Fiasco avoided as many Irish fans land tickets for Euro 2016

Not everyone was left happy but there will be considerable relief out in Abbotstown in the wake of yesterday’s distribution of Euro 2016 tickets.

A calamity on the scale of the one endured by the Northern Irish or Belgian associations has been avoided with most of the Republic of Ireland’s more active fans accommodated for at least one of the games.

There was some frustration last night amongst those who did miss out that supporters with higher numbers of loyalty points were entitled to apply for up to four tickets for each game on the basis of one person having regularly attended matches during the qualification campaign but the association insists that this was a Uefa decision and that it had sought, without success, to have the number limited to two.

Problem

Applying for the maximum number allowed appeared to be something of a risk beforehand but a significant number who took the plunge appear to have been successful, at least for the Sweden game, tickets for which were being offered either for resale or exchange by yesterday afternoon.

Tickets for the game against Belgium in Bordeaux on June 18th appeared to be the most sought after. That game, for which only slightly over 7,000 tickets have been allotted to Irish fans, certainly emerged as a problem.

The FAI had predicted that it would be able to look after most of the team's most regular fans for the opening match with Sweden in the Stade de France on June 13th and this appears to have been the case.

There also appeared to be a general sense that the situation is not too bad in relation to the game against Italy in Lille on June 22nd but there was widespread concern over the Belgium match with many fans clearly fearful that tracking down tickets will be a major challenge.

The FAI moved last night to reassure those who had missed out that they may still get their tickets if they are a deserving case.

The association invited those who feel they were unfairly treated this time around to email them at euro2016@fai.ie with details of the application they submitted so that they might be considered when the 2,000 tickets it held in reserve are distributed.

As things stand, nothing will happen with these until after February 29th as this is the deadline for concluding the current process.

The association, however, is to contact Uefa with a view to ascertaining whether it can be confirmed that the process has been completed before then and if it is, then it is likely to push ahead with its fallback distribution.

A number of supporters with very high loyalty points totals were active on social media yesterday complaining about having missed out but a spokesman for the association said that having contacted a selection of the people involved and investigated the circumstances, the organisation had found that issues with the processing of payment, something that it says occurred in some 9.5 per cent of attempted transactions, had been behind the problem.

“We’ve told them to hang in there; that all is not lost yet,” he said. “In most of the cases that we’ve looked into, the payments were the issue and so the people concerned have missed out on this occasion but we’ve said to them to send us the details and in cases where people have attended a lot of games, they’re likely to be considered favourably.”

With regard to disgruntled season ticket holders who feel they missed out because others, ahead of them in the queue, were allowed to apply for four tickets, he acknowledged that there was more than a hint of injustice about the situation but insisted that the fault lay with Uefa.

Imperfection

“That is the imperfection of the system,” he said. “Somebody who has been to a lot of the games can now bring three of his mates to one or more of the games in France; I can understand that it is extremely frustrating to somebody who has missed out but we did ask Uefa to limit the number that could be applied for by individuals to two. Unfortunately, they decided against doing that.

“Again, we’d say to people that the process is not over, that there may still be a chance of securing some tickets but overall, having spoken to a few of the different supporters’ groups, we feel that the day has generally gone quite well; better in many ways than we might have expected.”

For a small number of applicants, meanwhile, there was the news that they had been granted “conditional” tickets for Ireland’s games in the knockout phase but not the group stages.

If Martin O’Neill’s side exceeds all expectations, then this will start to look like a pretty enviable position to be in but, in the meantime, at least one fan apparently found that he was €3,000 down for tickets he is unlikely to ever see, with the money set to be refunded for the rounds Ireland fail to make after the tournament ends.