The Halifax Branch of the Manchester City Supporters Club - just the ticket!!

The Road to Wembley from Scotland will reach the penultimate stop in a fortnight when Manchester City take on Arsenal. Regular readers will know that I have had a devil of a job getting a ticket for this match but thanks to assistance from my good friend John Rees and a load of much appreciated help from the Halifax and District Branch of the Manchester City Supporters Club I am now sorted. Special thanks to David Ellis the Chairman of the Club and also to Martin Duddridge the Club Ticket Secretary who pulled a few strings to sort out these tickets. A great gesture by David and Martin and very much appreciated. Also in midweek the two protagonists were in Premier League action with mixed fortunes.

About twenty years ago when I was working as a senior manager at Boston College I was part of an interview panel that appointed a young ambitious, energetic likeable lad called John Rees as a Sports Science lecturer so that he could take up his first job in further education. Twenty years later I am a clapped out old blogger whose body has been ravaged by years of alcohol and tobacco abuse and he is the Principal of Calderdale College in Halifax.

The Rees-Meister General: All round good guy and ace problem solver

 In addition to being colleagues in the 1990s we became good friends. Despite experiencing very different life and career paths we have kept in touch and when John noted my ticket-less situation he made some enquiries. Working in Halifax he is surrounded by Man City fans and some of his colleagues are members of the Halifax and District Branch of the Manchester City Supporters Club. Step forward my new heros David Ellis and Martin Duddridge. The Club get an allocation of tickets for big matches and after hearing of my plight and my project Martin was able to use his influence to ensure that I would receive a brief for the semi final. The Halifax and District Branch of the Manchester City Supporters Club are now officially the best supporters club in the entire world.

Halifax Blues Committee celebrating: L-R Dave Toal, David Ellis and Martin Duddridge

Readers who followed the post on this blog on Tuesday noted that I had been scammed. The whole episode has still not been resolved. The dodgy on-line touts company Pro Time Tours have taken the debit card sale £159 for a £30 ticket from my account. So at the moment I am £159 out of pocket. The ticket (if indeed it does exist) has unsurprisingly not arrived. My bank has cancelled my debit card so that they can’t get at any further monies. The bank advice is that once I am sure that the ticket is never going to arrive (i.e. when I can prove fraud) get back in touch and they will act. They already have details of the case including references from the scamadviser web site detailing previous similar transactions where individuals paid hundreds of pounds for tickets that did not exist. A very unsavoury incident and four days later I still feel like a complete fool for falling for this. This sale though is part of a wider issue.

As you may have guessed I have been I touch with the FA to (i) try to secure a ticket from them and (ii) to tell them of this on-line ticket touting scandal. With regard to (i) I was unsuccessful and with regard to (ii) they claim to be concerned but as my old Mam used to say ‘judge a person not by what they say but by what they do’. The FA emailed me on Thursday as follows:

Hi Chris,

In regards to allocations for the upcoming FA Cup semi-finals approximately 64,000 tickets go to the two competing teams. There are also a number of seats that are not put on sale which act as appropriate levels of segregation over the weekend. Additionally a certain number of seats are located in the Club Wembley areas of the stadium on Level Two. The remaining tickets are issued to the ‘Football Family’.  The Football Family is made up of all the clubs who participated in this seasons FA Cup, FA Partners, official charities and the local County Football Associations who organise football throughout England. However, anything not taken up by the ‘Football Family’ is made available to the two competing clubs.

We do appreciate the frustrations involved when supporters miss out on obtaining tickets for big matches. However, with matches of this importance involving two such big clubs it is impossible to satisfy the demand for tickets.

I have also attached a link to our FAQ's which may answer any further questions you may have; http://www.thefa.com/news/2017/mar/17/andy-ambler-q-and-a-170317 

If you do click the link then you will find a very complacent statement that states:

It’s a big priority that the tickets get in the hands of the genuine supporters. Tickets are sold directly by the clubs to their fan-base. Clubs supply us with a ticket-selling policy in advance, which is approved by The FA. At the stadium there will be enhanced ticket checks outside, prior to supporters entering the turnstiles. We also operate a very robust system to detect fraudulent tickets. That should act as a big deterrent to anyone considering buying from an illegal source. We strongly advise people not to buy tickets from touts as they are at risk of not getting into the stadium. 

All sounds good in theory but as I found out at about this time last week several thousand tickets for this match are not in the hands of genuine supporters but are in the hands of on-line touts. So how big a priority is it for you Mr FA? Returning to the arithmetic that I described in an earlier post the capacity of Wembley (90,000) minus the club allocations (64,000) equals 26,000 tickets sloshing about in the ether. The FA is simply not doing enough get tickets in to the hands of genuine supporters. Since Thursday I have emailed the FA again to flag that I was disappointed that, despite this project advertising the joys of the FA Cup to hundreds of readers with each post, that they don’t consider me eligible to be classed as part of the ‘football family’. I do feel that some tickets for matches such as this one should be made available to neutral fans who could be asked to pay a higher tarrif, but not the sums requested by the on-line touts, directly from the FA. Then at least the FA would be doing a bit more to get the tickets into the hands of genuine supporters. Rant over … back to football.

There was a full programme of Premier League matches on in midweek and as I was working in the East Midlands I managed to head up to Hull on Wednesday night to see a bit of the action. I was at the Hull City v Middlesbrough game with my old sparring partner Howard ‘Howie Baby’ Nimmo. Hull City are a very good side and will provide a stern test for Man City later today.

Howie Baby: Sporting the colours of his adopted home town

On the same night Arsenal were in fine form demolishing West Ham 3-0 at a packed Emirates Stadium. Mezut Ozil in particular was in great form apparently. Despite all the media ‘Arsenal in Crisis’ and ‘Wenger Must Go’ hysteria Arsenal are now in 5^th position in the Premier League and of course have the FA Cup semi final to look forward to. Also on Wednesday evening, and also in London, Man City were at Stamford Bridge to face Chelsea. Chelsea won 2-1 but reports suggest that Man City were by far the better side. Certainly they enjoyed more possession, had more shots on target and more corners. The first goal that City conceded was a goalkeeping error from Caballero. Man City have such a great team of skilled outfield players it is strange that they have to choose each week which of two mediocre goalkeepers (Caballero or Bravo) they select – especially when they employ Joe Hart the England goalie but have chosen to loan him out for the whole of the 2016-17 season to Torino. I can’t quite work that one out.

Today City take on a resurgent Hull City team while Arsenal have to wait until Monday night to play their weekend Premier League fixture. Will City and the Gunners improve their Premier League positions? Will the City Manager field Caballero or Bravo in goal later today? Will the FA reply to my most recent email? Do Pro Time Tours actually have tickets for the semi finals? Come back here on Tuesday for the answers to these questions and more … and … keep reading.