ACCRINGTON Stanley are keen to capitalise on interest in the club following the play-offs as they bid to increase attendances at the Crown Ground next season.

Stanley’s average attendance dropped by six per cent from 1,980 to 1,867 during the 2010/11 campaign despite the Reds’ fifth-placed finish, with only Macclesfield attracting lower crowds in the Football League.

But the Reds are reporting encouraging season ticket sales, despite a sizeable increase in prices, and are hopeful that Ilyas Khan’s recent takeover will help to build a relationship once more between the club and the town after a troubled couple of years.

“I think there are a lot of new people getting involved with the club now who’d perhaps stayed away until it was all sorted because it did become a bit of a soap opera, certainly towards the end,” said chief executive Rob Heys.

“Now it has been settled I think you’ll see a lot more commerical activity going on and hopefully crowds will improve as well.

“Season tickets have gone well, you get a bit of lull now before pre-season starts and we fire up the marketing to sell a few more.

“But we’ve sold the same number as last year despite the prices creeping up a little bit, which we’ve had to do to keep competitive on the field, so that’s encouraging.

“And it’s not just the crowd, it’s the local businesses we want to get behind us, everything that we’ve been banging on about, it gives us a chance to do it now.

“We’ve been out there, we’ve been in the public eye, we’ve had people go out to paint the town red, there were 17 shops who had window displays during the play-offs.

“So it shows there is that affection for Accrington and we’ve got to go out there and capitalise on that.”