The ordeals of an England fan in the build up to the World Cup finals in Germany and beyond
Thursday, June 08, 2006
The Final Countdown
It’s been a busy week trying to sort out last minute bits and pieces before I head off to Frankfurt on Friday, I don’t really know where to start. The issue of tickets is never fair away when a tournament is around the corner. As a member of the official England supporters club (Englandfans+ - great name) who travels everywhere, I don’t have to worry about tickets as they operate a loyalty scheme (I believe I detailed the workings at an earlier date).
However, many people I know are not so lucky and the corruption at the higher levels of the game doesn’t help the real fans much. Lets take the example of Trinidad & Tobago. All the tickets allocated to the T&T Football Federation were only available as part of a package from a company called Simpaul. As the tournament draws near, the T&T public haven’t snapped up the £2,500+ packages as quickly as was hoped for so this meant they had a load of tickets to shift.
England fans are never shy of taking tickets but if they wanted to buy tickets for T&T v England, they would also have to buy tickets for the other T&T games in Group B as well (Sweden and Paraguay). Now England fans have a surplus of tickets for games they don’t want to see. Personally, I have a number of contacts in Sweden so it wasn’t too hard to find buyers for the T&T v Sweden tickets. However, the problem was getting the tickets from the T&T to Sweden in time. Naturally, the tickets would have to be sent on via England and this is where the fun begins. The tickets would have to be sent as collection wasn’t possible as the T&T v Sweden game is on Saturday.
After loads of phone calls, emails and no little panic, the tickets I needed have been sent via overnight courier so the Swedish lads could get them before heading off to Dortmund. As I write, I’m waiting for the tickets. It’s an outrageous situation where real fans have to mess around like this to get tickets while thousands of corporate freeloaders probably couldn’t name the city hosting the games they are attending.
The big news tonight is that Wayne Rooney has flown back to Germany after doctors reviewed the results of his cat scan on his broken foot. Yesterday, Rooney took part in light training and was striking a ball without any problems. This is what England would have missed had Rooney not been fit.
So tomorrow is my last full day at work. In between actually doing some work, emails will be flying around arranging meeting points in Frankfurt, discussions about the team and all the normal stuff as well as the small matter of expecting 2 lots of tickets to be delivered to pass on to some Swedish guys.
I leave work at 10am on Friday and head off on my motorbike to the airport for a 2pm flight down to Frankfurt. Once I arrive, I have some FIFA tickets to collect and then my England tickets before finding out meeting point to get hopelessly drunk.
