LAST Saturday, Worcester City finally bid farewell to St George’s Lane after 108 years.

It was a day of emotion — sadness at leaving their beloved old home as well as the joy of fans recounting the good times — but one to remember.

However, while fans will quite rightly want to cling to memories of bygone years, there is no time for dwelling on the past.

Amid the scenes of supporters packing the terraces and players taking a deserved lap of honour, so the stark reality of the situation hit.

City no longer have a home to call their own. In June it will be unceremoniously ripped down by the bulldozers and become a housing development.

Now is very much a time to look to the future of sharing with Kidderminster Harriers, otherwise the prospect of the club returning to the city in its current form will be extremely bleak.

Worcester need their fans more now than ever. More than 4,000 people showed up to see the ground off in style but how many of those actually care beyond being able to say “I was there”? I guess we’ll find out.

Sales of the £100 season tickets have increased sharply since the final whistle blew against Chester but the club are still nowhere near their 1,500 target and the deadline to snap one up is tomorrow.

Such a crowd as last weekend would suggest a healthy fanbase but, of course, that is not necessarily the case.

People will always turn out if it suits.

I’ve done it in the past and those who attended Worcester’s FA Cup match against Huddersfield in 2005 did it too.

Glory hunters, call them whatever you will, but the fact remains that being part of an occasion like last Saturday is eminently more appealing than Vauxhall Motors at home on a cold January evening. It’s just a fact of life.

Whether the club should have done more to promote the season tickets on the day itself is a moot point but officials have worked behind the scenes to keep the club alive and need the scheme to work.

If City don’t achieve the required sales, who knows what the future holds?

New ground proposals and a potential capital gains tax bill in December aside, they would certainly struggle to maintain their current playing budget, and that’s already at the lower end compared to their Blue Square Bet North rivals.

Relying on gate receipts alone at Aggborough, which are likely to be well below the 979 average (inflated by the Chester attendance) they had at the Lane this season, won’t leave them with much cash to play with after rent is taken into account.

Worcester’s directors know they can’t survive forever in exile, they need to get the club back into the boundaries of the city if they are to stand any chance in the long term.

But to get to that stage, they need to negotiate the present, and, to do that, they need those who were at the Lane last Saturday to play their part.