World Cup Volcano

AT last another blog from me! Ive been lying dormant like the icelandic volcano, watching the World Cup from afar, watching with disinterest at first as Vuvuzelas flattened the atmosphere of most opening group games, whilst players on the pitch became as flat as the wasp like irritant sound blowing out the end of those fucking trumpets. Add to that the worst England games seen in a long time (and theres been a few) and a fly away football usually bought from the likes of Thompson Road garage and things did not look all too good in the World cup house.

And then all of a sudden, like my musings and the volcanic ash, the first African World Cup has spewed out a plethora of action, drama and positive chaos! England get their fingers out their arses and show a bit of graft and guile (though we will do well not to get too carried away just yet) Ghana show the rest of the African nations the way ahead into the knockout stages, the football has improved a hell of alot and those fucking trumpets are finally being sounded out, most notably by the English with awe inspiring chorusses of 'Rule Britannia' reverberating off the stadium in Port Elizabeth.

Part of my angst towards the WC was the fact that I had tickets to go. One of the games was yesterday afternoon's England/Slovenia game. However due to the missus' illness we were unable to attend. FIFA in their wisdom adopted a new ticketing policy in which the tickets have to be collected over in the rainbow nation itself and at first I was told that seen as I had ticked the terms and conditions box when applying all those months ago, then I didn't have a Vuvuzela to stand on! Madness! No refunds, until it emerged that the FIFA refund ticket policy was introduced in which fans who had bought tickets could return them via this ticket transfer scheme, as long as there was demand for the games. I had no problem there with Brazil, Argentina and England amongst the games I had tickets for. The only stumbling block came when the facility to 'view my application' to then click on ticket transfer scheme had been cunningly removed from their website. Hence how the fuck do you transfer tickets now?

Needless to say no emails were returned from my enquiries and now the matter has been passed to my local MP to try and resolve, to which the odds do not look good, talk about David versus Goliath. I am trying to take on a football dictatorship here, I'd have more chance of winning if I went to war with North Korea.

The biggest victory in football, bar Sunderland winning the Champions League or England winning the world cup, will be when Sepp Blatter and his gallic cronies are ousted from FIFA - either that or the fans set up their own organisation a la the own fan clubs at Manchester and Wimbledon.

For now I sit back to see any further eruptions on the biggest stage in football.