Clare county board has said that no supporters have lost out on All-Ireland tickets as a result of a serious issue that emerged with the distribution of tickets last Friday.
While those who received codes for tickets originally are all still getting tickets, there have been some issues with people now not being able to get tickets beside each other, and being moved from the stands they were originally going to be in.
Shortly after Clare’s allocation of tickets went on sale online it became apparent that some code holders were able to buy more tickets than the codes given to them were supposed to allow.
If the sale continued the problem was going to be exacerbated, and certain people would be left without any ticket, despite having a valid code.
The decision was taken to close the sale less than an hour after it started.
Over the weekend attempts had to be made to recover tickets from people who had bought extra, and the sale resumed on Monday.
Clare county board chairman, Kieran Keating, said that last weekend’s issue arose due to a misunderstanding between the GAA and the county board.
“The format of the file that we got was different to previous and we didn’t spot that,” he said.
“We could have spotted it and we could have nipped it in the bud, we could have fixed it before we sent the codes out, but we didn’t spot that. It’s a bit of a mix.
“The lads in the GAA have put their hands up for their part and we’ve said that if we double checked everything before sending on Friday we could have spotted it. It’s a learning process.”
He said that by the time the sale was suspended, most Clare supporters had already bought their tickets.
“We put up about 6,000 terrace and 8,000 stand of our allocation up for sale on Friday,” said Mr Keating.
“They were on public sale and within 40 minutes two thirds of those were gone, but it was reported to us that some people who should only be able to buy one were able to buy two or people who were only supposed to be able to buy two were able to buy four.
“We suspended it then, because obviously we’d have run out of tickets too quickly.”
After the sale was stopped, officials began work to retrieve a certain number of tickets, with GAA club officials across the county having to take on that task.
“We suspended the sale on Friday to find out what happened. Then we had to do a bit of work in terms of finding out who had succeeded in buying, what codes were used, what codes weren’t used.
“We had to do a bit of a trawl through all the data, who had bought, who had been able to buy more than they were supposed to, and tell the clubs that information, and then give them new codes for the remainder.
“The clubs had to go after a few people but it wasn’t many, it was seven or eight in the Hogan, ten in the Cusack and there would have been a couple of hundred in the Davin alright, that was the main problem. The one and the two codes operated for one or two there, so a lot of people had bought two. The clubs resolved it between Saturday and Monday, we got new codes out to them and they sent those on.
“We were able to identify if there were say eight people in a club who had bought an extra ticket, we could identify them and give the club the detail. Obviously it was awkward for the club to have to go back after them, but there was nothing else we could do or those people would have gone off into the sunset with those tickets and somebody else would have been left short. The clubs had to go after them, we didn’t have the resources or the ability, we didn’t have the resources or the ability, we didn’t know the people, we only had the name, we didn’t have details to contact them.”
While it was undoubtedly a very difficult weekend for many club officers around Clare, and the matter did cause some upset for supporters, he says that all who were initially allocated tickets are still going to Croke Park.
“People that were due a stand ticket got a stand ticket. Yes some people did end up in a stand they didn’t want or ended up in the corner of the stands, but that was because they didn’t buy early on like the other people did. The first 5,000 had already picked up the best seats. There wasn’t really a solution for those people anyway who didn’t get great seats,” he said.
“If they had went in on Friday at 3pm [two hours after the initial sale opened] it would have been the same thing.”
He said that the level of demand is really high, for the county’s first All Ireland final since 2013.
“I’d say there will be a lot of people who want to go to the game who won’t get there this time, which is unusual,” he said.
“Before it would have been said that anyone who deserved to be there would be there, but it’s not so easy this time. People have brought their kids to all the games but they haven’t a hope of getting four or five this time, they might get one or two.
“There is great interest in the team at the moment, but with the opponents we have and the population they have and the pull they have around the country, it makes it a lot harder to pick up tickets in other counties compared to other years.”
Adrian Hogan is chairman of Sixmilebridge GAA club and he said the allocation of tickets had been hugely demanding on the club.
“I worked until 2.30am on Thursday and 4am on Friday and that’s before the mess. I worked on it all weekend, I’m still cleaning up today [Tuesday},” he said.
He said that the current system, where codes are sent to county boards and then to clubs who allocate them to members who finally buy tickets online is flawed.
“It’s a process that requires a lot of time on behalf of the individual club secretary, but also it’s absolutely ripe for human error,” he said.
“This whole thing of sending out spreadsheets to secretaries with codes and us sending them out to individual members, that’s ripe for human error.”
He said that not everyone is equipped to make online purchases, and he has made great efforts to help people in such situations.
Owen Ryan has been a journalist with the Clare Champion since 2007, having previously worked with a number of other publications in Limerick, Cork and Galway. His first book will be published in December 2024.