Guess the Gate

Sliema Par will be booking a room in the Workhouse this Festive Season after he had five winners (yes five) of his "Guess The Gate" by last Saturday all of whom are to receive a bottle of wine.

Remarkably the fans guessed within two of the precise Dunfermline Official Attendance.It was four years ago that this popular competition began on the "Pars Fans Forum". In the first year there was no actual prize and fans only had one guess.

Today it has grown and there are prizes of bottles of wine or soft drinks to the same value.In the weeks leading up to a match, Sliema gives you details of the towns population, the size of their average support and distance from Dunfermline.

Other information includes our average Gate ,our last attendance and the number of fans who attended the comparable match last season. Although one is allowed two guesses, a minority of fans try to sneak in more guesses or they duplicate another fan`s guess.

Sliema usually puts a daft quip in this preamble mainly to force folk to read it. This month he wrote that the Gate will go up as fans will need to escape from the Family after Christmas!

Recently he had to contact Ross as the Tannoy announcement of the Gate 3948 conflicted with the (incorrect) 3498 figure on the club`s official site. Sliema had threatened to Phone the President of UEFA in Slovenia!!

By the second year of the competition, so many fans were asking for a prize that Sliema brought Marsovin wine or Cisk Lager from Malta. The Cisk lager has won awards for the best lager in the World! Marsovin wine (strangely) has never won the equivalent wine category!.

The next step, logically, was to have a "Guess The Seasons" Competition running from May till the opening game of the League Season. It would prove embarrassing when Sliema won his own competition!

His avowed aim is to encourage an interest in the size of Dunfermline`s Gates and it is not uncommon for our Attendances to be superior to half the Premiership. This is not a trivial matter, given it can be a deciding factor in attracting players to the Club.

What has proved interesting is that, while you get about fifteen fans on the Leaderboard, (where you must get within twenty to be included), there are about two dozen fans who, every fortnight, can consistently get within fifty yet they do not trouble the Leaderboard!

Some fans take the competition very seriously and heaven help him if he omits a fan`s good Guess as he announces the result on a Saturday evening. In Spring 2018 he received an E Mail from one supporter pointing out he was sure he had had a good Guess four months earlier!!

Sliema is quick to pay tribute to Mathew and David in the Club Shop,w ho keep him updated with the figures. Chairman Ross McArthur has quipped, at a Supporters` Council meeting, that some Fans are better than the Board at projecting fan numbers!

Sliema will be at the Clubshop on Saturday 14th at 10am clutching the bottles of wine if he has not fled to his island in the sun on the first available Ryan Air flight.(He won`t ED).