St Mirren supporter Kyle Gunn has been a season ticket holder at the Buddies for over 10 years.
In that time he's seen it all; from stadium moves, to cup finals, to relegation from the Scottish Premiership.
However, the IRN-BRU Cup semi-final against The New Saints was a little different for the media and communications student.
Kyle attended the clash with the Welsh champions as a member of the press and shares his experiences of the day, and the lead up to it, with stmirren.com.
"Most St Mirren supporters just go to the game, sing songs, have the odd heart attack and go back home again. I was the same until the week of our IRN-BRU Cup semi-final. I have always been interested in media, so when I got the chance to do an interview with Saints' goalkeeper Billy O'Brien I jumped at it.
I arrived at The Buddies' training ground in Ralston on the Tuesday before the game and the team were still training. The players started to come in for their lunch, I spoke to the manager and we discussed how cold it had been at East Fife the previous weekend.
Billy had been out doing some work with Jamie Langfield and then he came in. Jack Ross let us use the manager's office and when I got my dictaphone out to record the interview, it felt great. Billy was very nice to interview and we spoke for about fifteen or twenty minutes. It felt like I had been doing it for years and Billy had a lot to do with that because it wasn't like an interview it was more like we were just having a conversation.
From that I was then able to get my first article in the Daily Record. I thought that it would just be for experience and a good opportunity for me. The article was published on that Friday and to be honest I was pleasantly surprised by the size of the it. However that wasn't the only surprise. I was checking my emails and one popped up saying: "this email is in relation to your payment for your article on page 63." It was absolutely amazing because I had never been paid for an article before.
After the match, I was able to go to Jack Ross' post match press conference. I had been at Jack's press conference when he had been appointed as the manager last year but this was my first post match interview. The manager was very honest about the first half performance not being anywhere near good enough but he was happy to get a reaction in the second half and get through to the final. I also got to have an in-depth chat with returning captain Stephen McGinn.
It was good for me to have an insight because when you see press conferences on the television, it looks all very prepared but it wasn't really like that. It was more like us all standing around getting quotes from Jack. It was all very busy.
When Jack gave us answers and went away, Stevie Mallan came up to speak to the journalists who were using the interviews for Tuesday's newspapers. I was getting ready to get in the lift to leave and Stephen McGinn was coming up the stairs and I asked him if he was going up to do media duties, when he said that he was I asked him if I could have chat with him he agreed. I was able to have a good really in-depth interview with him.
Unfortunately my article from the post match press conference was not used but I would like to thank all at St. Mirren and The Daily Record for making this opportunity possible for me."
