There's been a whole lot of confusion about ticketing in the knockout stages of the Euros. The vast majority of Irish fans in France have run out of money and decided to come home, while others in Ireland are looking on enviously and have decided to head to Lyon for Sunday.
For whatever reason, there are people going home who had tickets, and others still in France who didn't.
So the question that a lot of fans are asking is - can I collect someone else's tickets without them being there?
Yes, yes you can. Here's how you do it, via the brilliant you boys in green forum:
I managed to pick up tickets on behalf of a fellow Irish fan. It may have helped that we used the same fancode when applying and thus were seated together for the games so far.
It appears you can only pickup at your country's pickup point. Ours is at Stade Gerland "the old Lyon stadium" on the metro.
Upon exiting the metro you can choose to follow signs with the Irish tricolour or French one to 2 different locations.
Picking up your own tickets is easy hand in the voucher show your id sign something and they print off your tickets there and then. We are in the yellow section. I also used my passport card whereas the id used to purchase them was my actual passport. They did not check the id number. My name, DOB etc all matched.
Now the tricky bit. I had a photocopy of my friend's passport along with a signed note authorising me to pickup his tickets. They still needed him (or me) to email the scan of the passport to the manager. She is behind the scenes and makes all the decisions. Her email (and I checked with the front desk guy and it is ok to pass this on) is [email protected]
Ideally send a scan of your passport to Sofie saying I, Mary Murphy authorise Paddy O'Brien to collect my tickets. Best to use the email used to purchase them.
I had to provide that for my friend and in the end guessed it was the one I use to contact him and it seemed to be ok.
They very kindly gave me the wifi password to organise it while there.
There were loads of staff with about ten pickup places. I saw other fans exit and arrive but was the only one there in the time it took me to collect maybe 30 minutes. FAI staff were also behind the scenes but that was probably on another matter.
If collecting on matchday I'd advise go very early.
So there you go. Picking up your friend's tickets for the boys in green.
Sorry.
Check out the YBIG forum for more information
Photo by Stephen McCarthy/Sportsfile