THEY’RE NORMALLY LIKE gold dust, but last night unwanted All-Ireland hurling final tickets were returned by the Kilkenny and Tipperary county boards to be sold online by the GAA.
The GAA announced last night that “a limited number of stand tickets have been returned by the competing counties in Sunday’s All-Ireland hurling finals. These tickets have been placed on sale at gaa.ie.”
Despite both the Tipperary and Kilkenny GAA county boards claiming that there would be very little demand for these less desirable tickets, some of which being in restricted viewing sections, fans have questioned the decision to put allocated tickets on sale outside of the competing counties.
Tipperary County Board said that ‘these are isolated tickets in the back rows, and some are restricted viewing where very few would go.
“I suppose they would probably sell a lot quicker on the online rather than hold on to them and we wouldn’t be in a position to sell them on tomorrow.”
When asked if the county board felt it was fair to put Tipperary allocated tickets on general sale, the County board said that “a lot of people won’t pay €80 to be up in row Z and against the back wall.”
Tipperary supporter Ed Leamy only managed to get a ticket for the final yesterday, and he said that he’d “sit on the roof for whatever price — I’d stand on my head to watch the match.”
“It will sell out there’s no doubt about that and there’s a huge demand around the county and in Dublin.
“But maybe people got their tickets outside of the county which the Tipperary county board mightn’t have foreseen.”
Last night there were both upper Hogan and Cusack stand tickets available for purchase on gaa.ie, some of which being available at the reduced €40 for ‘restricted viewing’, although a number of regular €80 stand tickets were also available. These were all sold before today.
A spokesman for Kilkenny GAA added that he was initially surprised by the news as there were a number of people still looking for stand tickets, although the GAA’s statement did not represent the situation in the county accurately .
Nonetheless he did reveal that the Kilkenny county board have returned a number of Nally terrace tickets, along with two “restricted viewing stand tickets, behind the screen which cost €40.
“Obviously the Nally terrace tickets, a number are allocated to the clubs and there wasn’t the demand for them and they were finding it difficult to sell them.”
