CELTIC are angry at the news from the SFA that they are to receive almost 700 tickets LESS than Aberdeen for this Scottish Cup Final at the end of the month, despite the huge empty spaces at Hampden in the Aberdeen end in their semi-final win over Hibs.
This means that there will be FEWER Celtic fans at the Scottish Cup Final than were at any of the Champions’ three previous visits to the national stadium this season.
Celtic defeated Sevco Rangers 1-0 in the semi-final of the Betfred Cup last October and Celtic supporters occupied 50% of the stadium. The same was the case two weeks ago when the Champions beat the Ibrox club 2-0, again with the tickets split 50-50% between the clubs.
In November’s Betfred Cup Final, where Celtic beat Aberdeen 3-0, Celtic supporters had 50% of the ground with many ticketless supporters watching on television frustrated at the sight of a huge empty section behind the goal in the Aberdeen end.
CQN has already called for the SFA to sell this section first to Dons fans and make their way round to the middle to meet the Celtic support at the half way line. If Aberdeen can sell their 50% allocation all is well and good. If not then the last section can be allocated to Celtic supporters to ensure that the Scottish Cup Final is a complete sell-out.
Now there will be guys who have been to Aberdeen once and heading back up there shortly, Inverness and Dingwall twice and basically all over the country supporting Celtic, worried that they will not get a ticket for the Scottish Cup Final.
That was probably the case anyway before this morning’s bombshell from the SFA.
Celtic broke the news by issuing a Statement on the club’s official website. Remember, the club has to be pretty mad to release a statement like this!
Here is what Celtic have stated:
SCOTTISH CUP FINAL TICKET ALLOCATION
Celtic Football Club has been informed by the Scottish Football Association that it will potentially receive almost 700 tickets less than Aberdeen FC for this year’s Scottish Cup Final at Hampden Stadium.
We have attempted to secure more tickets for the match. Through discussions with the SFA, Celtic has made every effort to ensure a 50-50 split, however, we are disappointed that this has not been achieved.
During this week’s Operations meeting at Hampden The Club put forward a number of proposals in order to maximise the ticket allocation for our fans.
These included:
a review of segregation arrangements
reconfiguration of the Upper South Stand;
the creation of a neutral area to best accommodate supporters through the ‘football family’
However, these positive suggestions have not been accepted and this will mean a number of our supporters who have supported the tournament and indeed attended matches in the earlier rounds including the Semi Final will miss out on the Cup Final as a result of this reduction.
A spokesperson for Celtic commented:
“Clearly we are very disappointed that our attempts to ensure an equitable allocation of tickets have been unsuccessful, however, our supporters should be aware that we have tried everything to ensure that this could be achieved”.
“With Celtic supporters attending matches at Hampden in such huge numbers across this season, an equal split in allocations is the least that we would have expected for such a prestigious and important match.”
The initial split of tickets means we will receive slightly less tickets than we did for the recent Semi Final tie. As it is a Cup Final there are a number of contractual rights which the Club is tied to and these have to be fulfilled which naturally impacts on wider availability. We understand the significance of the match and this has again intensified demand for tickets and it is clear that we simply will not have anywhere near enough to accommodate the demand we are currently experiencing.
