The roar of the Fratton faithful is usually enough to inject life into even the most tired of limbs.
But the Pompey team will have to motivate themselves when they take to the pitch to face Oxford in Friday evening’s play-off clash.
Football is currently taking place behind closed doors, although there will at least be an army of cardboard cut-outs to welcome the players.
Lee Brown, however, does not believe the Blues will have any difficulty getting themselves up for the encounter.
The left-back said: “Those cardboard fans are a rowdy mob! It’s going to be surreal for everyone involved and you’ve got to adapt to it.
“It doesn’t matter if there’s nobody inside the ground or you’re playing in front of 40,000 – our job is to win football matches.
"Those cardboard fans are a rowdy mob! It’s going to be surreal for everyone involved and you’ve got to adapt to it."
“I don’t think motivation is going to be a problem because there’s promotion on the line, so there’s a lot riding on these games.
“We know it’s not going to be a case of no fans forever, so we want to get through this period and grab the carrot of Championship football.
“We’ve got to take a good result into the second leg on Monday night and realise that it’s a 180-minute game.
“Take a look at what happened in the League Two play-offs and you can see that nothing’s decided after the first leg.”
It has been almost a third of a year since Pompey were last involved in competitive action and Brown is raring to go.
He said: “It’s going to be great to get back going again because it feels like we’ve just been training for such a long time now.
“That started off working at home on an individual basis, then moved on to little groups and now we’re all together again.
“It’s been longer than pre-season and these are strange old times – of course you miss it and there’s only so much preparation work you can do.”
⏰ Less than 24 hours to go...@hampshireflag | #Pompey pic.twitter.com/Qe884wrJKY
— Portsmouth FC (@Pompey) July 2, 2020