Just the ticket

We were fortunate to have a very enjoyable  2016, albeit we lost some dear friends and relatives during its course. We now enter 2017 hoping to experience new and rewarding adventures at home and abroad, while maintaining our health and that of those closest to us.

The first thing I have to look forward to is a trip to Anfield on Sunday to see Plymouth Argyle take on Liverpool, and to see how the Green Army fair against the Kop. Argyle see themselves as a Championship side at minimum, but some of the build-up surrounding the game, and the ticketing in particular has been non-league at best.

I appreciated I did not have first dibs for away end tickets as I am not a season ticket holder, nor a regular attendee. but as a registered member I was able to obtain tickets when they went on general sale on Tuesday. Now, up until Tuesday, the tickets were available via the club website hosted for them by Ticketmaster. As of Tuesday though they were only available to the general public by telephone. Five hours I tried to get through before I managed at least to get in a queue. when I got through there were only restricted view seats left but at £11 each I could not really complain.

Subsequently I have been invited into a box to watch the match, so I will do a bit of Green Army and a bit of corporate as a mix 'n match.

Following on from Anfield we have a stamina building weekend in Snowdonia before our skiing trip later in February, then it's off to Portugal for the El Tel Cup before a couple of weeks warm weather training in Barbados. Slot in a few rugby internationals and that is the first part of the year taken care of. Decorating and gardening might have to be delayed for a few months!!

One sad piece of news emanating from Wallasey Golf Club, however, was the notice informing members that Neville Thompson passed away earlier in the week. Neville was 104 and up until the last couple of years had been a regular figure in the Club at lunchtime.

Neville was the last surviving Wallasey member who can recall watching Bobby Jones play the links in 1930 on his way to qualification for the Open finals at Hoylake. He won there and went on to complete the grand slam of golf in the same year, a  feat which remains unique to this day. 104 is a good innings. Golfers always hope to one day shoot a gross score lower than their age, many never do it, some do it with regularity, hopefully Neville was one of the successful ones. Either way he remains a modern day legend in the Club, in the way Bobby Jones was in the world of golf,  all those years ago.

Don't break the seal

The Six Nations rugby came to Twickenham at the weekend, and, as usual we were there!

It was a very strange day though. The stadium was full with 83,000 souls being there, and yet the surrounding streets, pubs and restaurants were remarkably quiet. This may have been due to people cutting back on their hospitality expenses, or, more likely, an increase in family groups and couples attending the game.

Italy always seem to be the least popular game for the die hard supporters to attend, and tickets are often placed with Ticketmaster to gain access to the non-rugby club portion of the public.

Now this different demographic generated a problem which Twickenham Stadium was not geared up to cater for, namely, insufficient ladies toilets. Now long queues at ladies toilets are commonplace at many sporting arenas, but Twickenham has been able to cope pretty well in the past. Not this week though.

The increase in lady spectators is one reason for the extra queues, but the other is the increase in the number of ladies who are now drinking pints. Whatever happened to Babycham or Cherry B as the lady ruggers tipple of choice.

Entry fee extra....

There has been much discussion lately about the rising cost of air travel, with talk of increased landing charges for Heathrow and Gatwick and fuel charge supplements affecting most major airlines. Couple that with the cheap airlines like RyanAir and EasyJet adding-on for hold baggage and golf clubs, and the whole scene becomes extremely confusing. people are up in arms about early boarding charges and 'long leg' premiums. All are classed as stealth charges making cheap ticket prices a misleading selling ploy.

Luckily the Office of Fair Trading has clamped down on these practices so that at least the surcharges are included in the price, if not the luggage charge. Now lets turn our attention to something else which continues to irritate me.

I regularly use TicketMaster for concert and sporting event tickets. They have hidden charges too. This week I ordered six tickets with face value £15 each for a rugby game at Twickenham. I was then charged a booking fee of £2.40 per ticket, and postage of £2.20. As I could only order two tickets at a time that cost me postage on each transaction. The whole package was £109.80, a 22% premium on their face value.

So, I went directly to the RFU box office as I was passing, but they were not selling tickets for this event, it was TicketMaster or nothing. What I want to know is why don't they just say the tickets are £18.40 including P & P, up front, so we all know where we stand, or in this case, sit?