Did Brighton away ticket collections actually work at Brentford?

The Albion introduced their new policy of asking randomly selected Brighton fans to collect tickets with ID at an away game for the first time on Friday night at Brentford.

And do you know what? The world didn’t end. It was a minor inconvenience for the 100 supporters required to visit a collection point next to the visiting turnstiles but other than that, business as usual for the majority of the 1500 strong away end.

Everybody we have heard from who collected a ticket said the process was relatively hassle free (and if it wasn’t for you, please email us at wearebrighton@hotmail.co.uk with your experience).

The only issue reported on the evening involved Dick Knight, who was videoed shouting “I’m the life president of this f**king football club” at Albion staff working the ticket collection point.

It later transpired that Knight had not been asked to collect his ticket with ID. This would have been stupid, of course. He is the guy without whom we would not have a football club wanting to see driving licenses, passports, birth certificates or blood samples signed and verified by a doctor.

What actually happened is the barcode on his ticket would not scan at the turnstile. Brentford reprinted a new ticket, which again did not work.

A frustrated Knight therefore sought someone from Brighton to get him into the Gtech Stadium. Mr President gained entry minutes later and now we can all look forward to Dogma producing a sticker featuring Knight and that fantastic line in the very near future.

If the Albion have any sense, they will follow suit and get a range of merchandise in the Amex Superstore. Who wouldn’t part with an extortionate £40 for a “I’m the life president of this f**king football club” t-shirt?

The video of Knight at the ticket collection point naturally got a lot of traction over the weekend after it was posted on Twitter.

Albion fans were understandably desperate to jump on a deeply unpopular policy greeted with near-universal uproar when it was announced last month.

The idea of getting to a stadium early to prove you are who your ticket says you are seemed over the top. Introducing random ID checks on fans read like something out of North Korea.

And the punishment of a 10 game ban and deduction of 50 loyalty points was communicated in a manner as if fans were naughty school children being told off in an assembly by a head teacher. Good morning, Mr Barber… Yes, Mr Barber…

Where the real problem appears to lie is not in the policy itself but in the way it has been communicated. Every away supporter has been made to feel punished for passing on tickets when 90 percent play no part in such practices.

That instantly gets fans’ backs up, making them less likely to want to listen to or understand the reasons. The ill-feeling that continues to fester over the season ticket sharing scheme and the club’s refusal to take on board supporter views on it does not help either.

So how about this for a fact? Every arrest made at a Brighton away game last season was by somebody who was not entitled to be at the game in question.

They either did not have the required loyalty points or were not on the club’s database at all. They had not bought the ticket to the match they were nicked at – somebody else had on their behalf.

At high-demand games which did not reach general sale, that means the person besmirching the good name of the Albion had a seat instead of a supporter with more loyalty points.

Had the club used the arrests figure as one of the major reasons why away ticket collections were coming into place, then suddenly it appears a lot more acceptable. If random ticket collections lessen dickhead-ish behaviour at away games, then that can only be a good thing.

Likewise, if it means somebody in tier two, three or four of the loyalty points system gets a ticket to a popular away day.

Rather than a random receiving a seat from somebody in tier one who bought with no intention of going, but simply wanted to top up their points to keep them at the head of the queue for games like Crystal Palace, Plucky Little Bournemouth or Fulham.

Nobody can say for certain how much of this deliberate harvesting actually goes on. For Brentford, the club have confirmed that 17 of the 100 tickets selected for collection went unclaimed.

Some of those will have been left for genuine reasons. People suffering with Covid-19 or that nasty flu going around at the moment.

Family emergencies. Changes to work or travel plans. Hangovers. WAB know of a ticket to the 3-0 win at Peterborough in 2010 sold on the day of the game because one Brighton fans was too hungover to travel to London Road.

Imagine missing one of the best Albion away matches in history as punishment by your body for a night in Oxygen and Tru.

Time for some rough sums. Say seven of the 17 tickets not collected at Brentford were for genuine reasons. And 10 were people who did not attend because the ticket had been bought by another person.

Apply that 10 percent figure for harvested tickets across the away end at Brentford and you get 150 Albion fans in tier two of the loyalty scheme denied a seat at the Gtech Stadium.

In a sell-out 3,000 allocation at other Premier League grounds, that would equate to 300 people in the away end instead of Albion supporters who have the points to be there.

The maths is obviously guesswork. It could be completely inaccurate. Nobody can say for sure whether all 17 tickets remained unclaimed because of genuine reasons, or whether every ticket holder stayed away because they were not eligible for a ticket in the first place.

The club though will use that 10 percent (or even 17 percent) figure to justify the need for the away ticket policy at the most in-demand matches.

And if you are one of those 150 or 300 supporters who misses out on attending Brentford, Palace, Fulham, Forest Green Rovers or any other away game which sells out, then you might be inclined to agree.

There are clearly things the Albion need to do to improve the new away ticket policy. One is making it easier for fans to claim refunds for away games they have tickets for but later discover they cannot attend.

The club have said nothing more than issuing refunds is “difficult”. That is not really good enough at a time of sudden and unexpected train strikes, isolation periods for Covid-19 and television companies butchering the fixture list to suit their needs. Or if you end up hungover after a night on West Street.

Fans who find themselves unable to go for genuine reasons deserve better than to be stuck with a £30 match ticket they cannot do anything with, especially in the middle of a cost-of-living crisis.

Here is a prediction having seen the away ticketing collection in operation for the first time at Brentford – give it three or four away games and the fuss will have died down.

Speaking from experience, there was a similar furore when the FA moved from randomly selected supporters collecting England away tickets to making every single person in the away end collect with ID.

Very quickly it became accepted as part and parcel of following the Three Lions on the road, a minor inconvenience that means every fan watching in Italy, North Macedonia or Malta has a ticket because they have done the hard yards and racked up the points. At the same time, it keeps trouble away from stadiums.

The handful of Brighton supporters forced into collecting in the future might find it frustrating but based on Friday night at the Gtech, the vast majority will not even notice it is in place.

This will be especially true at matches which go to general sale including upcoming trips to Manchester City and Wolves, where anyone who wants a ticket can buy a ticket – so long as they are happy with the club knowing their name.

There are more pressing ticketing issues for Albion fans to focus their frustrations on than away ticket collections which are well-intentioned, just perhaps ham-fistedly introduced.

Time to talk about season ticket sharing again?