It’s a strange feeling being on a train from Brighton, headed to Upton Park in the certain knowledge that West Ham aren’t going to give away a heartbreaking last-minute goal, nor be the innocent victim of diabolical refereeing decisions.
I should have been a happy Hammer knowing that nothing could go wrong on the pitch for once. But I was far from pleased as I was transported from the south coast to this nation’s glorious capital city. In fact, I had the right hump.
The reason? I wasn’t going to London E13 to watch West Ham play. This was on Saturday and, as you will all be aware, we had no game that day. I was making the trip because of the shambles that surrounded the club’s botched attempts to finalise the season ticket allocation for 2015/16.
I wanted to swap seats because I sit next to an aisle, which is choc-a-bloc with late arrivals trying to find their designated places for 10 minutes after kick-off, and equally packed with eager beavers looking to get a flyer 10 minutes before the final whistle (is it just me, or these generally the same people?). Five minutes either side of half-time isn’t funny either.
Not being blessed with X-ray vision, any action to my right-hand side remains a mystery to me unless I stand up – which only adds to the problem for the people around me. And as I sit in line with the edge of the penalty box in the south-east corner of the ground, a good deal of the action takes place to my right.
Why the club doesn’t marshal supporters properly has baffled me ever since we were all made to sit down by Lord Justice Taylor. Go to a cricket match and try taking your seat whenever you feel like it – you’ll be bang out of luck. There was a time when the convention was simply that spectators didn’t move behind the bowler’s arm; now, at well-attending matches, there are stewards preventing you disturbing those around you during play in all parts of the stadium. Quite right too. Yet at Upton Park people are regularly allowed to loiter in the gangways no matter what is happening on the pitch. And don’t tell me football doesn’t have the same breaks in play that you get at cricket. As someone who has watched an array of damaged claret and blue manhood being helped from the pitch after sustaining major injuries each requiring several minutes’ treatment this season, I would beg to differ.
Like everyone else who wanted to relocate or buy a ticket on behalf of another loyal supporter keen to play their part in our final fling at the Boleyn Ground, I wasn’t able to do so when I renewed my season ticket – we all had to wait for Friday’s renewal deadline to pass and then take part in a giant bunfight held over the weekend. And you could only participate in person or over the phone. No online or postal applications were possible at this stage.
The phone lines opened at 9am on Saturday morning. At 9.01, having listened to the preliminaries and selected Option Three as instructed, I was informed I was number 144 in the queue. That didn’t surprise me. What did was the added titbit of information that the estimated waiting time was one minute. An hour later I was comfortably down to double figures in the queue, but the repeated assertion that the waiting time would be a minute, or possibly two, which punctuated the strangled version of Bubbles that you get when you ring the ticket office would have been laughable if it hadn’t been so annoying.
Then things got exciting. Suddenly I was up to No 8. Then I went back to 50-something. Then I was in the teens. Then I went to No 37. And there I stayed as the waiting time went up to three minutes, four minutes … seven minutes … ten minutes. As it turned out, my overall waiting time was 93 minutes – each minute costing me 10p and an increasing imbalance in the systolic and diastolic readings that make up my blood pressure.
But, finally, I was head of the queue. The recorded messages were over and I was on the verge of talking to a real person and sorting out my relocation. Apple Mac users describe the spinning coloured icon that appears when their computer has crashed as the Beachball of Death. What I got next was the telephonic equivalent: the continuous Bassnote of Despair that means you’ve been cut off.
It’s not the first time it’s happened to me, although that didn’t make me any less gutted. I tried to call the ticket office again, and learned that if I wanted to hang on I would be No 133 in the queue (with a waiting time of one minute). This time I ended the call, and emailed the ticket office explaining what had happened – only to receive an automated reply explaining that everyone was busy dealing with season ticket requests and no one would have time to look at emails until Monday morning. The cat knows the look on my face that resulted from me reading that message does not bode well for him, and he wisely scarpered.
It was now 10.50. The next train to London from Brighton was the 11.08. And I was on it. I got to the ground shortly after 1pm, and walked straight up to a vacant window in the West Stand ticket office where the extremely helpful Leah found me three highly desirable seats in the East Stand Upper in a matter of moments.
Equally helpful were the stewards who were prepared to take me round to inspect my new seats, thus giving me the unmissable chance to effectively have the stadium to myself. I even had my picture taken sitting in Sam Allardyce’s seat (could we, for today at least, park the debate about who should be sat there next season?).
The people at the ground on Saturday were a credit to the club (there wasn’t a managerial suit in sight, of course). But as an exercise it was chaos. The 10p-a-minute ticket phone line is a money-grubbing swindle at the best of times, and this was the worst of times. The whole thing was badly planned and badly executed – almost certainly by highly paid executives who failed to anticipate a demand that should have been foreseen. As it turned out, a process that was supposed to be completed over the weekend had to be extended into a third day. How did they get it so badly wrong?
A steward told me I was one of several people he’d spoken to that day who had experienced the problems I had encountered. This was confirmed when I later checked WHTID and read of the difficulties some of you had endured. Other sites told a similar story – one unfortunate supporter reported hanging on the phone for more than three hours before being cut off. Others were put through to an outside agency which was unable to sell them the tickets they required.
I was lucky in that I was able to jump on a train and sort out my problems. For one thing, I have an annual rail season ticket so the journey didn’t cost me anything other than precious time. I also have an understanding wife, who recognises the importance of these things, and grown-up children who no longer expect a Saturday morning kickabout in the park or a lift to their weekend karate class. Many other people will not be in this happy position and now face an uncertain future in what is set to be one of the most memorable seasons in West Ham’s history.
I think the club owes them an unreserved apology – and a refund for all those wasted 10p-a-minutes.
PS: If, like Sam’s weary warriors at Manchester Citeh on Sunday, you have chosen to go on holiday early this year why not take a copy of my book with you? It’s called Nearly Reach The Sky – A Farewell To Upton Park, and can be ordered from publishers Biteback here
You can also find it on Amazon, complete with some very generous reader reviews – for which I am eternally grateful.