As I have said previously I don’t think that the £15 ticket price will have a great impact on the Welling support  -  though obviously a tenner would have been nice.  What interests me about the report is the fact that Huddersfield have broken ranks, and the official silence, on the price determination negotiations.  Why?

I would suggest that it may well have something to do with the flack they have taken from their own supporters on the £15 ticket price, the fact that Bradford just down the road negotiated a £10 ticket price with Tranmere and perhaps an advance ticket sale figure which is unexpectedly low.  It’s surely a ‘Don’t blame us guys’ scenario.  If they had had really strong feelings surely they would not have agreed a price with Welling and the FA would then presumably have had to step in to arbitrate or declare a price.

Whatever the prompt to issue the statement was, there is no doubt that we come out as the villains of the piece, not only with the now buoyed up Huddersfield supporters but potentially with our own supporters who may feel that they are being exploited by the Club.  Overall not an enviable position to be in and it will be interesting to see if/how the Club respond to what I’m sure they will see, quite reasonably, as a breach in the confidentiality of ticket pricing negotiations into which they are forced by the FA.

I still need to be convinced that the promoters of the competition, the FA, should not be charged with determining the ticket price for each stage of the competition.  We enter their competition with their rules, their determined reward for the winners in each round and last but not least we need  their consent to the negotiated ticket prices.  Personally I would see a fair price at this stage of the competition being the average match price for a Conference game, which from my research this afternoon would have resulted in a ticket price of £12 this year.

Kettering v Stevenage looks to be one of, if not the bargain tie of the round with it's £8-50 ticket price.