STEVE Kavanagh wants Sunday’s JPT final with Crewe Alexandra to be the start of a more successful era for Southend United, both on and off the pitch.

The Blues chief executive was proud to see more than 31,000 supporters cheering on the side at Wembley Stadium on Sunday.

And he now wants the club to capatilise on the increased interest in the team.

“We want the fans who came to Wembley to start coming to more matches and helping their local football secure more success,” said Kavanagh.

“We have collated all of the data from the fans who got tickets and we will be contacting them regularly to try and keep them interested in what we want to achieve here.

“Even if they came to just one in every five matches it would make a huge difference, and we will also be coming up with other strategies to improve our crowds because we’ve all seen the potential of the club now.

“We have to be careful not to annoy our season ticket holders with any offers we come up with, but everyone wants the same thing and that’s success for Southend United.

“More days like we had at the weekend would be fantastic and we want to push on from here and make this the start of another exciting period for the football club, which can also include a new stadium and promotion.”

Kavanagh confessed that success on the pitch would be the best way to bolster Blues’ crowds and admitted that he would have offered cut price tickets to those who came to Wembley for the last home game of the season, had Phil Brown’s side not been beaten 2-0 by the Railwaymen.

“We were going to charge them £5 for the Morecambe game and parade the trophy but unfortunately it wasn’t to be,” said Kavanagh.

“It could have been a different story if either Tamika Mkandawire or Bilel Mohsni’s headers had gone in and it would have been great if we could have given something all of our fans to cheer.

“But I’ve had only words of praise about fans from the Football League and directors from other clubs.

“And I actually came close to crying when the National Anthem was being sung due to how proud I was to be associated with the football club and how many people we had there.”

Blues will take 45 per cent of the gate receipts and also set a new club record for the number of their own supporters to have watched the team play in a single game.