Most liked posts in thread: Home Ticket Fiasco vs Carlisle

Easy option would have been to have left the set up as it was for Monday, and if Carlisle needed extra tickets they could open downstairs in TL Dallas. That way no movement needed and just let people buy their own seat

 

I copied my email to Ryan and Marco to the supporters board. I have had a reply from them which I reproduce below.
It seems the club and the supporters board are both under the mistaken impression that we have to give 10% of our allocation to Carlisle.

"Thanks for forwarding a copy of your email to us. We are aware of the strength of feelings for some of those affected by this decision. Every time the club have made the choice to relocate home fans to accommodate away it causes the same issues.

As a board we were not consulted on this change, but they did briefly discuss the rationale in our last meeting with them towards the end of April. Essentially we are obliged to give a minimum of 10% of seating to away fans for a fixture of this type. That is a good proportion of the midland road stand in itself.

They also have listened to fan feedback about wanting to use the Bradford End TL Dallas stand for home fans too and wanted to add to the atmosphere by letting our fans be behind both goals.

The final reason is undoubtably the money. If Carlisle sell their allocation (which the expectation is they will), and our fans are accommodated into the other 3 stands then that is a large amount of income and another record crowd. The only way they wouldn’t have made this decision would have been if had been playing Salford. The percentage allocation is apparently only enforced if the away team can sell that many.

I’m certainly not saying we agree as a Supporters Board with all of the above (some of our members are affected in the same way as you) but they are the reasons they told us. Also to reiterate the Club made this decision without consulting with our Supporters Board.

I think given the unforeseen technical issues with tickets last night too it probably has heightened everyone's feelings on this.

I hope you get a prompt reply from the club though, but please be assured we did discuss and challenge this situation at length in our meeting but the decision had already been finalised at that point."

They also don't seem to understand that income is shared and we would sell out anyway.

Amateur hour.

 

Didn't you have a home to go to?

 

A big congratulations to the ticket office for shifting all the attention from our biggest match for years. Let’s hope they have the good grace to apologise so we can get on with the anticipation of what we hope will be a great occasion

 

I have just received this from Ryan Sparks. I am astonished that the club is ignorant of play off rules and told him so. Appalled.

"The decision to change the stadium setup from what is more usual for league games has been made to enable City fans to occupy seats behind both goals.


We have to provide our opponents with an allocation of 10% of the overall capacity, in line with EFL rules and regulations.


Given where the segregation barrier is situated, within the Midland Road Stand’s concourse, the only way to do this while using the TL Dallas Stand as a ‘home end’ is to essentially flip the traditional ‘away’ blocks of F and G with the traditional ‘home’ blocks of A, B, C, D and a part of E. This provides Carlisle with the 2,460 seats they are entitled to.


I apologise for any inconvenience this may have caused you and your family as that wasn’t our intention."

 

EFL rules:

"3.3 The Visiting Club shall have the right to claim 2,000 tickets for use by its supporters (or such number as represents 10% of all tickets reserved or otherwise sold in advance, if less than 2,000)."

Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear......big faux pas......so we end up giving our opponents more tickets than necessary, moving season ticket holders out of their seats when not necessary, starting to create divisions amongst supporters when not necessary, losing a feel good factor when not necessary, creating work for the ticketing team when not necessary......we get no extra tickets at Carlisle and Salford give Stockport 500..... unbelievable Jeff!!

Let's not give any sort of additional advantage to our opponents...oh wait!!

Marco Townson....good job mate!!

 

Success! Apparently the Staff have been working through the night to sort out the shambles and my son received an email with all the tickets changed to our original season tickets seats.

 

It shouldn't be the problem its turned out to be and as you say communication or a complete lack of has caused this. But then lack of communication usually causes every cockup in any business, its not the fault of anything else. I never do anything quickly so didn't get caught up in snapping tickets up as others did. But then i've only got my own ticket to get and i haven't sat in my own seat all season. And neither do i sit in the Midland road so really it doesn't affect me at all. I just get frustrated when i see a lack of professionalism that causes problems that shouldn't be there. And that the people who have caused it seem so blaze about it to a point where they think they've done nowt wrong.

 

The only way Salford will shift 10,000 tickets for Wembley is if they give evert BBC employee, every relative of a BBC employee, and every dog/ cat/ rabbit owned by a BBC employee two tickets each.

 

I think you are being remarkably silly in accusing fans of bashing the club. Any organisation that is not open to constructive criticism or able to admit their errors is immature in a nutshell. We all support this club warts an all, but I personally cannot stand being lied too. Trying to have fans at both ends is something I would support but it has to be done properly with full consultation. I gather the manager wanted it to happen for this very important game, but bloody well say so and I am sure the fans will do their best to accommodate it. The communication has been awful, they need to do better.

 

Glancing through this thread, just makes me all the more determined to just keep the 2 tickets I bought at the bottom of the Kop on Monday evening. No way do I have any time or desire to get stuck in a telephone queue to try and swap them

The amount of stress this has caused normal innocent fans - without so much of an apology or even acknowledgement from Sparks & Co - is 100% going to leave a sour taste in a lot of mouths for years to come

On the plus side, at least it's only for 1 game, and the atmosphere should be fantastic

 

Why couldn't we have discussed the chance we could make the play off after the Crewe game, we knew any chance of the auto's were gone that night, so we needed a point against Orient to get a play off place, its not beyond the likes of Ryan and his team to call a meeting and brain storm the situation, come to an agreed plan going forward and announce what the club were proposing if we achieved our goal, come on mate were talking about a group of people who have generated more sponsorship and none football revenue than ever before were told that's a cracking achievement, I have praise Ryan and his team in the past but this is poor at best.

 

Yeah but you put plans into place.

It's pretty simple, these are the scenarios.

Stockport - Will bring a full allocation - May require movement in the stadium
Northampton - Will possibly bring a full allocation but probably closer to 1,500 - Could fit them all in Midland Road with a slight movement on the current split.
Carlisle - Will bring a full allocation - May require movement in the stadium
Mansfield - Will bring a full allocation - May require movement in the stadium
Salford - Will bring a skateboard and we can sit them anywhere which has 5 seats together.

Thats kind of the trouble shooting you do in anticipation.

 

Carlisle announced within hours how many tickets we had given them so I'm presuming we had decided everything before hand and told all clubs involved and vice versa otherwise not sure how they could confidently have tickets on sale at lunch time Tuesday

 

I would never use 'the 56' to try and prove a point ever.

 

Man United are playing at home the same day

Anyway, if it's not played at Wembley how will the FA pay off its debts?

 

Interested for you to name these dodgy places as I have probably parked there myself. In PL years parked off Lumb Lane. Now park off ML itself. Have parked in Walmer villas etc was well. TBF the only time I have encountered anything was after we beat Preston NE in the fog at VP on the telly years ago ( Jacobs scored I think ) and a PNE fan put my drivers window through as I passed him on Walmer Villas. I was sticking my middle finger up at him so I guess I deserved it.