Extreme
Queuing
10/03/04 | by Carl Blackborow
What did you do on Friday night? Jolly into Nottingham for a night out to get plastered? Few pints down the local pub with your mates whilst playing darts? Quiet night in, feet up, in front of the telly? Spend an enchanting evening with your loved one, naked bodies curled together like a packet of Quavers as you bask content in the arms of a dusky maiden?
Or did you queue round the block in hope of getting a ticket for the biggest game of the season whilst freezing your toes off (not too mention other parts of your body) and try to get comfortable in a sleeping bag on the floor of the City Ground car park?
I imagine many of you nodding solemnly at your screens, reflecting on the harsh climate that Mother Nature threw our way. At least it didn’t rain. At least I got a bloody ticket!
A little after midnight, the four of us arrived, with a good 50 or so people there already, loyally waiting with tents, deck chairs and garden furniture for the 8:15am opening time. We realised that we perhaps should have worn more than a coat over our Forest replicas when we saw one man with a camping stove and sausages as we turned the corner into the car park.
The queue, considering it was only just after midnight, was healthy. An eight hour wait stretching before
us and it dawned slowly on our thick skulls that this wasn’t going to be the fun-packed adventure of Forest fans rejoicing in the spirit of the event of Extreme Queuing we had first imagined.
The bloke on our left was from Glapwell - not too far really. He started work at 9:00. I didn’t dare ask where, I felt so guilty that I was ahead of him in the queue. A quick glance to our right saw two women setting up a tent, clambering in and not being seen again until around 6:30. My guilt vanished quicker than you can say Lord Lucan as I envisaged their comfort and warmth.
As the night stretched itself out over a period of three weeks, more and more people joined the queue. By 4am, it stretched all the way around the car park and was beginning to spill onto the road outside the club shop and stretch all around to Trent Bridge, and towards McDonalds.
The promise of a game of football never appeared - the stewards saw to that by parking two cars strategically in the car park. One at each end so there wasn’t the room for the talented Forest boys to splay 60 yard passes to each other.
A bit of a buzz had generated by the time 8:00 hit - the knowledge that, for us, the wait would be over by 8:30. For many of the others though, the wait would go on, but at least they would be happier in the knowledge that the tickets would be placed safely in their hands soon enough.
But tickets for the game at Derby in a little over a week’s time are not unlimited and many fans went home disappointed. It’s my bet that there was some Forest fans in the queue who were left empty handed that have been to all the games this season, home and away. If they were angry, then they have every right to be.
I cannot claim to have been to every game. I missed Reading, Tranmere in the Carboot Cup, Norwich and now Gillingham, just because the sheer effort of queuing all night to get those tickets deprived our crew of energy and motivation.
But I don’t think that we have done too badly all in all. There will be some people in the queue who haven’t been able get to all of the games, but do when they can, which is great, but it isn’t only the likes of Manchester United and Arsenal who attract the ‘Glory Boys’.
Some people there will have eagerly snatched away tickets, and it will be the first time they have travelled away all season. All the way to
Derby - bloody hell, don’t overdo it!
The point is that Forest fans have shown loyalty to the club in magnificent voice and numbers away from home throughout this nightmare season. For the club to release the tickets to an average Joe with a voucher makes me angry. There will be many loyal Trickies listening to Fletch and Burns on March
20, when they deserve to be at the Prideless Park built from Mecanno.
Everything the club has thrown at the fans this season; we have swallowed it and carried on supporting them through thin and thinner. It’s about time the club recognised this and showed the same loyalty to the fans that we show to them.
For God’s sake, sign the letter to Mark Arthur, and we might see some sense reign in Nottingham, instead of a first-come-first-served basis that undermines many of the true fans.
Comments to: carloscaminos@hotmail.com