Forest season ticket holders gamely queued – some from as early as Saturday afternoon, to stake their claim from the ticket allocation left over from our away season ticket holders/members and the more frequent away travellers. I must admit that I felt rather like ‘Charlie’ in Charlie & The Chocolate Factory as I stepped from the ticket office at at little past quarter-to-eleven clutching my tickets after around 9 hours of queueing!
I must admit I was surprised to see quite so many fans there when I arrived, just making it inside the carpark upon arrival – however, it became apparently that numerous tents and deckchairs were making the queue seem disproportionately long – around an hour before the ticket office opened the stewards asked the tents to be packed away, and I soon found myself well beyond the Main Stand reception, feeling somewhat more confident of getting my ticket.
The queue snaked around onto Radcliffe Road at its peak – and even as I left the ticket office there were still hopeful people who had yet to ‘gain access’ to the car park even – I imagine they will be home now and disappointed. As the clock ticked past 10:00am many fans thumbed their mobile phones in unison to attempt to get through on the phones – I don’t think I saw anybody succeed – my two or three abortive attempts saw me get cut off immediately.
Probably the most amusing interlude of the day was between around 7 and 8am, when the harmless kickabout that had been going on in the carpark with a football descended into fans hoofing the ball across the carpark to one another in a manner that Nicky Eaden would be proud of. The security staff took a good two hours to finally snap and start confiscating the errant balls that ended up on the roof of the Main Stand reception, and were repeatedly hitting the cars of the security and ticket office staff that were in the carpark.
It did give a lad in a red hat a platform to exhibit his utter lack of football skills though – but bless him, he was keen and never stopped smiling (although one cruel onlooker pointed out he may not have much choice genetically about that!). Rumours spread like wildfire about how any tickets had been sold or were available, and I must admit it was quite a spincter-twitching moment as we shuffled for what seemed like an age around the carpark to the ticket office – for sweet salvation when we finally were handed over the tickets.
From what I’ve heard anecdotally I’m certainly pleased that I didn’t depend on Forests’ advice to use the online booking system, and the phones were predictably busy too – I imagine there will be a large number of very disappointed fans this afternoon, I felt really sorry for those I walked past on my way out who hadn’t even got into the carpark yet.
I can’t help but think that Forest could make the whole system fairer by restricting online and phone sales to those fans who live further away – these systems seemed to be a lottery, and it seems unfair that somebody who rolls out of bed at 10:00am in West Bridgford possibly has a better chance of getting a ticket than somebody who has stood in the cold for hours – not to mention the countless people I know who seem to have ‘blagged’ tickets from all manner of sources within the club.
Commisserations to those of you confined to watching on TV, but at least that is an option. You never can tell, if we can do the unthinkable and force a replay at least more fans will have the opportunity to actually attend a match in which the Reds pit themselves against one of the most expensively assembled teams in the world!
A big thanks to those folks around me who made the experience all the more bearable, we were cold, we couldn’t feel our legs – but we had a great laugh – and more importantly, we got that glowing feeling of actually getting hold of those precious tickets! I’ve taken a few more pictures (on my phone, so poor quality I’m afraid) which I’ve included below – you will need to click on the ‘read more’ link if you’re reading from the main site.
The first arrivals – who setup a tent outside the entrance just to make sure! It was rumoured there was a tunnel underneath and eighty people would “emerge” from the tent. Fortunately this turned out to be a blatant fib!
Once the queue “bunched up” it wasn’t so bad for people who arrived around the same time as me – aside from keeping an eye out for the footballs being hoofed all over the car park!!
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