LAST week, the club announced that as a one-off it would be scrapping the £3 surcharge normally applicable to punters who purchase their tickets on the day of a game.

Fair enough. The club should be congratulated for taking a step in the right direction and encouraging stayaway punters to get down to Turf Moor

The next step, and one which the club needs to take quickly, is to capitalise on the success of Saturday's increased attendance is to get rid of the surcharge for good.

It would be revisiting old ground to go into all the reasons why, but the surcharge - a tax by any other name - is unfair, unpopular and has caused a degree of resentment among the very people who Burnley FC should be trying to appeal to - those fans who are umming and ahhing about whether to go to the football on a Saturday afternoon, or invest their time and money elsewhere.

Should the board need persuading that this is the right thing to do, they need look no further than Saturday's attendance figure for their answer.

At 12,592, the gate was around 2,000 up on the number that usually file through the Turf Moor turnstiles. It's also worth bearing in mind that this increase occurred despite mid-table opposition, freezing temperatures and, in all probability, nagging partners who wanted to go Christmas shopping.

Those that did turn up on Saturday afternoon witnessed a Burnley side doing a passable impersonation of a team pushing for a top six spot.

True, the standard of football was not of the highest quality, a fact acknowledged by Steve Cotterill, but then that is the nature of the Championship this season.

That having been said, there were flashes of quality on show. Lee Grant was faultless on his debut and kept the Clarets in it in the second half and John Spicer's deft, glancing header was textbook in its execution.

Once again, the star of the show was Ade Akinbiyi. How defenders must hate marking him.

In the first half he had a perfectly legitimate goal chalked off after outmuscling his defender and firing home a venomous shot.

And in the second period, a trademark Akinbiyi moment saw Ade use his pace and power to leave his man for dead before seeing his fierce shot tipped onto the post and out for what should have been a corner.

Here's hoping Ade can go one better tonight at Elland Road.