Destined for k-town?

The word quickly passed around the Australian fans that extra tickets to the Australia Italy round of 16 game in Kaiserslautern would go on sale at 10am today. Hower the ticket sale location in Stuttgart was not to be revealed until 9am on the FFA Travel website.

Well into Friday night little else was on our minds except how to get the jump on the rest of the crowd and get to the front of the line. Groups of fans laid plans-Where to get internet? Is it close to a transport? Some even scoped out potential sales locations such as hotels and conference centres for clues. Everyone was asking where are the FFA staff staying? Could it be there?

It had the amazing race written all over it. This was the middle of reality TV, except there was no cameras, producers or directors prompting the action.

Pete had his Blackberry so our plan was to station ourselves at the cab rank outside the main station and as a back up to the sometimes unreliable wireless service I would be inside at an internet kiosk. As soon as we knew the location we´d be in a cab with an offer of a big tip to the driver to get us there fast.

The FFA were doing the best to make this as fair as possible knowing that many would miss out. We knew that some would get the inside run on the location. We just hoped, somehow, it would be us.

None of us slept very well. I was certain that there was something we hadn´t considered, hadn´t thought about; something that would give us an adavantage, fair or otherwise, that in hindsight would be obvious. Sometimes it is a blurry line between fair and unfair.

We met at 8am and walked to our local station to catch the underground to the main station. As we arrived at the platform we recieved a txt- Maritim hotel. Trusting it was reliable we rushed back up stairs and as cooly as possible asked our hotel to call us a taxi.

We arrived at the Maritm and was ecstatic to find about 100 people in line but would not be satisfied until we had the tickets in our hand. It was only twenty past eight but people kept arriving, on foot and by taxi. Some tried to cut in but were quickly disuaded by a jeering crowd.

Some first hand witnesses said that the FFA website, not the FFA Travel website had the hotel location online much earlier than it was supposed to and word went around the Internet Cafe about the location and then spread from there.

As 9am approached the stream of people arriving grew. At times a train arrival at a nearby station saw a crowd of tens sprinting for the back of the line. The media appeared. How would they cover this story? The joy of those who had tickets? The dissapointment and anger of those who missed out? Or where things went wrong? Those of us there were fairly cheery as we were confident of getting tickets. But we felt for those now arriving, many of whom would have found out from the web site, and might miss out.

The five of us will be at the game and for that we are grateful and ecstatic. I have a ticket voucher in hand, Frankfurt hotel booked and plans laid to see Australia´s first round of 16 appearance. I find it hard to believe I´ll be there. Once again sporting spectator fortune has fallen my way.

But it is bittersweet. As we left for town, wanting to avoid any ugliness that might occur further down the line, we ran into a couple of mates well down the line. They had spent most of the past two weeks hanging with us sharing this world cup experience. Of all the people we should have passed the tip to these guys where the most desrving. In the heat of the moment we had forgotten them and for that we felt so, so, low. We cursed ourselves knowinf all it would have taken was a txt to them. We still don´t know wether they have tickets.