Neville Dalton is a journalist with the BBC News website and a Portsmouth fan of 40 years. His expressed views are his and not necessarily those of the BBC.
It's ironic that this has been the season when some of our fans began to fall out of love with watching Pompey live.
When the novelty of being in the Premier League finally wore off and the ever-rising cost of watching Pompey became more of an influencing factor.
In this most amazing of seasons when a 7-4 record-breaker was followed by six successive home games without a Pompey goal and the club set new highs in terms of away wins, average crowds have for the third successive year continued to settle about 500-600 short of capacity, with cup followings generally considerably lower.
And if Fratton Park's capacity hadn't been so low, I believe the difference in attendances from our first couple of years among the country's elite would be even more marked.
Let's face it, the club turned down the chance of a higher ticket allocation for the FA Cup quarter-final at Old Trafford because it knew it wouldn't sell them.
I wonder, given the complex ticket arrangements for the semi-final, how many "occasional" fans are regretting the decision to forgo the early start that day for the comfort of watching the game on the box.
Not that all this isn't totally understandable. Watching Premier League football is really expensive these days, and a lot of people have other more pressing priorities.
But of course it is many of those same people who are now worrying that they might miss out on Pompey's first appearance at Wembley for nearly 70 years.
The club has had an unenviable job in trying to establish an equitable system for allocating tickets for the match that everybody wants to see.
As one (regular, I might add - have you noticed how the number of new ones has rocketed in the past week?) poster on this site pointed out, short of checking each fan's supporting history and extenuating circumstances, excuses, justifications and hard-luck stories, staff were always going to be caught between a rock and a hard place.
Thirty-plus thousand is at the same time both a decent amount, given that only half that number are Fratton Park season-ticketholders, and hopelessly inadequate when you realise the football fervour that exists in the city and among its far-flung diaspora.
To put it another way, 33,000 is just a little above the number watching Southampton in the first few years of their new stadium - and not much more than 10,000 over its average attendance in this most miserable season at St Mary's.
Ardent
We have loyal, passionate fans - but in truth, do we really have that many?
Nevertheless, I think Pompey have done pretty well with their rather complicated and elaborate allocation policy.
For what it's worth, I totally agree that season-ticketholders should be treated generously.
Not only are they the people who sustain the club with guaranteed income, up-front, every season, but - this year apart - they've largely committed to the next season at £500-plus each long before it's been known even if they'd still be watching Premier-division football.
Should we get more than one? Well, many season-ticketholders have friends or family who are maybe just as ardent as them (as are, I'm sure, many of our more occasional fans, too).
So we can be confident that most of the "multiples" will be going to genuine fans rather than corporate customers who like the football cachet but don't know Sean Davis from Steve Davis.
Moreover, many of us also fork out separately to go to away matches (let alone the home Cup games) - to the likes of Ipswich, Preston and Old Trafford when Wembley was but a remote thought.
Yet of course every extra semi-final ticket snapped up by a season-ticketholder reduces the allocation available for other genuine fans who are denied regular attendance by finance or work commitments.
But at least the club is dividing the allocations into groups so there will still be at least 6,500 for general sale, regardless of how many the preferential groups snap up - and that's about double the number of "casuals" who have been turning up at Fratton each match.
It's never going to be easy, and in my view it might have been fairer to give season-ticketholders the chance of a maximum of two.
Risks
I don't know whether I'll get three. But if I do, I know I'll put them to good use.
And it should be noted that while such a big game offers the opportunity for Pompey to attract a new generation of supporters - as well as rewarding older ones - one-off special games also attract plenty of one-off spectators.
You may not doubt their desire to see Pompey, but there have to be limits.
Whatever the reasons, the fact is that by not buying a season ticket, people know the risks. They may not be able to do anything about it, but we don't always get what we want because we can't afford it or can't spare the time.
Many of us buy and renew season tickets in part because we know it will increase our chances of priority in matters like ticket allocation or - perhaps a few years down the line - seat preferences at some mystical new ground.
But the method Pompey have chosen would appear to give most fans a decent chance of getting to the match.
And what's all this criticism about commercialism? Can you really blame a club which is doing the fans so proud on such limited resources for cashing in by offering incentives to those "casuals" attending the Birmingham and Aston Villa home games?
They're not putting up the prices - just giving people more incentive for doing what they already have the chance to do anyway: support Pompey.
Very few of our league matches at Fratton have sold out this season, despite such a limited capacity and all the talk of how we'd fill a 36,000 stadium every week.
Yes, myriad reasons why people can't - or won't - attend regularly. But when there's something in it for club and fan, good luck to Pompey if they squeeze a few hundred extra through the turnstiles in the meantime.
Maybe a bit of extra support will help the team achieve new records in the Premier League, as well as the Cup.