Tickets arrangements for next weekends Tipperary Co Hurling Championships 1st Rounds

First of all thanks to all the club secretaries from the football games last weekend for their co-operation and for working with us to ensure we all have a better understanding of the new ticket administration system. In fact some came up with some great suggestions for improvements and we have taken these on board with some of the advice to clubs below. Also I want to acknowledge the great efforts of all the hosting clubs as our Co Designated Officers were full of praise for the high standards of compliance at all our venues last weekend. I think we are now better equipped to take on the additional challenge of 24 games in the hurling championships next weekend.

Unfortunately our worst fears were realised last week when the government postponed the increase of capacity to 500 which means its a roll-over of last weekends arrangements and this creates major headaches for all of us with capacity again confined to 200. Just to remind you that this figure of 200 includes all present at the ground, including staff, volunteers, players, backroom staff, media, contractors, and spectators of all ages.

Therefore the following are the arrangements for next weekend;

Weekend commencing July 25th( Hurling) with 200 attendance restriction

Allocation of 40 complimentary tickets per club for players and backroom. These tickets were emailed to participating clubs today.

Allocation of 30 for sale to club members. The link for these will be emailed to all participating Club Secretaries this Tues morning.

Allocation of 40 Season Ticket/Passes per match. An email will be sent to all holders on Tues night/Wed morn advising of a time to apply for these.

Balance of 20 for Co Board for Media/Stewards/Co Selectors etc etc.

Process for Clubs to deal with Tickets

For the 40 Complimentary Tickets the Club Secretaries are requested to Print/Download these tickets but do not distribute them to the individual players and backroom. Following last weekend our gate checkers have advised us that scanning 40 tickets off a phone can be a slow process. Also printing off 40 x A4 pages is not a most desired option so we suggest before printing that these tickets be copied and pasted with three per A4 page. On entry to the game the club secretary will hand these 40 passes to the Co Board Designated Official at the venue with a copy of your team list containing the 24 players and 5 backroom as per regulations but also add in on this copy the additional 11 names. This covers the players and backroom for traceability on the day.

For Club Sales of the allocated 30 tickets some club secretaries came up with some very acceptable ways to overcome the difficulties with personal bank cards. Once the secretary has gathered up all the requests from the club supporters they need only use one bank card to purchase the full order of tickets (similar to the juvenile groups with Munster Co and Coke Park). The owner can be refunded with a club cheque and the ticket proceeds lodged to the club account. Its important to remember when printing that the ticket prices vary from the Senior and O Riain games at Adult €10, Student/OAP €8 and juvenile (€1) and the Intermediate at the lower prices of Adult €8, OAP/Student €5 and Juvenile €1.

Once the tickets order is complete the ticket can be printed or downloaded and emailed to the customer. Whilst we warned last week against Club secretaries sharing the link for sales some were happy enough to do this and still maintain control of the clubs distribution. For traceability it is acceptable that a club secretary has a record of all who purchased each ticket in the event of any issues arising.

Season Tickets/Passes

The county has over 1,600 passes between Croke Park Club Plus, Co Board Season Tickets (€120) and Co Board Concessionary Passes (€25). Most of these have already registered their details on the system and have received their barcode which enables them to go on-line and apply for a permit to attend their chosen game(s). We cannot guarantee availability as these will be on a first come first served basis. We are not yet in a position to devise a system to separate each clubs pass holders and give them priority booking for their own clubs fixture as we need to do a cross check to eliminate dublicate registrations. Also we are not yet ready to offer streaming packages for season tickets or weekend streaming packages for the general public but we will give it serious consideration next week once we get the streaming successfully up and running this weekend.

In conclusion I hope our clubs and supporters will continue to co-operate with us during these very challenging times for everyone. Spectators should be aware that all the risks posed from Covid-19 cannot be eliminated, including attending GAA games but that essential control measures have been put in place to reduce risks for members. We must endeavour to take a practical, responsible and common sense approach to managing risk whilst observing regulations.

Please continue to stay safe.

Is mise

Tadhg De Flóid

Rúnaí Choiste Chontae

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