A crowd of Millwall fans who queued yesterday at The Den for tickets against Gillingham say they feel “cheated” after many came away empty handed.
A smaller-than-usual allocation of tickets was enforced by Kent Police for the game on May 8. But those who queued from 8am say tickets should be reserved for the “old fashioned” supporters.
Season-ticket-holder Terence King, 72, said: “This morning I made a big effort to go down there and get tickets, and there was at least 50 people queueing.
“I’m not computer literate, and I can’t buy my tickets online. I’m old fashioned, and I like to queue, so I always go down early with the crowd.
“This time, I swear, they went on sale at 9.30am, and after a couple of minutes they had put a sign up saying there was none left.
“There are loads of fans who are my age who can’t use a computer to buy tickets, so what about us? Why should we be disadvantaged?
“It’s embarrassing for me to say it but I don’t think someone should be able to beat us in the queue just by going ‘tap, tap, tap’ on a keyboard and ordering loads at once.”
Terence, who has been a season-ticket holder for 27 years, added that he thought tickets should be “held back” for the old fans, so they still have a fighting chance.
“Millwall means so much to me, but this isn’t fair,” the retired cab driver said.
Another disgruntled season-ticket holder, Barry Fitzsimmons, of Lee in Lewisham, thought about 100 had turned up to queue.
He said: “I was there at 8.30am and was about 30 people back in the queue when it opened at 9.30am. By the time I was a few away from the ticket office they started turning people away.
“It wasn’t like this back in the day,” the 57-year-old fan said, “I tried to talk to the manageress about what had happened and she didn’t tell me anything.”
A spokesman for Millwall responded with following: Millwall will be reviewing its ticketing policy ahead of potential involvement in the League One play-offs in May.
The Lions were allocated 1,159 tickets based on a decision taken by Kent police, leaving many supporters disappointed.
The club say they pushed for a higher allocation but neither the club, nor Gillingham, have the final say over the number of away tickets made available.
The club was allocated 1,860 tickets for their recent fixture at Coventry but the club say they could have sold double that number.
There was a high demand for tickets for the Gillingham game, which could have a huge bearing on both clubs’ promotion fates.