ACCRINGTON Stanley have no immediate plans to switch more home games to Friday nights, but they hope that will not bring an end to increased attendances at the Crown Ground.

A total of 2,764 fans watched Stanley claim an emphatic 5-3 win over Crewe on Friday, two weeks after 3,228 watched them beat Darlington under the night-time lights.

Such gates are marked improved on an average attendance of around 1,400 in recent times and, although many fans turned up to help Stanley during their current financial crisis, the Friday night fixtures eliminated the element of competition for supporters with neighbours such as Blackburn Rovers and Burnley.

Stanley, however, are concerned that winter weather conditions could cause chaos if they continued to play games on Fridays – although they are not ruling out a switch from Saturdays further down the line.

“It was a magnificent crowd again on Friday,” said chief executive Rob Heys. “We were hopeful that people would come back after we got 3,000 against Darlington, when everyone agreed it was a great game. And I don’t think anybody left disappointed on Friday.

“We’ve had a lot of people saying they like the Friday games and it helps that we have won the games and it has been a good start to the weekend for everyone.

“I don’t think it’s something that we can start to do permanently straight away because obviously, as it goes into winter, frost on the pitch starts becoming an issue. We don’t want to start having games postponed.

“But it’s something we will look at and discuss with the supporters. It may be that next season we can play games on Friday nights early on in the season.

“And we hope people will continuing coming on Saturdays.

“They saw eight great goals on Friday and all five of ours were well taken.”