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Respect Campaign - Cup Final Allocations

By Liam White :  04/06/2009 :  Comments (15) :
To: All Football Fans The FA have called for respect in football. Respect referees, respect competitions by not fielding weakened teams, they've used the tag line 'Lose Respect, Lose the Game'.

As an Everton fan, having seen many Evertonians being forced to pay hundreds above face value to touts to see their team in the final and stories of more being conned by fake tickets, seeing such a tag-line flash up in Wembley before the final was laughable, considering the FA had supplied every single one of these touts with the tickets in the first place. A pitiful 25,000 was given to each club out of 90,000, leaving a 40,000 supply of tickets potentially available to touts.

This is not a problem that only affects the top 4 fans, it will affect many fans in the future. In the last decade, 12 teams outside the top four and 4 outside the top flight appeared in the Carling and FA Cup finals, a total of 20 different teams have appeared in the two major finals, and any club from 60 clubs in England has a chance to get to a major final in the next decade. This is an issue which affects most fans.

We understand the financial problems with the FA, and we understand the need for Club Wembley, but what is unexplainable is the 23,000 tickets given out to people who have little interest in the game itself and inevitably via an extortionate price tag, the tickets go back into the hands of the fans of the clubs playing. If most of these tickets will be taken up by fans anyway via touts, then surely the FA should cut out this extortionate middleman and supply the tickets directly.

The Respect Campaign is calling for a rethink from the FA about a fairer allocation, a look into who deserves to be counted as the football family, a greater protection of fans from touts, and a general show of more respect to the life blood of English football, the fans.

So if you want to support the Respect Campaign, please sign the online petition part of our campaign.

Thank You For Your Support.

http://www.petitiononline.com/facup71/petition.html

Reader Comments (15)

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Mark Stone
1 Posted 05/06/2009 at 09:28:05
What annoyed me most was that the ’neutral’ seats which were allocated to grassroots football / county FA’s were assigned either Chelsea or Everton. Isn’t this an admission by the FA that the tickets are going to be sold on illigitimately to supporters? The tickets we got should have been neutral but we were in the Chelsea end (section P)(until we got moved and watched the rest of the match on the steps in the Everton end).

I might write to the FA with this observation.
Ged Simpson
2 Posted 05/06/2009 at 10:53:44
Liam... has this been sent to all the other football fass sites? You should.

About time fans took control of our game back and most will support this.
Colin Evans
3 Posted 05/06/2009 at 10:54:52
Club Wembley (that collar around the stadium - middle tier) is part of the problem since those seats are sold to debentures. I think there is 12k seats.

CW was the only way I could get a ticket , since i am not a STH, and I had to pay a vast amount (I can’t bring myself to even type it ) - the seats were great but I couldn’t afford to do that every season.

I was sat with a couple who were clearly loaded and admitted they didn’t even like football, but went to all wembley events - they left before the final wistle to avoid the traffic and the guy even fell asleep during the game.

They told me the paid £20k per seat for ten years! That how the stadium was financed.

But even considering that that 28k seats that should have gone to real fans of the two teams.

I will sign your petition - for all the good it will do ...
Stu Mac
4 Posted 05/06/2009 at 11:59:01
Mark Stone - you should definately write to the FA. I have read so many posts about Evertonians being physically & verbally abused by Chelsea wools and having to be removed from the section they where in because it was a ’Chelsea’ section.
The FA caused this situation and are therefore to blame for it
Mark Stone
5 Posted 05/06/2009 at 12:21:25
Yeah Stu, a lad by us got hit in the head by someone when he was looking away, and one Chelsea fan tried to jump over 3 rows of seats to lay into a group of Everton fans to our left.

Daft because as I say, these were tickets that county FA’s had given to grassroots football clubs all over the country to be raffled off or whatever. How do they know that Billy in South Shields is an Everton Fan? Or that Jonny from Hull supports Chelsea? Seats in this area should have been neutral.

It’s an open admission from the FA that they knew the tickets would be sold on - otherwise the area wouldn’t have been assigned to Chelsea on the ticket. Our tickets legit, face value and we still got screwed over.
Chris Halliday
6 Posted 05/06/2009 at 12:49:43
We got our tickets from the County FA becuase we play for a local team registered with them. Needless to say, we were in Block P upper stand with all the Chelsea. Lasted 1 minute after Saha scored and spat at, kicked and abused until we had no choice to leave. Other fans around us were the same.
Stephen Stuart
7 Posted 05/06/2009 at 13:08:06
The FA are consistently bringing the game into disrepute.
Paul Hardwicke
8 Posted 05/06/2009 at 13:12:20
We were also in Block P of the Chelsea end. A group of Evertonians in front of us were being abused and the stewards decided to escort them out just after we scored. We decided to join them as there was not a good atmosphere in there. Whe we got to the bottom of the stair in the concourse there was a group of Chelsea scum in there throwing punches at us over the shoulders of the stewards who were doing their best to deal with the situation.

We were eventually escorted in to the Everton end where they left us standing in a corner missing 10 minutes of the game. We eventually sneaked away and were very lucky to find 2 empty seats. I don't know what happened to the other 15 or 20 with us which included women and children. I will be certainly writing to Chelsea FC but wont be holding my breath for a response.

Tim Wardrop
9 Posted 05/06/2009 at 13:33:32
Some interesting stuff on here, but going off at a slight tangent, I wonder if anyone who had tickets in the Everton sections (either the club allocated sections or the "neutral" areas) saw anything similar with Chelsea fans in their area?

I certainly didn’t see any Chelsea fans sitting in our end.
Adam Drewery
10 Posted 05/06/2009 at 13:48:57
I sat in Club Wembley and the guy next to me had a Derby County tattoo on his arm.

I’d do it all again though.
Mark Stone
11 Posted 05/06/2009 at 14:06:41
After we got moved to the Everton end I saw 4 Chelsea fans in there (wearing the kit). Nobody said a bad word to them and many people even shook their hand at the final whistle. At Everton we do things with dignity and style.
Keith Glazzard
12 Posted 05/06/2009 at 16:18:38
Cup final tickets are offered as prizes in newspaper competitions. How would the FA justify that?
Micky Norman
13 Posted 05/06/2009 at 16:24:01
Still waiting for my reply from the FA after I "outed a tout" to their hotline, well several actually. Has anyone else who did it had a reply yet? Slightly off thread here but at £20k for 10 years this Club Wembley thing is a bargain nd a license to print money. Those who sell their tickets on must be making a fortune regularly. If only I had the money I’d join the bloody scumbags myself. But then would I have to out myself?
Liam White
14 Posted 06/06/2009 at 00:46:57
This has been sent to several forums for different teams. I want to take this beyond a petition so any ideas on how to promote the campaign is welcome

A facebook group has also been set up, all are welcome to join and I’ll post updates on the campaign on there

http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/group.php?gid=87769364695

Thanks for your support.
Chris Julian
15 Posted 08/06/2009 at 12:59:59
Myself and 5 friends paid £250 each for Club Wembley tickets in our end through a contact and the whole thing was a joke. Loads of us went in wearing Everton replica shirts even though we heard of several Blues getting lashed out for wearing colours but even more laughable, we smuggled a ticketless mate in ? we passed a ticket back after gaining admittance, told him to act stupid when trying to put the ticket in the reader and low and behold a steward did let him in. A steward looked at 7 lads on 6 seats and did nothing!!! Considering this foolproof system, it's shocking how things got like this. If I?d have known how easy it would have been to get in, I wouldn?t have bothered spending that much cash.

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