In Reply to: Re: Tickets posted by losed shop on August 30, 2004 at 02:25:38:

Michael Ring in a Dail debate about the problem, in 1999:

"A tout is somebody who gets tickets and makes money from them. How do these touts get the tickets in the first place? One cannot get a ticket for an all-Ireland match but outside Croke Park, or Lansdowne Road there are people selling tickets. Somebody within the sporting organisations is handing out tickets. I cannot understand why the rugby and soccer associations and the GAA did not do what the Football Association in England did. If 100,000 people attend a match at Wembley Stadium the Football Association can identify all the tickets. If a ticket tout sells a ticket at £100 over the odds, that ticket can be traced back to the person who got it from the association. Why can we not do that here? It is because nobody has the courage to do it. There is a fear in many of the organisations that the people handing out the tickets will be found out. Those people are bigger touts than the touts on Lansdowne Road or Jones's Road selling hundreds of tickets on match days while the genuine supporter cannot get a ticket.

Another problem is that one can go to the Connacht finals or the Leinster finals and get into the games, but when it comes to an all-Ireland final the corporate people, the people with the money, the people with the boxes are more important than the poor devil on the ground."

i forgot to mention the money the FAI are getting from the now infamous deal with sky tv by the way, that must be a nice little earner too.

and all the while lansdowne road is falling to pieces.

i'll credit the gaa with this- they offer great support to the grass roots, and we have a world class stadium to be proud of (even if it is in dublin!)

does anyone know what kind of support soccer clubs in mayo get from the FAI?