Tickets easy at West Ham and Brighton but St James’ Park a different story | OneFootball

Arsenal game coming up next weekend and as Newcastle United fans it is our first success in the ballot.

Not our first game of the season thanks to good mates pulling out all the stops and getting us into the Liverpool game.

Looking forward to next weekend but once tickets are bagged it’s on to the next one.

Last year I got membership for us at Brighton, which was free (but now has to be paid for I am told). We managed to get tickets with my mate from Worksop who has a young lad and goes to Brighton home games in the family area. Come mid-October myself and my young teenage son will be in the Brighton end, sitting on our hands having paid more than ninety quid for the privilege.

How much longer can football clubs keep pushing the prices before the game is no longer the people’s game, the working class sport that it once was?

And so with one eye on the fixture list and in this new world order of having very little chance of an away ticket with the Newcastle United fans, I have turned my attention to West Ham and their dysfunctional carbuncle of a stadium.

Newcastle tickets not on sale yet but a quick look at their website and their home game against Brentford. Adult tickets available for thirty five quid while under eighteens can get a ticket for a pound. No doubt the pricing will have changed when Newcastle United come to town.

Ironically, as I write this I am listening to a hardcore Hammers fan on Radio 5’s Monday Night Club. His big gripe being so many original West Ham supporters have given up their tickets in protest at the clubs mis-management. Surrounded by tourists with half and half scarfs he refers to himself as the legacy fan from Upton Park.

I went to West Ham a season ago to watch Newcastle and had a ticket easily purchased. A bit like paying in at the turnstile but in advance, no checks or membership required. I was in the main West Ham end, their equivalent I would say of the Gallowgate corner.

I moved to London some thirty five years ago but still possess that council estate Geordie accent. You can fill in the picture of how I conducted myself at the game. I didn’t take my son back then for obvious reasons but will this time round.

Looking at the fixture list, it appears that this will be the last away game we get to until the last game of the season when we play Fulham at Craven Cottage. Hopefully we will get tickets thanks to my Fulham season ticket holder friend Dave and his lad Albert and have a few beers near Archbishops Park.

There is of course the cup competitions which could throw up a game that we can get to (in the Millwall end anyone?) but that is relying on fate. Pretty much like the ballot really.