Mass swap proves just the ticket...
The shock Irish win against Australia in the pool matches was not anticipated by many visiting fans, who have now found themselves with tickets to the wrong quarter-final after buying in advance.
Many were trying yesterday to swap tickets on tripadvisor.com, gumtree.co.nz, eBay sites, and specially created blogs and webpages.
Most assumed that Australia would beat Ireland, leading to an Australia-Wales match-up today and an Ireland-South Africa clash on tomorrow.
Ireland fan Máire Shanahan listed a pair of tickets to tomorrow’s game on tripadvisor.com, to swap for tickets for the Ireland game.
“We didn’t know Ireland would win against Australia — we should have had a bit more faith. But my tickets were $200 and they were the cheapest, so we could only afford the one [quarter-final]. It’s a huge problem. Now I’m trying to decide whether to just sell the tickets I have and just buy tickets to the Irish games, but the cheapest ones they have are $400 and I can’t afford that.”
World Cup tournament boss Martin Snedden said “I don’t think that’s in the slightest an issue”, adding that Ireland’s upset win over Australia had simply turned it into “even more of a special weekend”.
“We’ve created a draw where the travelling fan had an absolute certainty that if his or her team reached the quarterfinals they would know what city it would be played in.
“If someone has chosen to buy one ticket for one of these matches, then there are still tickets available for the other.”
However, the 2,500 tickets left for each match were expected to sell out before this morning’s kick-off in Wellington.
The New Zealand capital is bracing for its biggest-ever weekend as an unprecedented onslaught of international rugby fans flood the city.
Ticket prices for today’s quarter-finals range from €90 for restricted-view seats to €285 for spots in the A category.
The city’s pubs are bracing themselves for a Celtic onslaught. “We are hoping it’s going to better than the British Lions test,” Leuven-Belgian Beer Cafe manager Todd Hunter said. “[That was] the biggest one day we have seen and this is two days of it.”
Staffing would be increased and he would be stocking beers to about five times normal levels.
Kitty O’Shea’s Irish Bar co-owner Martin Binks said that after the Ireland v Wales game today it promised to be another cracker. “On Saturday it’s feasible people will go through 20 kegs of Guinness,” he said.
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