Crying foul…

CHRIS BENNETT has been looking at the ticket buying process for the coming Soccer Beano.

I HAVE recently had a request for help from two young friends keen on seeing one of the great football matches to be played as part of our country’s involvement in the 2010 FIFA World Cup. Nothing startling there, one would have thought.

Before me is an Official Ticket Application Form. It is a 16-page A4 sized glossy brochure, the cost of which cannot have been inconsiderable, as it was doubtless distributed around the globe.

The ‘fine print’ at the end of this brochure takes up two pages of, well, fine print. I haven’t managed to trawl through it all yet, and doubtless never will, but it strikes me as being a bit over the top for the local people. It is not so much that they cannot read and write as that they should not be expected to cope with bureaucratic claptrap at this level.

The little blocks provided for the personal information of each applicant (you are required to apply to be included in a draw for a ticket, but there is no guarantee you’ll get one) are small and require a good level of careful printing. I, for one, would be a bit hard pressed to do this.

What I cannot understand is why was this whole ticket business has not been approached from an African perspective? We are dealing here with people who are passionate about soccer but whose daily existence is a battle for food and, in some cases, water. These folk do not operate at the email address/credit card level of life. Surely something simpler could have been devised. I wonder how many will simply give up and watch the game on TV.

This elaborate brochure is introduced on page two with a few words of welcome from the eminent gentlemen at the top of the gigantic FIFA pile, Jérôme Valcke, the FIFA Secretary General, and Danny Jordaan, the Local Organising Committee CEO.

The blurb between these two messages, headed South Africa welcomes the World, is a puzzlement. After the first sentence comes this string of words, “Between the 11^th June and the 11^th July 2010, 32 national football teams will participate in this match festival of football in their bid 10 venues culminating in the Final on the 11^th July 2010 at the Soccer city Stadium in Johannesburg, where the World Champions will be crowned in front of a crowd of over 80 000 spectators.”

Pardon ?

This makes no sense whatever. I am surprised, to say the least, that someone, somewhere along the production line of this extravagant document didn’t bother to call in a proof reader to put an eye over things. All the time, effort and money that must have gone into what, at first glance, looks like a professional job, have been dashed on the rocks of slapdash and careless work.

It is devoutly to be wished that this attitude is not allowed to creep in to other aspects of what will, surely, be the most spectacular and the most expensive (especially to the host) sporting event on this continent since the gladiator tournaments in North Africa some 2 000 years ago.

CB

5/2/10