grand final mess

[the_cow]

i haven't seen this mentioned in any of the other threads so thought i would vent some anger

the rfl managed to make another fine mess with the showpiece event of the season yesterday with the tickets.

i bought tickets on thurs 4/10 in the morning of the rfl ticket website- myself and a couple of friends thought we would take a risk in case wigan got there, and if not it would be a good reason to go out in manchester for the day.

anyway, i bought tickets and recieved an email back saying tickets will be sent to my home address and also showed a £2 fee for p&p- i naturally thought that this meant they would be sending them and that they would arrive in time for the game, regardless of the postal strikes as it was 10 days before they would be required.

at about 8pm fri night it dawned on mke that i hadnt actually got any tickets through the post yet (yes a bit slow on the up take i know). so i checked the confimation email again and in small print at the bottom it says that any tickets purchased after wed 3rd would have to be collected from the ground. why the rfl couldnt chnage the system after the 'last post date' had expired i have no idea?!

we decided to go and pick them up at the man utd ticket office before kick off- as we were not that interested in the game due to being a neutral, we decided to arrive a bit later than most to the game and were expecting to just be able to roll up and collect the tickets as most people would be inside the ground by then- on the confirmation email it did state that the rfl were providing their own extra ticket offices to meet expected demand.

we arrived at 5:40 to the ground and after i'd sprinted around old trafford i found the ticket office to be greeted with a 40 min queue. the aforementioned 'extra ticket offices' were shut even though there was approx 1,500 fans still outside- most of them leeds fans. as my mate who is predominately a footy fan remarked 'if this was a football match, there would be a riot'.

finally, we managed to get into our seats after approx 22 mins of play. thankfully, we had only bought £21 tickets so it wasnt as if we lost that much.

yet again the RFL screw the fans- the phrase 'couldnt organise a p*ss up in a brewery' rings true. and what also really wound me up was that the rfl had the cheek to charge me £2 for something they never provided, and the touts were making a killing as people were panicking to get into the ground before k.o.

we also had 4 fat saints birds sat behind us who took it upon themselves to stick their boots(literally) into our backs during the second half as 'we didnt clap when steve prescott was on the pitch and he's got cancer'- i hadnt even heard that bit as we had been chatting about stuff.

after a number of bad experiences i've had over the last few years, i'm really starting to doubt the intelligence and mind-set of the average rl fan and also hate the governing body with a passion.

my highlight of the game was wellens falling on his ass again when one on one, and a very drunk leeds fan falling head first forward over the 3 rows in front.

[gpartin]

I was at Old Trafford when we played bradford a few years back. Wigan fans at the end I was sat were fighting each other, ripping up seats jumping across rows of seats and propping themselves up against me nd my family for leverage to punch Bradford fans. Some of these fans had children and I was disgusted. It as my sister in laws first eveer RL game and we left at half time. I was adamant I'd never go again but convinced myself it was probably football fans going to spoil the day for everyone else. This kind of nonsense goes on every year and goes unreported thankfully, but until the kick off is made earlier in the day, this problem will continue from people unable to handle their beer. The scale of trouble at Old Trafford is miles worse than what was seen at ROvers but seems insignificant in a 70 odd thousand crowd. The worse thing is the stewards don't act until its too late and people, such as my sister in law refuse to attend a match again.

[the_cow]

yes i was in top of east stand and most of the banter was good natured but there were some very drunk people- mainly adolescents. there seemed to be alot fo flare ups further across the stand. the guy sat next to me was an older leeds fan and he pointed out to me a leeds fan four rows in front who was fast asleep and was so for the whole first half.

myself and 2 friends had taken it easy during the day and were mildly tipsy whilst in jovial mood- we ignored the fat c*ws behind us, but if they had been male then i probably would have been one of the flare-ups. i could have understood if we'd done something to actually offend them, but hadn't other than not clapping! very narrow minded methinks, but they did look as though they were sharing one brain cell between them and a couple of them weighed more than i did.

think im going to go to the cardiff bash this year but will probably miss the grand final for the forseeable future unless wigan are partaking.

[butt monkey]

pieater-alex posted:
Thought this was going to be about the violence at the game , don't no if anybody has read about this...

Stains fans at work today, were complaining of "small pockets" of Leeds fans within there allocated area in the West Stand!

With the alcohol consumption going on, there was always going to be trouble with the scousers and yorkies - imo.

[GeoffN]

Nobby`s Girl posted:
So why do they consist in mixing the fans together??

For one thing, a lot of people get their tickets before the finalists are decided. For another, many people like to watch from a certain vantage point; eg behind the sticks, or on the halfway line.