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This season the clubs have all had to adopt new ticketing arrangements. Hooray! Last season the change from cards to smartphone wallets led to queues preventing fans from getting in before half time. Â
Lessons learned? Oh no.
This season you have to get your season ticket through an app, and the match tickets will be sent 3 hours before kickoff. But a lot of season ticket holders are "legacy" holders, as the 15,000 waiting list means the tickets get passed down through the generations, and the associated emails are Aol, CompuServe, Ntlworld etc, and thus inaccessible.
In our family group we share 2 Aston Villa tickets between 5 of us. So far one has arrived safely. Many productive work hours have been lost trying to associate Fan i.d.s with long forgotten emails and passwords. We can't be alone. Saturday morning (ticket office isn't open till then, phone lines overwhelmed, email says we'll respond within 10 working days) will be like Hills****ough.
You heard it here first.
If we could move binners rants of despair on to this premier league thread it would make more room on the fitba thread
St James Park was always an absolute dogs breakfast for getting a signal, it came as no surprise when they introduced phone app style ticketing that the queues were down the street well past 3pm kick off time. Its sorted now but it was a cart before the horse situation for sure. 50,000 people trying to log onto phones via wifi or data isnt gonna work without some infrastructure changes
Well, finally, after my son seems to have spent the last two days doing nothing but running down virtual rabbit holes, I've got the ticket to tomorrow's game. As my brother thinks we need an hour to get to our place in that golden 5 minutes between all the anthems and hoopla and us conceding our first goal, then we just hope the Bartons Arms is open by 10:30
It seems my fears were unfounded - no queue to get in and the stadium looked full at kick off - 42,000 fans.
But my optimism was misplaced - The Bartons Arms - our pre-match venue for many years - closed its doors yesterday and the game itself was a nil-nil bore draw. Never mind being last on Match of the Day, we'll be lucky to squeak in before the closing credits.