This has riled me for a number of reasons.
Firstly, they quietly removed the priority for ST holders when STs were announced, despite this having been a benefit for literally decades. In an employment situation, this would be illegal. It would have softened the blow if they’d communicated it and said “Due to expected demand plus previous concerns about allocation of away tickets, we will no longer give priority to ST holders, but will be announcing a new system in due course”.
Then there is the point about not announcing home and away memberships at the same time. Some people did buy home memberships thinking it would give some priority for away tickets (as it has in the past) only to realize that’s not the case. Partly their fault for not reading the T&Cs before buying, but partly on the club’s poor comms.
Next there’s the fact that all 1,000 will almost certainly be taken up by ST holders. All this does is effectively introduce another strata of ST holder, and nothing to address the most complained about problem of regular away travellers who are non-ST holders.
Finally, there’s the blanket price. £30 for a single person is ok. £120 for a family of four is shit. I have STs with my stepdaughter (U18) and son-in-law. She doesn’t make many away games owing to work commitments but does come when she can. It’s probably not worth paying £30 on top of her £99 ST for the few games she can make.
The response on Twitter has been almost universally negative and, frankly, the club deserve every kicking they get over this.
Oh, and don’t get me started on the ‘major restructuring’ at the club, where two people have been given fancier titles and a key member of staff is working their notice…
