Caley Thistle midfielder Ross Draper is pleading with the club’s missing supporters to play their part in keeping Inverness at the top end of the Premiership.
The Caley Jags are third in the table alongside Dundee United, but average just 3,522 of a crowd for home league matches.
Location means travelling support is small and the club has tried a series of ticket initiatives, the latest being a pay what you can offer for next Tuesday’s home game against St Johnstone.
The Highlanders cannot yet match the top-flight tradition of clubs such as Aberdeen or Dundee United, but Draper hopes the constant drive for more supporters reaps its reward and said: “It’s a good scheme from the chairman, and it’ll be good to see the results, hopefully it will have a positive impact in terms of numbers and for the club in the long run.
“Fair play to the directors, they’re doing everything they can to get attendances up.
“We are competing with bigger clubs. Maybe if we were down at the bottom competing with clubs who have the same attendances it wouldn’t be such a big issue.
“Aberdeen get crowds of more than 10,000, but that comes with the size of the club, the tradition and the history they’ve got. I expect they’re going to get that.
“Everything included, including the size and location of our club, makes it tough.
“For us to be competing at the top end of the league, we need supporters to come and pay their money, and do their bit for the players to keep us up there.
“Maybe Aberdeen or Dundee United could say they’ve got a plan to be up there for the long-term. But with the extra support we’re looking for, we could do that in the future and become a side taken a little bit more seriously year-by-year.”
Draper is in his third season at Inverness having joined from Macclesfield Town in 2012 – another club which struggled for supporters being so close to Stoke-on-Trent and Manchester.
But with his side just five points off leaders Aberdeen, the 26-year-old is relishing being so close to the league summit.
He said: “Every year I’ve been here we’ve been written off and have had to go out and prove people wrong.
“That’s fine by us, we’ll just sit on the shoulders of the likes of Aberdeen and keep picking up results.
“I’m not saying we’re going to push them all the way, stick with them or go past them. They have different goals from us. With the size of the club, they might think within themselves they have a genuine chance to go and push Celtic.
“But we’ll just plod along and do our own thing. To see the league so tight is unusual, but it can only be a good thing for Scottish football. The longer it goes on the better, but I’m not sure how long it will last.”