FANS who follow their team away from home will always get my respect, because deep down I’m not sure I’d have the same devotion.

If I were to get a proper job tomorrow then the prospect of driving down to Ipswich on a Tuesday night to sit in a seat with a restricted view and then share the roads with the milk floats on my return would not interest me in the slightest.

I’ve been doing this job long enough to spot the real Wanderers die-hards by sight now – people who have invested god knows how much money to follow their club in what can be a pretty thankless pastime.

Some do it out of blind loyalty, some obsession, others for the social side, but considering the form the Whites have shown on the road of late, they all must be very, very patient people.

So it saddens me that the hardiest breed of football fan is increasingly being taken for granted these days, being asked to pay extortionate sums to follow their team up and down the country.

This afternoon Wanderers fans will join thousands of others around the country in protest at away ticket prices as part of the Football Supporters Federation’s Twenty’s Plenty campaign.

The FSF is lobbying for away tickets to be set at a maximum of £20, whether you are Manchester United or Mansfield Town, to ensure people can continue to enjoy the away experience for generations to come.

I’m all for it. The costs involved in following a team are astronomical when you consider travel, food and drink, parking – all on top of the money you paid to actually enter a stadium.

A colleague of mine informed me that the average ticket price in the Premier League is a whopping £53.76, which is double the amount that German fans are asked to pay to watch games in the Bundesliga.

In the Championship it doesn’t get much better. Fans are regularly charged £37 to watch a game at Leeds United’s Elland Road, and similar charges are expected when Wanderers visit Sheffield Wednesday.

I can half-understand some of the London clubs charging extra, as seems de rigueur in the capital. I understand QPR’s tickets are £30 for today’s game at Loftus Road – which is still pricey.

The cheapest away ticket I could find on sale at the moment is Cardiff City at £21 but I simply can’t see how Bristol City or Birmingham City can justify charging £30.

Most clubs use a banding structure, so finding exact costs can be difficult.

Wanderers charged as little as £15 for the Nottingham Forest game – one which was placed into the new Category D - but a Category A game against a local rival like Blackburn Rovers could cost £28.

I doubt today’s protests are aimed at clubs like Wanderers, and I know for sure that a lot of consideration goes into how they pitch their ticket prices.

Reducing prices brings about an inevitable gripe from season ticket holders, which is understandable. But it will always be the cheapest way of watching the club at home.

What interests me is the effect that dropping prices has on attendance. It seems the easy solution – yet it rarely has a massive effect on numbers.

Wanderers average away attendance is roughly 1,300 – although it can top 4,000 at a local ground like Ewood Park.

The average number of away fans at the Macron is also around the 1,300 mark, with teams like Leeds and Blackburn boosting the numbers.

If Wanderers capped their away tickets at £20, as the FSF are suggesting, would it lead to an increase in that number?

The Forest gate, for example, was 16,410. That is just above average for the Macron this season but considering it was a game billed as the return of Dougie Freedman, the number of walk-in fans that took advantage of the £15 ticket seems fairly negligible.

I would expect that the Category D prices will be used for the upcoming game against Brentford, which has been switched to a Monday night, and perhaps the home game against Fulham the weekend before Christmas. It will be interesting to see if numbers are recognisably different, and my hunch is that they won’t.

All of this is not to downplay the Twenty’s Plenty campaign, quite the opposite. I’d rather see it succeed as a gesture of goodwill from clubs who recognise the sacrifices that fans make travelling around the country, often at the whim of the television companies.

But the only sure-fire way to boost the number of fans coming through the turnstiles is success, or at the other end of the scale, necessity.

There will always be some fans will turn out in force when their club is doing well and when their club needs them most. Others – home and away – put their hand in their pocket repeatedly because they just can’t help it. And God bless them.