New Ticket System

Yeah pretty sure this is the same for every cup game isn't it?

If a season ticket holder wants to sit in "their" seat then they need to buy a ticket in advance or risk someone else sitting there.

Ah the wonders of the English language. Burned or burnt; learned or learnt. Both versions of each in common usage and both are equally correct. There are some differences between UK English and American English, but I am afraid they are beyond my grasp!

The acid test of any usage of language is whether or not it is understood.
It is easy to understand what was meant by the use of the word 'creeped' therefore it passes the acid test. Stop being so pedantic.

chelston 

I wouldn't think it necessary for the vast majority of us. If an F.A Cup Qualifying match at Plainmoor ever needs to be be an all ticket affair, it either means we've signed Lionel Messi or that the Safety Advisory Group have been successful beyond their wildest dreams in restricting entry to the ground.

I doubt your usual Popside position will be taken Chelston, and if you have to observe a bagful of Jamie Reid goals from a yard or two left or right of your normal standing position, I'm sure you'll accept it in good spirit. Similarly a death stare and a couple of choice words and I'll soon have my usual Bristow's Bench seat back, irrespective of the fact I won't be booking it in advance.

I was going to say that of more importance is that the Public Address remember to give us Mousehole's half time score.....but it seem's Kev's new side are playing on Friday evening 

And so the latest installment of ‘New Ticket System’ appears on the club website today. Older fans will be able to think back to the much heralded ‘No Child Left Behind Act’ that we heard so much about when President Bush signed it into law in the US back in 2002. From what we read these days about the American state education service, you wonder if it brought about much of an improvement. Well TUFC make a similar commitment with the new ticketing arrangement, and assure us that no fan will be left behind. Let’s hope it all goes well. ‘No-one will be left behind by the changes we are bringing in’ is the proud, and hopefully not over-confident boast that today’s statement makes.

Only a few weeks ago, the guy ahead of me who had just reached the Plainmoor turnstiles reached into his pocket and fished out a large piece of white paper that I initially mistook for a mansize kleenex. The turnstile operator could then be seen picking up a mobile phone and holding it above the paper. This went on for what seemed like minutes, before I was forced to observe that Britain might well have left the European Union before the rest of us in the queue got access to the ground, unless those two hurried up. ‘Sort it out or arrange for the kick off to be delayed’ was the general consensus. Goodness knows how it was resolved, I think they both gave up, and ‘big paper man’ was allowed in.

Now I don’t own, or wouldn’t know how to operate a smartphone, or a printer or anything like that, and reading today that ‘We encourage all fans able to buy online to print your ticket(s) at home or to download them to your smartphone. There are no financial penalties for doing so and fans will experience smoother access through the turnstiles’ leaves me unconvinced, based on what I’ve seen with my own eyes.

Not that I’m opposed to technology, and in many respects preparing the fanbase now, in advance of us moving to the state of the art ‘Osborne Arena’ which will probably have every hi-tech gizmo you can think of, is sensible forward thinking. Technology that allows the club to identify and taser a TUST Militant, taking him out before he can get within 500 yards of the Arena......well, it wouldn’t be frowned upon by all of us  .

'In order to speed up entry into Plainmoor, fans will no longer be able to choose the seat they wish to sit in from the ticket office on match days. The ticket office will be solely for fans paying by card, and to collect pre-paid tickets'.

What do we make of this ? Surely they mean fans paying by cash….as handing over a £20 is infinitely quicker that fans pratting around with PIN numbers then the wait for things to be authorised, then a receipt being printed etc. Swipe cards OK perhaps, but not dirty or bent cards that are clearly not going to work until the 20th attempt.


Or maybe it’s not actually about speeding up entry to Plainmoor at all, but the insistence on card payment is because of 'Our desire to move the majority of pre-match ticket sales online is to increase efficiency and to gain greater understanding of our fan base'. Just as I always used to explain to my Secretary as to why I always paid by cash when checking into our Hotel double room on business trips: ‘Fortunately it says less about me than an American Express card ever can.’

Speeding things up, or information harvesting ? Is it actually one disingenuously being disguised as the other?, or will TUFC achieve both in perfectly synchronised harmony ?

Let’s hope it all works out wonderfully. My own experience with home printed tickets is very limited. In fact it was only when ordering online to secure myself a ticket for ‘Leave Means Leave’ to join Farage, Mogg, and the Wetherspoons chap at the Riviera Centre a month or so back, that I was faced with the problem of forwarding an email to a relative and asking if they had means of printing the ticket attachment for me ?

In the end it transpired that ticket checkers were so overwhelmed by the number of eager Brexiteers, that any one of us could have held up the back of a white envelope as the crowd surged in, as there was no possibility to check or even look at tickets.

Sensible advance planning for fast efficient Osborne Arena life, comprising a mostly tech savvy fan base ? Let’s hope that’s all this is. The safeguards to ensure that no fan gets left behind are less easy to define, but I’m sure we all hope they’re somewhere in the small print.

Looks like from reading elsewhere that those in the family stand and the bench will be given a ticket with an allocated seat number obtained either on the gate or ticket office/online but with only the option to choose your seat from before 11am before the day of the match.

As long as there is a set system you can work out how to play this and not fall between 2 stools but of course too late to pre book for tomorrow’s match. Hopefully the central blocks in the bench will be sold first:) as always with a new system there will be unintended consequences.