South Sydney members robbed of thousands of NRL finals tickets after glitch

Thousands of South Sydney members have been denied tickets to the sudden-death blockbuster against the Roosters as their eastern suburbs rivals snapped up the premium seats.

Roosters fans secured premium seats to Sunday’s blockbuster while their rival fans were locked out. Picture: Cameron Spencer/Getty

An embarrassed NRL has been forced to apologise to South Sydney’s 30,000 members after a ticketing glitch denied the Rabbitohs faithful the chance to buy early tickets for Sunday’s sudden-death blockbuster against the Sydney Roosters at Allianz Stadium.

And further infuriating Souths fans is that the NRL ticketing computer error allowed potentially thousands of tickets to be snapped up by Roosters supporters after the initial release for ticketed members.

It comes as pumped-up Parramatta supporters push hard to hijack Friday night’s massive qualifying final against neighbours and rivals Penrith at BlueBet Stadium.

South Sydney members, given priority to buy tickets for the sell-out game from 10am on Monday, were hit with an electronic message stating ‘error’ when asked to type in a code to buy tickets.

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Roosters fans secured premium seats to Sunday’s blockbuster while their rival fans were locked out. Picture: Cameron Spencer/Getty

About 20 minutes later, the members received a follow-up email from the club declaring: “The code provided by the NRL in the previous email was incorrect. Please use (code redacted).”

Once the issue had been resolved, many of the premium seats had been snapped up by Roosters fans, who did not encounter the same online problems as their Rabbitohs rivals.

South Sydney CEO Blake Solly confirmed the NRL codes sent to members were incorrect. The NRL has now held back additional seats for affected Souths fans.

“The NRL called us to apologise, and confirmed they would send an apology email to all our members this afternoon,” Solly said on Monday.

“It was extremely disappointing for all our members and the club that we couldn’t buy tickets when they went on sale.

“Hopefully the delay doesn’t stop people from getting online to snap up tickets to the game.

“To their credit the NRL also said they would put additional bays on hold for Souths members who had been impacted by the error.

“I’m still really confident our passionate members will be the majority in the Stadium on Sunday.”

South Sydney players during Friday night’s loss to the Roosters. Picture: Mark Kolbe/Getty

An NRL spokesman confirmed the stuff-up and promised Souths fans would be given another chance to buy tickets.

“The error was rectified quickly and tickets made available to ticketed members,” he said.

“Additional seating holds were placed to ensure that any members affected have still been able to access members seating within the ticketed members window time frame.”

Meanwhile, Parramatta fans want to try to outnumber Panthers supporters in Friday night’s qualifying final at BlueBet Stadium.

Figures obtained by The Daily Telegraph indicate Eels members have bought 35 per cent of tickets sold.

“I can’t wait for all our Parramatta fans to get behind us,” said Eels co-skipper Clint Gutherson.

Cronulla supporters took to social media to vent their frustration at having to be moved from their regular season ticket seats in the Andrew Ettingshausen Stand at PointsBet Stadium for Saturday’s qualifying final against North Queensland.

One Sharks season-ticket holder took to social media to post: “Just a quick vent, people will have different opinions, I just bought tix to the Sharks finals game.

“Price doesn’t bother me, but I’m a season seat ticket holder, we should have access to purchase tickets in our seats. If you choose not to go, that’s okay. Pretty ordinary if you ask me.”

The NRL runs and hosts the finals, not the clubs.