Tales from frontline as GAA ticketing system struggles

For all of my adult inter-county playing life, which ended in June 2020 in the heart of a pandemic, I never once had to worry about tickets for games, or helping my friends and family out.

The reality is you are able to get your hands on quite a few tickets and ensure that everyone close to you is happy.

Outside of that, what other people did to get tickets, or how they got them was none of my concern. Why? Because you're in that bubble with the blinkers on, and you can't start worrying about what people are doing to get tickets. You have family and friends sorted so you are happy.

When I retired in 2020, and into 2021, for obvious reasons tickets were not an issue.

Welcome 2022.

On Tuesday, at 11am, all tickets, for all inter-county games became available to buy online. Welcome carnage.

So I'll give you a bit of perspective. I am involved in a number of Centra stores in the heart of Limerick City, with one of them an allocated store to sell matchday tickets. At 11am, the shop was bedlam. Queues going all around the back of the shop.

So what happened then? The system crashed. Twenty minutes later we got it going again. We got five customers served before it crashed again. And this was the trend for four hours.

One elderly gentleman was in the queue for well over an hour, and when he got to me I had to give him the bad news that there was no tickets left on the system in the stand for the Limerick and Cork game.

The poor man was devastated as he wasn't in a fit condition to go to the terrace.

Then you had people coming up looking to get tickets for all four games, with specific requirements. And we were glad to help them, and all within their rights, but the queue times for people were bonkers.

Do the GAA not actually see this?