainly £30, less than the cost of watching Saints at St Mary's.

Yes that could be dear for a father to take his kids to Wembley and yes there will be those that can't afford it, but for a father and two kids the tickets add up to £70 for the three, add the cost of driving and it is still less than £100.

If my son was a Saints fan I would want him to go to Wembley and experience the chance of glory, God knows when he may get another opportunity to do so.

The second reason is about entertainment and the club's performances this season, sorry I don't buy that, yes I want to be entertained, but I also want to see us grab some glory once in a while.

The reason I endured around 2,275 games that have nothing really on them is for the other 25 that come along so rarely, the opportunity to say "I was there" the feeling of euphoria when the final whistle went at Anfield last season was something everyone there had not truly felt since Villa Park 14 years earlier and before that you had to go back to 1979 when we beat Leeds in the 2nd leg of the League Cup semi Final.

Supporting Southampton Football Club is not about winning all the time, it is not about entertainment, it is not about individual players, if that is your basis for supporting a football club, then I would say Saints is not the team for you, I would suggest Manchester City would be a better fit.

It is about pride, if you have that pride then you would be at the semi final on Sunday, wild horses would not drag you away from the turnstiles at Wembley, I know I have that pride, I know a large proportion of our supporter base also have it and will be at Wembley on Sunday, some of them scraping together money they can ill afford to do so, some have had to walk that extra mile to be there.

But too many have either lost that pride or perhaps never had it, in tough times supporters rally around the team, get that siege mentality, now the days of social media mean that many would prefer to make snide jokes for a cheap laugh than actually go to Wembley on Sunday.

In 1999 it was one of those years that came down to the death and a final do or die game, it is known as the Great Escape season, then we had that pride, we had that siege mentality, we also had in Rupert Lowe perhaps our most hated Chairman of all time and at the height of his unpopularity, yet we did not use that as an excuse to abandon the team as many use Gao, Krueger and Reed now.

It is not too late to find your pride again, there are plenty of tickets left for Sunday at £30, why would anyone want to miss an FA Cup semi final !

Photo: Action Images

dillydog added 15:00 - Apr 19 I was going to buy a ticket this week, but the sun is out and boat is going in the water today, so i will be out on the ocean waves dangling a worm. Before you start , i went to all the games in Europe last 2 seasons and dozens of away games. And i wont feel guilty when i claim my final ticket. Any one want fresh Bream on Sunday.
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LoisDeem added 09:28 - Apr 20 Yes, don't discount the many competitors and families already committed to the London or Southampton Marathons and Fun Runs. Talking of commitment and competition the club should have been much more proactive in publicly advising of the 'general sale' availability, to generate sales of those remaining tickets, which are posted out from Devon, FFS. They must have known that they were competing with other events and some televised coverage of the semi. Add into the mix the complacency of someone within the club boldly announcing (at the start of this poor run) that the club would still thrive financially in the event of relegation -something that has become an increasing reality. Add into the mix the announcement by the invisible Mr Krueger (repeated several times in the same speech) that we are a 'smaller' club, which will slowly become a self fulfilling prophecy if he doesn't keep (us?) up. Add into this the complacent plodding inactivity by Mr Reed & Co with regard to the obviously failing last manager. Won't expect our directors to March like the rest of us, though they could be asked to Jog On quite soon. Agree with Nick though, something has always drawn me to a rare Saints semi final, ( and not the first for us at Spurs home ground) . So good luck to everyone in their various sporting pursuits. Up the Saints.

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