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The upcomng Georgia game reminded me of a mildly bizarre episode involving the home tie. My group had four tickets but my daughter couldn’t make it because of work and my pal Colin’s group from Fife had eight tickets but two of them couldn’t make it because they had returned from a recent trip to Thailand with a tropical disease (well they’re claiming it was tropical but I’m not so sure). So we had three spare tickets between us, but as you know this game was not exactly an instant sell out. Fans were very unhappy at the price of the tickets and the fact that we had to give up Hampden to the commonwealth games.

So am sitting in the house on the Monday before the game and there’s a knock at the door. I answer it to find a guy on my doorstep, suited up, clipboard and some leaflets in hand. Obviously a door to door salesman.

As soon as I open the door he takes a deep breath and is about to launch into his pitch but I beat him to it, “Dae ye want tae buy a ticket for the Georgia game.”

He’s a bit taken aback but quickly recovers, “Eh, aye. Ye don’t have two dae ye?”

“Ah’ve got three.”

“Ah only need two. How much?”

“Face value.”

“Awright. Ah’ve nae money on me.”

We got chatting and it turned out he lived quite near my work so we met couple of days later and I sold him my ticket and my daughters and I sat with the guys from Fife, which meant that the salesman and his mate would be sitting with my son and his girfriend. After the game I said to my son, “So how was the salesman, did ye talk to him.”

“He never showed up,” he said. “The seats were empty.”

He was some salesman, I don’t even know what he was selling but he gave me sixty four quid not to go to the game. I think we might both be in the wrong business.

Alan Nelson

First posted on Facebook July 30th, 2015