After quite a bit of mud-slinging on social media in the last few days, Leeds have finally come to a reciprocal arrangement with Huddersfield Town, and at both league matches between the clubs this season the visiting supporters will be charged £20.
The war of words began last week when it were announced that the ticket price for adult away fans would be £47, the normal price in the West Stand for a category A fixture. Almost immediately the Huddersfield fans started complaining, and to some extent they had a point. I wouldn’t have said they were the standard of opposition that merits a category A game, even if it is a local derby.
I couldn’t resist a peek at their forum, with many saying that they would boycott the game, though others wisely pointed out that we wouldn’t care that much, as the lower part of that section would then be made available to Leeds fans who would quite happily buy the tickets. And apparently that section of our stadium isn’t very good, and our club is a bit on the arrogant side.
The dog-botherers are like the Vogons from hitch-hikers Guide to the Galaxy, only happy when they’ve got something to moan about. Their Chairman Kevin Nagle was keen to get into their good books, so he took to Twitter to announce "Just so you know- We asked Leeds management to negotiate prices down for the match. They said no.”
Which came as some surprise to us, as everyone knows that we have offered every other club in the Championship the chance to come to a reciprocal deal. We will charge their away fans the same as Leeds fans have to pay to attend the corresponding fixture. A different story came from the Leeds United Supporters Trust.
They said "We have clarity from @LUFC that reciprocal pricing was offered for the Town game, as per what the club committed to this season. Our understanding is @htafc were asking Leeds to lower our prices without agreeing anything in return which was understandably refused.” So how do we reconcile these apparently contradictory statements?
One theory I’ve seen online is that Huddersfield expected Leeds to match their normal away fans' price of £25, as that is already one of the lowest away fans prices in the Championship. But Leeds insisted that any agreement would have to be for less than their normal rate to ‘get something in return’. Which Huddersfield initially refused, so the visitors’ price for the Elland Road game remained at £47.
But all of a sudden peace broke out this afternoon, and after a change of heart the two clubs shook hands on a deal that both sets of travelling supporters would only have to pay £20. There was a statement on the official Leeds United website confirming the news, but if you click on the link it now says "OOOPS!! Page not found! Errore. The page you entered does not exist”.
Though that’s not the most incomprehensible thing that has been said during this saga. That was the final sentence of this evening’s contribution from Mr. Nagle. "Extremely proud to announce we have agreed to £20 pricing with Leeds. We will always have your back, and we appreciate our neighbours at Elland Road for what we think is a good outcome. Now let’s go get three points!”
But at least everyone in Huddersfield will be happy now. Or maybe not. A couple of [presumably wealthy] fans on their forum have now said they would have paid the full £47 and that the price reduction will now make it harder for them to get tickets! You just can’t please some folk, can you?