Northern Ireland football fans rage as loyalty scheme fails thousands hoping for Euro 2016 tickets

If you are an Irish football fan, north or south, then you'll be anxiously scanning your emails this week.

The first batch of tickets for this summer's European Championships are being allocated, with some lucky fans already getting their hands on tickets for the Republic of Ireland or Northern Ireland’s group games this summer. However, reports are emerging this afternoon that a loyalty scheme, drawn up by the IFA to ensure hard-working fans who went to as many games as possible, home and away, has failed, and in spectacular fashion too. The points system was meant to ensure that when fans applied for tickets, those with most points out of a possible 29 would get the higher priority. However, according to the BBC, some fans, who had upwards of 27 points in the scheme, failed to get their hands on any of the 29,000 tickets the IFA has received for the tournament’s group games against Poland, Ukraine and Germany. The IFA are understood to have contacted Uefa to try and understand how some fans, who had zero points out of the possible 29, have managed to get their hands on tickets. https://twitter.com/CMcLaughlin84/status/697021114019672064 Gary McAllister from the Amalgamation of Official NI Supporters Clubs somehow managed to miss out on any group game tickets, despite claiming that he had 27 out of a possible 29 points in the scheme. He feels the system is very unfair.

"I am not glad that I haven't received a ticket, but people will know how many games I've attended.

We're hoping that no Irish fans suffer a fate like their northern cousins, as the hunt for tickets for our games this summer in France gets underway properly over the next few weeks. https://twitter.com/RBlackBT/status/697027078076690432