Oasis reunion: I missed out on the presale ballot, now I'm praying my wifi holds out and I land a ticket for Croke Park

As of Friday night I am in the latter camp having failed to get into the presale ballot for a much coveted Croke Park ticket and so this morning I join the online hordes staring at the probably quite huge ticketmaster queue numbers and praying the wifi doesn’t blip and kick me out. My phone will also be at my side as a cohort of friends and family members have joined in a rough alliance laying siege to the ticket selling website citadel.

A message or call from one of them could end my own search but with ticket numbers limited to four per person and a lot more people involved in our group than that I may well find out who my real friends (or indeed family members) are – the Gallagher brothers may not be the only warring siblings after all this.

It seemed much simpler in the old days of paper only tickets which you bought over the counter and you could hold in your hand but was it?

I have had adventures in ticket land on many an occasion in years gone by with everything from promised tickets that didn’t materialise to colleagues trying to use their press passes to access sold out gigs (not me, I promise).

The one thing I miss about ‘proper’ tickets is being able to keep them as mementos – I still have many of mine from back in the day.

I remember queueing for what seemed like hours outside a small record shop in early 1985 for tickets to a U2 gig in Croke Park that summer and I repeated that process for many other big gigs in the years that followed.

At least this time I can log on from the comfort of my own home or to be more exact – my bed! And the fear of the last ticket being sold before I got to the top of the queue was as real back in 1985 as it is now.

Added to this was the worry of losing said ticket at some point before the concert or on the way down to Dublin; there was no online phone back-up plan if you did.

Indeed the story of an Oasis ticket could take many twists and turns between now and next August when the gigs take place.

One such story runs deep in my friendship group after the ‘ticketgate’ episode of U2 at Croke Park in 2017 which I am happy to raise at every opportunity including this one.

Being old school (or just old) we had printed out our tickets rather than keep them on our phones and on the way in to the gig I was happy to swap my seat in the stands with a mate who had one for the pitch which was my preference for a ‘real’ fan experience.

We went our separate ways only for the stern looking Dubliner at the turn-style to tell me my ticket wasn’t valid. Cue frantic calls to my now former friend and others in our group who didn’t pick up as they couldn’t hear their phones – so they later claimed.

In desperation I approached a tout who looked like he’d stepped straight out of the pages of a Dicken’s novel and paid well above the odds for another ticket. I confidently marched back up to the guardian of the turnstyles who again condemned me with the words ‘not valid’.

I told a nearby Garda my tale of woe; he smiled ruefully and sympathised but said there was nothing he could do. I was about to give up when I spied the ticket tout in the distance at the exact same time as he saw me. He started running. I started running too and aided by my much lighter wallet I caught him before I had time to think what I was actually going to do.

Thankfully he had seen my conversation with the Garda and, assuming he was about to be collared by the boy in blue who was walking in our direction, he coughed up another ticket with a promise it was genuine and he hadn’t know the other one wasn’t – yeah, right.

This one worked. I saw U2 and my friendship with my very apologetic mate, who had simply printed the wrong ticket, was restored, especially when he generously contributed to my tout ticket costs.

There are two connections to Oasis in this story. The same friend is on a flight this morning and has asked me to try and get him a ticket to the Croke Park gigs next August.

And while I saw U2 that fateful day in 2017 I missed the support act – which was Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds.

I have seen them a couple of times since though (I’m in the Noel camp; never that fond of Liam) and I’ll do my best to get my mate his ticket – I certainly don’t look back in anger.