First Hand Experience

Author: Scott Cooper
Date: 24/5/03

Wolves Fan Mark Hickman from Wombourne gives his account on what happened in the hectic queue for Play-Off Final tickets for the Division One Play-Off Final between Sheffield United and Wolves.

I arrived there at approx 2030 on Tuesday evening and already the queue was
by the Old Molineux Hotel but the atmosphere was electric.  Camp fires were
going, music was playing and kids were playing football.  Everybody was
pouring out of ASDA stocked up with beer for the night.  The only worry
then was that there were reportedly only four stewards on duty covering the
whole ground.

By about 5am on Wednesday the queue had now gone all the way down to the
waterloo road and back up again.  Most people were still asleep when a
steward came up to us and asked us to move around a little to enable
workers at Molinuex to park in the car park at the back of the Southbank.
The stampede then started, we moved around the corner by the wanderer only
to see that no one was there.  Everybody had abandoned there tents, camp
fires were still burning.  Everybody ran as far as they could to join the
queue.  The queue was absolutely massive, about 10 to 15 people wide
tailing from the ticket office all the way round to about half way up the
John Ireland stand.  There was already a male who seemed to have collapsed
through the amount of people pushing forward and an ambulance soon arrived
to take him away.

From then on everything was a nightmare.  People were just walking into
the queue from anywhere and the stewards were just standing there.  Even
when police arrived they did nothing to stop the queue jumpers.

I later saw a friend who I met during the evening in the pub after I had
collected my voucher.  We were originally next to each other but after
speaking to him found out he had voucher number 5XX and I had voucher
number 17XX which just goes to show the amount of queue jumpers there were.
I also knew someone who had literally arrived at Molineux 30 minutes before
getting his voucher!

I must say that the way the tickets have been allocated has been terrible.
I am sure there are a lot of fans who queued most of the night were still
without tickets while people who arrived and hour or two before the were
given out were successful  I also feel that Wolves did not reveal enough
information as no one was aware that corporate tickets would come out of
the allocation.

I am glad I have got my ticket but I do feel very sorry for all the honest
supporters out there who have been unable to get a ticket and know have to
pay extortionate prices over the internet and through touts to watch the
game.  I am sure this will be the last Play Off Final we will be in for a
while so hopefully this will give the board enough time to sort out the way
they allocate tickets in future.

I only hope this will not be the case for away games next season when we
are in the Premiership!

Wolves

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