A separate post from me on today's attendance. A number of reasons for today's poor home crowd. A generic reason to begin with. None of the home teams in the 4 quarter finals attracted their average home crowds. Celtic 18K yesterday; Aberdeen 8.7K yesterday (home average 13-14K); and Rangers 33K today. Fans are put off by having to pay extra for cup games end of.
Today's game was on TV and that was always going to reduce the crowd.
Finally the weather reduced our crowd by several hundred and Hearts probably by the same. Before the beast from the east arrived I expected a crowd of 8,000 - 8,500 (with about 3,000 - 3,500 Well fans) and I reckon that we'd have achieved that. I know of about a dozen fans (including Al B it seems) who didn't travel because of weather conditions or transport problems. There will have been far more. Not all Well fans live in Motherwell or Hearts fans live in Edinburgh. It snowed heavily and constantly where I live between 10.00 and about 15.00. A gritter got stuck just opposite our house this morning. I just wasn't going to risk it.
Maybe a technical question to end with. Does anyone know if the recorded crowd of 7,564 included tickets sold but not used? Looking at the South Stand on TV I was was very impressed with the Hearts fans but there were still a goodly number of empty seats in there. I'd estimate their crowd at about 4,300ish, well short of the much quoted 4,800.