IT'S cold out. The game's on telly. It's only Zebre. Fridays don't work for me. The bus times are awful. The team's rubbish. The beer is awful and overpriced. The side is full of foreigners rather than local lads. Tickets cost too much… They're a Newport superclub.

There can be no more excuses; it's time for folk to put their money where their mouth is if they want professional rugby to continue in these parts.

For too long we have been told that there are barriers to people outside of Newport attending Dragons games.

The green light for the Welsh Rugby Union's takeover deal, and removal of such hurdles, should call their bluff. This has to be made to work.

Plenty have been keen to tell Newport RFC shareholders how they should vote. In fact, so many put their tuppence in that it would have come close to eclipsing the £2.85million that will be paid by the Union for the nine-acre site.

Some lectured them with scant consideration for the turmoil that those individuals that had the power of a vote were feeling inside.

Faces that I often see filled with exasperation in the Hazell Stand thanks to the frustrations of the 80 minutes were solemn as they headed towards the Bisley Suite. Whether an individual was voting yes or no, pretty much everyone was doing it with sadness.

It was always going to be a tense night due to the required 75 per cent being a high mark. It sneaked through and while four in five giving their backing is still quite the mandate, the whole deal hinged on the decisions of fewer people that will be out on the Rodney Parade pitch for Newport versus Llanelli on Saturday.

With 429 votes cast, had 29 gone with no rather than yes then we could be talking about wrecking balls rather Gilberts on a new hybrid surface.

It has been an emotional, stressful and frankly divisive month or so and I stand by the assertion that there are an awful lot of pieces to be picked up.

I put it to WRU chief executive Martyn Phillips in a press conference afterwards, in the building that used to house the indoor bowls rink at Rodney Parade, that it had been a damaging process.

He disagreed with that description, instead calling the process "energising" because of the "real potential in Gwent".

True, but I sincerely hope that he inwardly recognises that a lot of bridges are to be built with the people of Newport who are still vital to the success of the Dragons.

There are a lot of Black and Ambers who will harbour resentment at the very fact they were put in such a position by the mismanagement of others.

Can that bitterness at losing their asset be overcome? Some wins might help but it's easy to slip into rhetoric when talking about rugby in the east, waffling on about the region being a sleeping giant.

If things goes well then there could be bright times at Rodney Parade, we all want that, but there is also an awful lot of work to be done to ensure those diggers that were on standby for a No vote don't start trundling up Rodney Road.

Phillips wasted no time is spelling it out: the WRU don't have oodles of money to throw at the Dragons, it has to be a sustainable business, it needs the people of Gwent to actually pay to head through the turnstiles and buy in to what is happening.

They need those who claim to have been disenfranchised by the old Newport Gwent Dragons set-up to outnumber those who say they will be disenfranchised by the new Dragons set-up.

The majority of the 2,000-or-so season ticket holders come from the city and it will be interesting to see how sales go now that the Rodney Parade future is secured for 2017/18. Plenty of freebies have been dished out in recent seasons but it's punters that are needed.

Hopefully there will be more wins next season but there has to be realism; potential supporters will not be watching a push for the play-offs. This will be a slow process.

The WRU will have done their sums and will recoup some of their initial outlay by redeveloping the northern end of the site. Once that's gone then financial losses won't be acceptable to the clubs to the west and north who the governing body are accountable to.

So the Dragons aren't out of the woods yet and it's down to those in Gwent that urged Newport RFC to vote yes for the greater good to actually do their part.

There is potential here and with a bit of luck the next few years can lay the foundations for brighter times but it's going to be a pretty fraught couple of seasons due to the landscape of the whole of Welsh rugby.

There have been no long-term guarantees from the WRU other than expressing their desire to give it a crack in the east with Phillips stating that to watch things "slowly disappear would not have been acceptable to us".

The governing body talk of the Dragons' potential – and it's encouraging that Phillips describes long-term aims – but they need to see something tangible in the next year or so.

And this isn't only a call to arms for the potential fans of professional rugby, the Black and Ambers need those who were stirred by the takeover deal to help out their club.

It's going to be a testing few years for Newport and they have to develop new revenue streams and in many ways compete with the Dragons for sponsorship in the city. The £600,000 cash sum they have received as part of the deal won't last long.

The Friends of Newport Rugby have done sterling work in recent years and tried manfully to protect the interests of their club over the past few months and get the best bad deal possible.

The deed is done now and, after a short period of reflection, it will need everyone at both entities to graft hard to ensure we aren't in another fraught doomsday scenario when we enter the next decade.