Portsmouth v AC Milan

...Indeed i can get FP anytime especially as i live 5 mins from the stadium but i, like you, really fancied seeing AC Milan. And you can only get in the away end via AC of course. Shame really.

Thanks for the info on the games. What happened to the good old fashioned Home And Away? Surely that swings towards the home team if they are worlds apart, ie Liverpool at home to Buckalnd lol...

If this is the way that some football games are going it is even more pushing the neutral or real footie fan away.

edit; i see you are Horsham..i was at the last ever game at the Atspeed last season, and paln to see them while they reside at Worthing. Will also get the new ground when its built

I have to agree with Jerry on this one & back Portsmouths policy

bbcgull

Fratton Park as we know has a small capacity by Premier League standards & they seem to be ensuring that real Portsmouth fans get to see one of their clubs biggest matches rather than those genuine Pompey fans having to miss out so that neutrals who quite fancy seeing AC Milan can have the seats instead.
It surely makes sense to look after your regular customers first rather than look after those who wont be putting another penny Portsmouths way unless there is the lure of an equally glamorous opponent at Fratton in the future.
During the last petrol shortage my local garage proprietor made certain that his regular customers were looked after first ...any surplus can be made available to passing trade a little later.

If we need to apportion blame look no further than the politicians who forced Clubs to turn their old grounds into all seaters & thereby dramatically reduce the number of football fans who can get in to see big games like the Pompey v AC Milan clash.

So it looks like a ticketing policy which will appeal to real Portsmouth fans & force the glory hunters to watch the game on their TV sets is the only sensible option ;D

There won't be any tickets left Brett! I can't see them failing to sell 20,000 tickets for a game against Milan even if it means buying a ticket for the Heerenveen game as well! (The majority of Pompey fans would be going to both anyway!).

Therefore, both games will be sold out!

You really are a strange one Brett, more of a "trainspotter" than a football fan the way you come over in my opinion.

Your priority in seeking out a game to watch is to "do" the ground - to "cross it off your list", rather than the actual prospect of the football to be played. Like the majority of "hoppers" you get as excited by a rope round a pitch and two dugouts as you would sitting in the San Siro. A bit like those sad characters one sees in their Kagools on station platforms all over the country seeking out nothing more than I.D. numbers on the sides of a piece of machinery. There must be a term for this form of obsessive mental illness.

Mind you, anyone who has lived in cities like Plymouth and Portsmouth and NEVER get along to their football grounds whilst happily seeking out two sheep and a bike rack on some windy hill top in Cornwall in favour of sitting in front of that bell ringing loony at Fratton Park might have a point.

The prospect of a couple of your ilk standing or sitting behind me, chattering away about all the minutiae under the sun, anything and everything except the very thing everyone else is there to watch (the bloody football match) sends shivers down my spine.

It all reminds me of when I was a bus driver and these ruddy "bus spotters" used to come up at termini and ask you to put up some obsolete and irrelevant destination on the blind, long consigned to history; so they can picture it on their Box Brownie...................they usually got a cheery "feck off, go and get yourself a job" type of response unless they were female,well fit and gagging for it

So if Pompey's policy keeps Fratton Park a "Nerd Free Zone" and spares the thousand's of proper football fans the excruciating experience of the company of "trainspotters" getting all erectional over the fact that the player's tunnel is "slightly off centre" then all power to their elbow.

* Another "Merse Hand Grenade", lobbed in to bring a tedious thread to life!*

Don't worry Merse, i get your tongue in cheekness. Believe me i am in no way a Groundhopper of the description you made. Take a look at my grounds list on here. Yeah only 43 different grounds but i have been to over 1000 games i would guess and believe me all of those have been Torquay Games apart from SEVEN I havent even begun Hopping yet. I set up the TU92 site with Mark Lovis back around 2002 for all TU fans to keep track of their grounds. I only took and interest in getting to Torquays away games properly last year when i took in 11. Yes i did do two other games too, this was because i was now living in a more central part of the country. Well more than Devon any way.

I discovered the Tony Kempster site and message board and got an interest in all things non league this summer, due to other commitments i have not been to any games this season yet but that hopefully changes from this saturday when i hope to do a village Rec (see below)

By not going to Plymouth and Pompey so far when i live(d) there actually means im not bothered in grounds. I know you are talking about groundhoppers in general but i dont feel im in that league yet. Yes i am doing the CSWPL hop next easter and that is more so to meet new poeple in this and see some footie.

If i was more interested in the ground than football surely i would have been to ground losses this season...Wisbech, Leigh Phil Collins etc. However yes Ninian Park is on my list this year i will give you that.

You know, as you stated, that hoppers will get excited if they find a roped or barriered pitch as most will not count a village rec in an open field. I had no interested in anything below the Conference up until now but now i have found the Portsmouth Saturday League - 3 Divisions (Step 9,10 and 11 i think) 36 TEAMS all in Pompey and i am gonna start going to a game when im not with Torquay every Saturday. No ropes, no programmes, barriers, floodlights, terrace or canteen...just a Saturday footie match. Won't go anywhere on the list its not a ground, Im going cos i love football and i wanna see some!!!

That, my dear Merse, Makes me a FOOTBALL fan NOT a groundhopper.

And remember in my previous posts i stated i fancied seeing a UEFA game, that suggest a footie fan. Yeah ok Ac would have been nice but i would have taken the other team. But im not bothered. Surely if i was that much of a ground hopper i would have been to Fratton when i arrived here 18 months ago.

To conclude, im proud of seeing over 1000 games in my lifetime. Dont ask me what they are i dont keep records like that. I am a Torquay United fan, a football fan. I am a groundhopping fan.. i look in from the outside so far as you can see from my grounds, list. im most certainly not a groundhopper (yet) I come over in the way i do cos i keep the old fans of the TU92 site updated on here about footie news and keeping grounds list, is that so bad hehe!!!

So you didn't discover girls until well into your thirties then?