City snub members

Cardiff City have just announced the ticket priority scheme for the 3rd Round FA Cup tie against Tottenham in January. Unbelievably, after Ambassadors(sic) and season-ticket holders have taken their allocation, those who attend Saturday's game with Ipswich have the next chance.

Then why have I paid £20 for membership ? Is there no advantage to becoming a member other than the "privilege" of spending lots of money to go to away games ? Is there really nothing else apart from an ID card?

I live 200 miles away. Still, I sometimes make it to home games, but as it happens, this Saturday is one occasion when I can't get there. So that's it. My membership counts for nothing, and some taxi driver who hasn't been to Ninian since they sold Toshack can take my place at the Spurs game.

I'd have been better off if we'd been drawn away. As a member, I would have had priority for an away game. . They should call it an away travel club instead of conning their own loyal supporters like this.

This stinks. The club has a history of making up absurd qualifying factors for ticket purchasing and this is one of them. Who has ever heard of a club where members can't buy tickets? Bastards.

As a postscript, I've now bought 2 tickets for a game on Saturday that I can't get to. In 1994 I had to do the same thing for an FA Cup tie against Luton. We played Wrexham the week before and I bought a ticket for that game to receive my FA Cup voucher, even though I was working that day. But City made things worse. It wasn't enough to just buy a ticket, or even present your ticket on the day of the Wrexham game. You physically had to go through the turnstile to receive your voucher.

All of which meant that I had to leave work, walk through a turnstile, and turn round again. But then, and you're not going to believe this...they wouldn't let me out! It took them 20 minutes to find a chief steward with the authority to open the gates.

Let's hope this isn't a pre-requisite for Saturday's game. There's no way I'm driving down from North Wales just to walk through a turnstile. What's that ? Give my tickets away and receive the vouchers? Nope, they're non transferrable. It says on the back.

But you see what I mean ? You wouldn't get a woman going through all this to get a ticket. But there'll be thousands of them at the FA Cup game, spoiling things for the rest of us. Though I'll put up with all of this, just in case we see anything like Peter Sayer's long distance strike from 1977. Was it really 29 years ago that he graced the MOTD titles for a season?