Ron Hogg, Assistant Chief Constable of Durham Police, is charged with ensuring England football fans have a trouble-free and enjoyable World Cup. In the fourth of a series of special reports from Japan, he talks about the problems with the ticketing fiasco ahead of England's tense quarter final match with Brazil.
THERE have been massive problems with the ticketing situation. It means that there's a breakdown of plans that the police make on segregation. The England fans don't tend to cause problems in the ground but it does make it difficult from an operational point of view.
There are a lot of ticket touts around, so England fans are getting ripped off. For the England match against Denmark the fans were buying them from touts for about £350 - almost three times their true worth. For the Argentina match, they were being passed on for £700 to £800, which is a bit of a shame for the fans.
There's also a lot of conflicting information about the tickets. It was said yesterday that there were tickets available for the England-Brazil match at the ground so we've had them turning up there to find it wasn't true.
Another tickets twist is that the Japanese have been buying them but they don't want to sell them. Normally, when you go abroad the locals buy tickets and sell them on.
We are feeling confident from a police point of view about today's game. There was a big party atmosphere after the Denmark match and the Japanese police handled it brilliantly.
The match today is not the same as when England played Argentina and there was all the Falklands history kicking around in the background.
I think today will just be a massive party.
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