By Dave Lord

FURIOUS MUSIC lovers have slammed Perth Concert Hall for its “shambolic” handling of ticket sales ahead of this summer’s T in the Park music festival.

Thousands of fans descended on the venue on Friday night—up to 14 hours before 650 tickets were due to be sold. But many were left disappointed as a “massive crush” just before they went on sale saw an orderly queue reduced to chaos.

Last night Helen Robson (44) of Perth branded the stewarding a “farce”. She set up camp complete with sleeping bags and vacuum flasks at around 9pm on Friday night—and was close to the front of the queue on Saturday morning.

Then, half an hour before the doors were due to open at 9 the sudden crush left her out of position. Eventually she left upset, angry—and without the tickets she wanted.

“I cannot believe there were nocrash barriers or anything—the stewarding was just a farce,” she told The Courier. “I had been waiting with my friends all night and was sure I was in a good position to get the tickets I wanted.

“However, just after 8am there was a huge shout from towards the back of the queue and a massive surge of people. We were crushed and it was terrifying—for a time I could not breath and I just did not know what was going on.”

By the time some order was restored, Ms Robson found herself behind hundreds of other hopefuls.

“I could not believe what had happened,” she said. “Lots of people were still in their sleeping bags and lost out completely even though they had waited all night.

“The crowd was really good natured until what happened—I think it was organised by some people near the back who knew they had no chance of getting tickets as things stood. If there had at least been crash barriers it might have helped maintain some kind of order.”

Ms Robson claims to have spoken with stewards associated with the Concert Hall at the time—and was shocked by the response.

“I asked how this could have been allowed to happen and a steward said they had not known what to expect,” she claimed. “I was told to put my concerns in writing and I certainly intend to do so.”

Having waited all night in a bid to get weekend camping tickets, Ms Robson was hugely disappointed to leave with Sunday-only briefs.

“It is not at all what I wanted and if I had known I was wasting my time and I would not have bothered queuing all night,” she said.

When contacted by the police a spokeswoman said officers had monitored the crowd throughout the night but insisted the stewarding of the queue itself was down to staff from the concert hall.

Meanwhile, a spokeswoman at the hall admitted a “surge” had resulted in some people losing their place in the queue and said an investigation was under way.

Nevertheless, she maintained staff had “coped well” with the incident.

“When approached to sell the tickets by the organisers we set about putting a number of measures in place,” the spokeswoman said.

“We ensured the maximum number of box office staff were on duty. There were 10 experienced staff on hand to manage the queue including our front of house manager.

“We had also informed Tayside Police.

“There was an orderly queue established until a moment around 8.30am when a group of people ran to the front doors,” the spokeswoman continued.

“This was brought under control by our staff and police. Unfortunately, this surge caused some people to lose their place in the queue.

“Everyone in the queue got tickets, albeit not for the days they wanted due to the limited number of tickets available.”

The spokeswoman insisted that lessons would be learnt.

“We accept that a small amount of people were unruly but the situation was brought under control quickly and our staff coped well with the demand,” she said.

“We are investigating what happened just before the doors opened and we will be looking at our procedures and how we handle similar high-profile events in the future.”