After the excitement of Saturday's Fill Up Selhurst Day dies down, Sam Hesketh analyses the effects the idea could have on the future of Crystal Palace.

A year ago, every Palace fan in the world was unable to see a future past the summer, worrying how, where and when any help may come from after we entered administration and stared into the abyss of a ten point deduction which sent us hurtling down the table. Last Saturday we reached the complete opposite, with our eyes looking up and seeing a future that sees us not only financially secure, but a future with many new young fans getting involved and swapping their cartoon t-shirts for the hallowed Red and Blue stripes.

The match against Barnsley was important in regular terms, we needed the three points and with our exemplary home record and the Tykes arriving with an away record that isn't far off ours, it was a match that we should have been confident of taking by the scruff of the neck. With Danns lovely run and shot and Vaughan's coolly taken penalty giving us the victory, the day ended on what would have been a high on any Saturday afternoon.

That only tells half the story however. Getting to the ground around 2pm, the area was already awash with colour and buzzing with the noise of DJs and and kids shouting and hollaring and as I moved along the main stand towards the Whitehorse to meet my mates, there was a vibrancy that hadn't been around for the large part of this season, certainly not before Christmas. Little extras added to the occasion with the kids allowed to see Kayla, a real life eagle, who stood out amongst the usual clowns and men-on-stilts, surely a dimension no other club can offer on its family days.

Another huge positive in terms of looking to the future generations for Palace support was the large group of kids located in the corner of the Arthur Wait, next to the Holmesdale. At the start of the season, a lot of people were complaining about moving the away fans to the other end of the stand, citing a lack of bantering atmosphere as a reason it shouldn't have happened. However, when in the last fifteen minutes or so, thirty or forty children had locked their arms together and were swaying and bouncing along to "We Love You" thanks in no small part to their proximity to the loudest sections of the Holmesdale, all arguments for bringing the away fans back were left dead in the water. Seeing those young'uns find out first hand just what it means to be loud, proud and Palace was the closest thing to those three points that you could possibly get.

Fill Up Selhurst Day was an unbridled success for other reasons too - Geoff Thomas' return to Selhurst Park is always welcomed, the legend that he is, but seeing him at half-time with the ground a lot more full than usual talking about his foundation and the importance of supporting it, made it that much more pertinent. The club allowing a change of sponsor for the match to feature the charity Geoff was promoting and collecting for was a great move and another positive note to add to the overflowing number for the new board.

Continuing the theme of praising Parish et al, FUSD was helped in no small part by the togetherness of the online Palace community and the willingness of the board and everyone at the club to not only co-operate with the initiatives but be pro-active in pushing them through. A friend of mine who is a season ticket holder at Fulham came along because it was a tenner to get in and he loved every minute of it. Other friends came down because it didn't cost an arm and a leg and had a lot of fun too.

Whilst we can't do this every game, it just shows that we do have the support there and there are lots of people with more than a casual interest in the club, something Dougie pointed to when he lamented the loss of support, saying: "Hopefully we have got a new young breed of fans to come and watch us play who will tag along to see what we are trying to do...My aim is to get the fans back up to that level of support because I know this place is difficult for other teams to come to and if we have that level of support behind us, it will make it a lot tougher for the away sides.”

There were a lot of eyes on Palace last Saturday, with the furore of the cheerleaders in the media spotlight and the BBC's Late Kick-Off following FYP's very own James Endeacott around during the game, so it was an absolute pleasure to be a part of an afternoon that may well herald the start of something very special.

It may not happen this season or next, it may take quite some time, but if we keep on promoting events such as these, sticking together and continuing this forward thinking, Palace are going to be an attractive proposition to all the local kids and instead of the replica kits of Chelsea, Arsenal and Manchester United, it'll be the Red and Blue we see in Croydon, Streatham, Norwood, Thornton Heath and all areas in between.

We love you Palace.

KG is back with his fortnightly column and he talks about the international break as well as returning to league action as Palace try to avoid the drop. He also speaks about how awesome the Palace fans are, naturally. KG was talking to freelance reporter Ed Aarons.

Hi everyone! Since we last spoke, I’ve been back in South Africa to help Bafana Bafana defeat African champions Egypt 1-0, in a match I played for the whole 90 minutes. It was a very exciting game and we scored in the third minute of injury time to win so everyone was feeling on a high afterwards.

I flew back to the UK on Tuesday after some great celebrations back home with my team-mates. I feel a bit exhausted but flying is something I’ve got used to over the last few years playing international football. I usually just watch movies on the flight and then sleep to pass the time.

Now it’s back to England and trying to keep Palace in the Championship. We have seven games left so I think three or four wins should guarantee us survival. Our home form has been really good recently but it is away that we need to start picking up more points. We haven’t been playing that badly but we have been losing too many games, although sometimes it has been more down to luck – like against QPR when Paddy was sent off. It’s also very hard to beat some teams away but hopefully we can get some better results coming up.

But the most important thing is that we keep winning at home. It has been really good for us to play in front of our fans since I arrived at the club and Selhurst has become a bit of fortress. I’d like to thank the supporters for what they give to the team because it really helps us as players. I promise you that the lads are working hard to making sure that the team will survive in the Championship.

FYP's Stephen Bridle has his say on the Crystals-gate affair, well everyone else has, haven't they? To see the ITV London Tonight coverage click here.

Drum roll please...

And the award for worst piece of journalism of the week goes to... Fred Attewill for this little gem published in the Metro. Stand up Fred, take a bow.

Yes, this is the story published earlier in the week claiming that fans of Crystal Palace were blaming the Crystal cheerleaders for our poor home form. Not five minutes of research would have revealed that, in fact, the Eagles have not lost a game the girls have presided over.

What’s more, if he had taken the time to speak to more than the one Palace fan then surely he would have sculpted an article that presented the girls in a different light – and not as the “pole dancers on grass” picture that was painted with the help of “one internet blogger”.

I can tell you now that the response the Crystals have garnered from the vast majority of Eagles fans I have spoken to is one of gratefulness. In fact the only distraction they bring on match days is a welcome one, something easy on the eye in stark contrast to some of the football we’ve slogged through watching this season.

It’s not certain what Attewill was trying to achieve with his article, perhaps he just wanted to carry on in the vein of other anti-Palace articles published in the Metro such as this take on Edgar Davids’ departure. Whatever his aims he’s certainly earned himself a torrent of criticism and backlash from Palace fans united behind the Crystals.

The story has even earned the girls attention in the national press when 23-year-old Crystal Amie Latter went on BBC Radio 5 in order to defend herself and the rest of the girls – who, by the way, don’t get paid and volunteer for the group for the love of dancing and Crystal Palace.

There's a couple of points in particular I want to use to highlight where I think he may have gone wrong:

Firstly to distort information is in contravention of the Press Complaints Commission’s code of practice.

Secondly, to pick on young girls – many of them not yet twenty, is an act of cowardice. “Pole dancers on grass,” something I’m sure their parents loved reading.

What really has me in hysterics is the thought that a ‘bloke from down the football’ would even consider pole dancers as a bad thing. Next there’ll be calls to ban swearing on match days, well that’s not fucking happening any time soon; or for all women to attend matches in long sleeved turtle necks, where the mere flash of an ankle will result in a life-long ban.

Attewill did, however, try to redeem himself in this follow up article published on Thursday after it became abundantly clear that Palace fans wouldn’t stand for an attack on their club, whichever form it came in.

Not so much an apology, but in fairness it does allow Palace fans chance to rebut on points made in the previous article. Still, it’s not much help since the original article has been in the Metro’s top five trending stories since it was published at the beginning of the week.

What do you think? Let us know below...

We all love the sash, right? It's what makes Palace Palace. But since it was originally introduced in the 70s there have been a handful or reincarnations over the last 10 years. Which has been the best? Sam Hesketh has a think.

Now I can't be counted amongst them, there are many Palace fans who are of the opinion that while our red and blue stripes are great, it is the white shirt with the sash that takes the mantle of favourite Eagles strip. Looking back over the past few years, we've tried to recreate the kit that proved so popular in the 70s with varying degrees of success, so let's take a lot at the last three attempts to see how good (or bad) they were.

Season: 2001/2

The reason this kit stood out so much was that it was the first return to the sash in over ten years. We'd been used to white away kits of course, but seeing the sash back was a big deal. The main attraction of the shirt was the placement of the crest and manufacturer's logo being in the centre rather than on either side, keeping the shirt simple and uncluttered. However, that being said, the Churchill sponsor was placed in the middle of the shirt, forcing a gap around the sash which, though obviously unavoidable with such a big logo, was a bit of a let down.

It was by no means a bad shirt though and a vast improvement on the home shirt of the following season [when we kept the away strip the same] which featured two different shades of blue. As the first sash shirt in many years, it lit the touchpaper of many fans' interest and the demand for more of the sash grew. It was also nice to see a bit of effort go into the away shirt, rather than just have a plain yellow shirt or the weird Adidas away kit with stripes coming down over the shoulders.

Summary: A good start to bringing the sash back. Not perfect, but certainly better than our next attempt.

Season: 2008/9

It took quite a few years for us to use the design again, not until the 2008/9 season did we move back to the idea after having a fair few designs in the interim. We'd had some nice away shirts in that time - the return to the yellow shirt/blue shorts which brought us promotion and the all black shirt in 2005/6 both spring to mind but we'd also had a couple of stinkers, not least the grey kit that looked like the designer had shaded his paper in with a 2B pencil and forgotten to tell his mate to add some colour.

But return to the sash we did, only this time it was to be our home shirt, rather than the red and blue stripes that I'd grown up with. I wasn't a fan of this idea, I want us playing in stripes though the home shirt of the previous season -with the V shape at the bottom - left a great deal to be desired. This time round, the crest and logo were on either side and the GAC sponsor logo was on top of the writing in the centre of the shirt, leaving it looking far too busy and decimating the effect of the sash itself. With Errea putting their logo all the way down the sleeve too, it just looked unruly and devoid of the simplicity that made the design so popular in the first place.

Summary: A step backwards for the shirt.

Season: 2010/11

So now we move onto this season with a design that is almost perfect. The crest is once again to the side, as on regular shirts, but this time the sponsor without it's chunky logo is underneath and away from the sash which moves from the opposite corner. The Nike swoosh is small and simple and as a result doesn't impact on the colours at all. The reason that we're not giving it a perfect mark here is the direction of the sash which strays from previous incarnations.

Were we to have it going from the normal side of the shirt, and then move the Gac.com onto the other side, it would look great. Sure, the crest would be at the top, but it would look clear and crisp and become the perfect example of how to design this particular kit and was how it worked in the late 70s and early 80s. It looks great with either white or red shorts and is arguably my favourite away shirt since I've been coming to Palace. My only qualm is that since we've had it, we've been bloody awful away.

Summary: One little step away from being a 10/10 shirt. If only we could win with it on...

So there you have it, a famous Palace design made to look either great or jumbled. Which is your favourite of the past three incarnations and should we carry on with it or bring back the Brazil-like yellow and sky blue?