Bristol Rovers are set for their biggest home attendance of the season with momentum building ahead of Saturday's League Two clash with Exeter City at the Mem.
Three successive wins and just one defeat in 12 League Two games for Joey Barton's Gas has driven a surge into promotion contention. They sit ninth in the table, three points off the play-offs and nine points adrift of the automatic places with 15 games to play.
Gasheads have responded in kind with home attendances improving in line with Rovers' form and they are to host their biggest crowd of the season for the visit of the Grecians.
Bristol Live understands more than the 8,003 tickets sold for the visit of Walsall (including season ticket holders and away fans) have already been snapped up and a sell-out is possible.
The club is urging fans to purchase tickets on Friday to avoid potential disappointment on Saturday if the Mem is at full capacity.
On the pitch, the stakes are high. Barton and his players are desperate to keep their fine run going, while Exeter are in excellent form too, with Matt Taylor's side third in the table and gunning for automatic promotion.
Barton said ahead of the game: "All we want is everybody at it, everybody on the front foot, everybody giving their best. I want our fans to turn up and give their best in the game on Saturday and, hopefully, our players do the same and we’ll do the same.
"If we keep doing that and keep turning up for each other, keep backing each other up and inevitably we’re going to be successful.
"We’ve seen some really good green shoots of recovery for the football club, but we’ve not got started on what I want to achieve here and what this group of players want to achieve here. We’re only just getting going.
"Fifteen to go and Exeter in front of us on Saturday, the best is yet to come from this group."
The working capacity at the Mem was just in excess of 11,000in recent seasons, but tightened measures from safety authorities forbid standing at pitch level – hence the yellow hash marks painted at the foot of some terraced areas – and the revised crowd limit is now slightly more than 9,700.
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