Grand final ticketing fiasco doesn't make top-tier Pies fans whingeing about low-quality seats okay

Let’s get this out of the way first: it’s my belief that, just because you pay inordinate sums of money to your football club to guarantee a grand final seat doesn’t give you the right to complain when that seat isn’t the best.

Sadly, the attitude permeating out of many of the thousands of furious social media posts from Collingwood supporters in the wake of Ticketek’s latest bungled roll-out of tickets for a big event has been outrage from the highest tiers of membership that their seats are far below the quality expected for the sum of money they pay as part of their yearly club fee.

Any of the thousands who missed out on a ticket because of the ‘standing room’ box-check fiasco, or because the AFL decides to allocate just 34,000 grand final seats to supporters from the two competing clubs, or just because the cost is far too exorbitant, have my undying sympathy.

The system sucks, and it’s going to keep sucking forever, and there’s not much us lowly fans can do about it.

But I’ve got no sympathy at all for stories like the one below sent in to 3AW’s Jacqui Felgate, which reads:

“My brother is a Priority 1 Collingwood member, also guaranteed a seat but is on level 4 at the very back. A friend is a Priority 3 member and has a seat on level 2.”

Or this one (language warning):

Or some of these:

With 106,000-plus Collingwood members, nearly all of them clamouring for just 17,000 tickets on Saturday, why not just feel lucky to be at the game at all, rather than moaning about being a little bit farther away than you’d hoped to be, or needing to stand, for the most in-demand sporting event of the year?

Especially when, crunching the numbers, a little under 90,000 of your fellow Magpies diehards are going to have to hustle to find grand final tickets some other way, or just not go at all?

There’s an elitist feel to a lot of these complaints, that people who pay quite frankly ridiculous sums of money to their clubs are somehow not just entitled a better chance at grand final tickets than the regular hoi polloi who either can’t or won’t fork out the same amount, but should get the choicest seats in a balloting system designed to be pot luck, unbiased, and fair for all.

Have a go at the AFL for only allocating 17,000 tickets for the biggest club in the land on the biggest stage of all, but why begrudge someone else a great or even just slightly better seat that they had no control over receiving?

Collingwood fans celebrate. (Photo by Dylan Burns/AFL Photos via Getty Images)

Personally, the only grand final I’ve ever been to live was, of course, the 2016 decider. My sister and I went into the Western Bulldogs ballot as a package deal, so we’d either both get tickets or neither would.

We got standing room seats in a decent spot on the wing, some minor restricted viewing when the ball went higher than the stand we were beneath, and we were absolutely thrilled to get them.

It should come as no surprise to any supporter of a team who has seen them claim a championship in the flesh that that day is one of the highlights of my life. Regardless of having to stand to witness it, I wouldn’t trade that experience for anything in the world.

Is $1000 for what turns out to be a standing room ticket to a grand final too much money? Bloody oath it is. You wouldn’t catch me paying that.

But it seems to me that that’s the drawback of barracking for the most heavily-supported team in Victoria, if not Australia. You get to walk around with a sense of superiority all the time, look down on rival teams with half the fans, and never get spoken about as a potential relocation to Tasmania target by the AFL, but you’ll also find the queue longer and demand higher for the biggest matches.

It’s the universe evening itself out – and it seems even Collingwood supporters are in full agreement with me on this.

So if you paid that level of money and are going to have to stand on Saturday, just remember that this is the system working exactly as intended.

You got your ticket to the game – many people didn’t. You have the chance to either experience your team claim glory live and in person, a memory that will remain with you forever, or (and I speak for the rest of Victoria in really, really hoping this happens) stand witness to your team blowing it in brutal fashion on the biggest stage for the eight thousandth time in the last 60 years.

Any attempt to allocate tickets in order of membership value wouldn’t just be a grossly elitist move, even by the AFL’s standards; but also be the first step towards pricing out an entire legion of fans from going to games, which in turn hurts everyone.

If this comes through, then clubs, especially bigger clubs, can basically charge whatever they want for those top membership tiers, and people will be compelled to pay.

To be clear, I’m not having a go at all about the top-tier Magpies members who missed out on a ticket – at the very, very least, the amount they’re paying should guarantee them into the MCG, and anything that’s fallen through the queue there is a disgrace.

But I imagine there would be thousands, and maybe even tens of thousands, of Collingwood supporters out there who would give anything to get the worst seat in the MCG for the grand final, or to have to stand with the view half-blocked by a giant concrete pylon, just to be there to cheer on their beloved Magpies.

Knowing that just makes the complaints of those lucky enough to still be going all the more distasteful.