With last weekends FA Cup tie against Burton Albion being called off so late in the day, there was little opportunity for those travelling to be headed off early enough to prevent many from already being in Bournemouth ahead of the tie.
This inspired Cherries supporter David Whitehead to set up an appeal for cash from Cherries supporters to help pay for a coach for Burton Albion fans to come down next Tuesday (Jan 14th). The target was £800 to cover the cost of a coach.
The overwhelming generosity of Cherries supporters has seen a total just short of £3000 raised since the Saturday's postponement, which will pay for three coaches from the East Midlands, with any surplus going towards Eddie Howe's nominated charity - Cancer Research.
Speaking in the Bournemouth Evening Echo, Whitehead was quoted as saying: "When we went to Burton in 2010, it was the most fantastic day and their fans and officials were really friendly. I thought that maybe we should do something and floated the idea. I was contacted by Adrian Lee who has experience in crowd funding situations and he set up donations on the internet. It exceeded our expectations. There are lots of heart-warming messages on the website from all sorts of people and fans. Everyone in the football family can relate to it and lots of people have chipped in. It has been a great experience. We hear enough about petulant millionaire footballers but there is another football universe out there, with smaller, less fashionable clubs. Hopefully, this will shine a light on different aspects of football".
Anyone still wanting to make a donation can do so via this fund raising link.