General manager hopes Morton 150th bash is a day to remember

Ton welcome the Kirkcaldy men to Cappielow for the first time this season and the club are preparing to pull out all the stops to recognise Ton's 150th anniversary.

The general manager says that everyone within the four walls of Cappielow has bought into making the celebratory event a success.

The Ton general manager revealed just how much planning has gone into the event (Image: alex craig)

And Mr Pryde-MacDonald shared hopes of the event being enough to inspire members of the Inverclyde community to come out and support their team on a more regular basis.

"It's difficult to do something that can try to involve every supporter," he told the Tele. "If you're doing events they can usually hold a maximum of around 500 people.

"To have the ability to do something here at Cappielow on Saturday is really great and hopefully we can put on a memorable occasion for everyone in attendance, because that's really important to the board and to myself.

"Everyone in the club has brought into it and is speaking about it across both teams and it's been really warmly supported. We want to give the supporters something to buy into.

"It goes back to what I've said previously about the attendances at the Motherwell and Hearts games. We're probably not going to get that on a regular basis but we do want to make an inroad into that.

"We want to inspire people to come back who maybe haven't been to Cappielow for a few years and hopefully bring new people along as well.

"If we can do that then it can allow us to strengthen our place in the community and really mark the 150th anniversary of the club in the correct way."

Mr. Pryde-MacDonald wants to ensure this is the beginning of a community wide celebration (Image: gmfc)

Ton representatives have handed out 1000 tickets across community projects in Inverclyde over the course of the week, in an effort to recognise the efforts of those groups. 

Mr Pryde-MacDonald hopes this is just the start of the club being able to help celebrate community-wide achievements.

He added: "Sometimes when people hear that you want to give away 1000 tickets, you get people giving you some strange looks.

"But I think that was a really important thing to do because in the last few years, particularly since Morton in the Community have been around, the club have been an integral part to the community.

"We want to continue, develop and grow that. What we're not happy to do as a football club, is to sit here and talk about what we've done because we want to talk about what we're going to do moving forward.

"What we want to do is extend the reach and recognise all the other charities and organisations that contribute so much to our local area.

"We're all aware of the challenges in the area, but what we're humble enough to do in the club is respect the work that goes on across the area, from people like Inverclyde Women's Aid and Ardgowan Hospice.

"These are things that we should be doing more regularly as a club. We want this to be a start point for that."