THOUSANDS OF GAA fans hoping to secure tickets for Dublin’s clash with Mayo in the All-Ireland semi-final in Croke Park on Saturday faced hours of frustration and, ultimately, disappointment today as the first allocation quickly sold out.

Large queues formed at Centra and Supevalu stores in both counties ahead of tickets going on sale at 10am this morning. Numerous people reported that they failed to get their hands on a ticket for the tie despite queueing for several hours.

Many who opted to use the GAA’s official online ticketing partner – Tickets.ie – didn’t fare any better as customers were left in an online queue for hours before the system froze at around 3pm. A short time later people were told that tickets were no longer available.
Tickets.ie came in for severe criticism on Twitter as fans expressed their frustration with the company’s queueing system and the lack of information on the availability of tickets.

“I queued for 5 hours and 17 mins in total. This is ridiculous. So disappointed as myself and my Dad have only missed one match since January,” one fan wrote.

“Disaster today @tickets_ie. Given place 810 in the queue. Two hours 45 minutes waiting, to finally be kicked out by an error when my turn comes up. Put to the back on the queue at place 20,112,” another added.

At midday, more than two hours before the site froze, the company’s account tweeted that there were “no issues” with the listing and that the tickets were still on sale. It has not given any update since despite receiving more than 100 queries from frustrated punters.

Dublin North West TD Noel Rock released a statement about the issues, describing the situation as “an invitation to touts.”

“We had people contacting my office saying they had been queuing for over two hours in shops around the city and county, and had only seen a handful of tickets being printed off,” he said.

“The demand for tickets is obviously massive – and it’s great to see fans so excited about the closing games of the summer – but the set-up is certainly lacking.

“The GAA are great at many aspects of organisation, but it seems on this occasion their ticketing system has let them down.

“This needs to be looked at constructively to ensure it doesn’t happen again.”

The match is expected to be a sell-out and it is understood that another batch of tickets will go on general sale in the coming days.