Richard Whelan, one of the two Irish lads who snuck into the Super Bowl and earnt himself overnight infamy has been making the rounds on the radio this morning, speaking to Anton Savage of Today FM, where he recounted his tale.
I'm still trying to figure it out (how I got in) myself I guess, it's like all the stars aligned perfectly and everything just went our way for the 30 minutes when we got out of the taxi outside the stadium until we got inside the stadium, I was pretty confident when I got over of getting a ticket but prices just kept going up and up and up.
Last year when I went to the Super Bowl in New York, I'm a big Seahawks fan, I managed to get a ticket for $1,500 and that was in the back row of the stadium in New York but this year ticket prices were insane, they were up at like $7,000-$8,000 for the cheapest seats in the house. I couldn't afford to get a ticket so the next best thing was to actually try to get into the stadium without a ticket.
The lads had been perched in a bar before deciding to give it a go.
We had given up hope at one stage, we were at a bar in Scottsdale and we were going to be watching the game in a bar, this was half an hour before the game, and we just didn't feel comfortable coming all this way and not even trying to go to the game. So we said just, listen, lets just get a taxi out and make it happen.
We arrived there, the first time we tried to get it we got turned away as you can imagine, then we went up to the security guards and asked what the best way to sneak in was, we said it kind of jokingly, and they just thought it was hilarious. They had bands saying 'no stadium access'. They said if you're going to try, go to the second tent on the left there, there's only one security woman and they're winding up, everyone was pretty much in the stadium. The only girl in the tent was packing stuff up, wasn't paying attention,we were blessed. We went straight by the metal detectors she was working on.
Our game plan was to act super confident and if we act like we belong here then they'll think we're meant to be here too. After we got through the tent we saw a big group of first aid workers, maybe 100m from the stadium, who were going in late, we kind of snuck in behind them. They were getting check by security and we saw an opening, there was a guy there on a door on the phone and he was a bit lax as well, so we just went for it and we just walked straight thru, and he didn't ask for a ticket so we went in and just kept walking.
So far so good, but the lads still had to find a seat.
We watched most of the first quarter from the concessions, you could see the pitch from there and you could see the screens, we spent the first quarter in the upper tier as we didn't want to risk going into a section and someone asking us for a ticket then.
What we did is we kind of looked through the sections and figured out where was the most lax and kind of, when people were walking by, who was not checking tickets and there was just one section where the guard wasn't really paying attention and if you were carrying two things in your hand like food and drink, she wasn't asking for your ticket, we just went straight into that section.
We ended up being in the section with all Patriots' family and fans and it was their main section and so for the next quarter we were playing musical chairs, just taking people's seats as they were going upstairs (for food/drink).
Savage, like the rest of the nation is suitably impressed by the lads achievements and even had to ask if he heard right when Whelan said Patriots family.
Yeah, we ended up sitting beside Lawyer Molloy who is a Super Bowl champion, he's one of the best safeties of all time, and he was sitting behind us, we told him we had no tickets and he thought it was hilarious, he had his Super Bowl ring on and was telling us all the stories, the inside scoop from the organisation so not only did we get some of the best seats in the house, we also got a play by play from one of the best players of all time.
And then the story gets even better, Savage asks how much the seats were worth and what happened when the owners returned.
The cheapest tickets were going for $8,000-9,000, the ones we were in were going for $25,000 each, we got pretty lucky,
We only got into the seats when they left so a guy we met from Boston, a Patriots fan, he was cool, and when we were moving around he was one of the guys we said to we didn't have tickets, he came up to us at half time and said these girls had to go for stage (to perform in the half time show), they're getting upgraded to a VIP box and they're not coming back to their seats, you can take these seats, the girls won't be coming back.
We're not jealous at all.
Picture via Cahir News
