Offaly GAA chairman hopeful all 'genuine supporters' will access All-Ireland tickets

OFFALY GAA chairman Michael Duignan remains hopeful that all “genuine supporters” will be able to access tickets in the coming days for Saturday's All-Ireland U-20 Hurling Championship final against Tipperary in Kilkenny's Nowlan Park.

Chaos and confusion reigned within minutes of tickets going on public sale on Ticketmaster at 2.30pm on Monday afternoon, with thousands in a queue and then unavailable messages coming up. It resulted in widespread panic and frustration among Offaly GAA supporters desperate for tickets and several took to social media forums to express their disgust and anger.

Ticketmaster denied their site crashed, insisting that tickets were sold out while Offaly GAA issued a post at that stage, urging supporters to be “patient” and stating that just 14,000 tickets were sold.

Later that evening, Offaly GAA confirmed that all tickets had been sold. The capacity has been set at 26,000 and on Tuesday, there were a lot of angry supporters in Offaly.

There was also annoyance that Tipperary GAA clubs had been given an allocation, whereas Offaly GAA clubs didn't receive one. Michael Duignan said they had been advised by Croke Park officials and Ticketmaster not to take such an allocation and to allow people to buy themselves online. He revealed that they also told clubs this last Friday and no club came back asking for an allocation.

Mr Duignan is unsure if they made the right call on that, though he stated that it would just have “shifted the problem” onto clubs and created big headaches for them. Numbered seats were on sale in the spacious Nowlan Park stands and he stated that club allocations would have been a mixture of both stands and terraces and they would have found it hard to facilitate family groups. “Tipperary took numbers for their clubs, the advice we got was not to do it. I don't know in hindsight if that was a good or a bad call. Should we have taken an allocation for our clubs. Maybe we should have, I am not sure. It would have caused a lot of hassle for clubs and would only have shifted the problem. Tipperary felt Offaly would have a huge crowd there and were trying to ensure they had a decent crowd. The advice we got was that tickets to clubs would be all over the place and it would be better for people to buy online themselves. Offaly wrote to clubs and told them this on Friday. There was no comeback about it.”

Stand tickets cost €25 while juvenile tickets were €5. While it was known that Offaly's presence and the way supporters have got behind this team would result in a big demand, the scale of it caught everyone by surprise.

“Monday was crazy in terms of demand,” reflected Mr Duignan, who also believes that some tickets will seep into the open near the weekend. He has spoken to a few people who bought up more tickets that they required – one was able to buy five tickets on Tuesday morning off a person, who bought twice as many as he required while he spoke to another where two people had purchased four tickets each for the same people.

“We are seeing evidence of a bit of this over buying this morning,” he said, adding that he believes Offaly will still have the bulk of the support in Kilkenny – it was open sales on Ticketmaster with no restriction on what county a person was from.

Offaly GAA had purchased tickets for the Leinster final to say thank you to stewards, volunteers, senior hurlers and sponsors and they had a small allocation to facilitate some of these people for the All-Ireland final. They also assisted some people to buy tickets at their offices at O'Connor Park.

His big concern now is that the real genuine supporter is not left high and dry – that the people who go to the early rounds, league clashes, Joe McDonagh games etc, are not left without tickets while supporters who only go to the really big games will be there.

“In the early rounds, there was not that many people there. My biggest concern is the people who go to all matches. I hope the really genuine people get there. The game is sold out but hopefully tickets will come free near the time. I do believe tickets will be in circulation but we will have to see.”

The former county hurler has huge sympathy for everyone who spent hours trying to get tickets unsuccessfully on Monday. “Ticketmaster have said their system didn't crash. They were even shocked at what happened in the first ten minutes. We had no control over it but I want to apologise to everyone who didn't get looked after. We want everyone from Offaly at the match but there is only so much we can do.”

He pointed out that Offaly GAA have made a policy of encouraging all young people and their families to go to big underage finals in the past couple of years. “We started putting on buses to matches. It was a huge part of our strategy of getting kids involved in GAA. Get them going to matches and they will want to play then. It gets their parents involved and you get buy in from everyone.”

The decision to fix the final for Nowlan Park instead of a bigger venue has now come under scrutiny. It was fixed there to mark the 100^th anniversary of the death of James Nowlan – a former president of the GAA, Nowlan Park and the All-Ireland U-20 hurling cup are both named in his honour. The pitch was also damaged from a recent Bruce Springsteen concert, showing the effects of this for the Kilkenny v Wexford Leinster senior hurling game last Sunday but the final will be going ahead there and there will be no change.

“I spoke to Jarlath Burns (GAA president) this morning and he said the demand was unbelievable. People are frustrated and I do apologise if they didn't get tickets. We are very concerned that everyone gets to the match. It is a very unusual situation for the GAA. Offaly have broken the mould in terms of support going to these games. The average attendance at a normal U-20 All-Ireland final would be 7,000/8,000. 10,000 max. Evidence is beginning to filter through that there are tickets out there. It doesn't mean all genuine people are sorted at the moment. Hopefully they will be.”

It is also a headache the County Board could do without. “We just want to focus on the match. Our players were in Nowlan Park on Sunday and we don't want this noise and distractions but I understand that people are disappointed, especially families.”

He concluded: “We have the Joe McDonagh Cup final; (v Laois in Croke Park) the following Saturday and if half the Offaly crowd go to that, it would be great. I am not going to get into which is the bigger game but the Joe McDonagh Cup final is also huge for Offaly. I would encourage everyone to go there. It is as important to Offaly in its own way. We want to get back to the top tier and we have never won the Joe McDonagh Cup.”