*Photograph: Gerard O’Neill
CLARE GAA’s Head of Operations acknowledged the contribution of voluntary club officials following issues with online sales of All-Ireland final tickets.
As first reported by The Clare Echo, a technical glitch emerged with the online sales of All-Ireland final tickets. 16,000 tickets were allocated to Clare GAA for the final and the apportioned amount was not impacted by the system fault.
After an online link went live for members of GAA clubs on Friday last, a failing in the system allowed some persons to obtain more tickets than they were allocated and others were left with half of what they were awarded. In some instances, persons who were looking for four tickets could only get two and those attempting to get two tickets could only obtain one.
When the matter was flagged with club secretaries, the message was relayed to Clare GAA officials who took steps to disable the links and codes issued to club members. There were no such technical glitches for clubs in Cork attempting to source their tickets. Club members were also separated from their family in some instances with the allocation of tickets.
Club secretaries who are volunteers were then furnished with a report “showing all codes used and number of tickets purchased” which assisted them in identifying persons who purchased more than their allocation. The onus was left with the club administrators to try retrieve tickets and they were not successful in all instances. As it was holiday season, some of the club secretaries were carrying this out while in Spain and Italy while others ended up working day and night to try rectify the matter.
Requests from club secretaries for all codes to be cancelled and for the process to be restarted were rejected. “Secretaries have been wronged, they’ve made us fall out with our own club members over it,” one volunteer told The Clare Echo.
In correspondence to the County Board, club secretaries urged the GAA chiefs to take control of the matter going forward. “Somebody has to talk to the powers that be as regards future issues. We have unsupervised children scattered around Croke Park, we have secretaries sitting with their family in restricted viewing seats and Chairpersons sitting on their own with wives and partners and friends elsewhere. I thought the process would be Clare and Cork had first pick outside corporate premium, players etc, and all remining seats would then go to clubs worldwide. Instead we have loyal Clare members separate from families and friends in the worst seats”.
Chairman of Clare GAA, Kieran Keating in correspondence to club secretaries advised that they were not competing with Cork GAA for the same seats with the allocation approximately split for 10,000 between the three stands and 6,000 in the terrace, of this 2,000 from the Hogan and Cusack Stands was set aside to be used for players families, management, referees, volunteers, officers and sponsors. He said 400 of the allocation were to be used at fundraising events.
By the final whistle, Clare supporters lucky enough to be among the 82,000 in Croke Park witnessing history were not talking about tickets.
Speaking at Monday’s homecoming event, the Head of Operations commented, “It is amazing to see the people of our county out tonight. I want to pay particular tribute to all those who work in the clubs and particularly those who worked on the distribution of tickets in the last two weeks, there are some people with full-time jobs who spent hours upon hours, countless time trying to ensure as many Clare people as possible had a ticket, we really appreciate all the work done by the voluntary officers in the club, we are honoured those who work for you to try do our best for you every day, we really appreciate I suppose the bond that is between all Clare people and our wonderful players and our exceptional management team, we are just so proud to have any small part to play”.
