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My new favourite hobby

• Martin Richardson - Sport Interactive journalist
• 16 Jun 06, 06:49 PM

A SAUSAGE SHOP, STUTTGART HAUPTBAHNHOF - Not that I expect the remotest bit of sympathy from you dear blog reader, but it can be very frustrating being outside a stadium when a World Cup match is on with no prospect of getting in.

For the second time in a week Fletch is happily settled in his press seat, while I have to glumly drag myself away from the ground and towards an establishment with a TV.

Now I've found one, I must admit my focus is not entirely on the football, but on the official World Cup website .

Any chance I've got, I've sat down and started to press refresh waiting for some of the endless red icons on the page to turn yellow.

It's the World Cup equivalent of the seaside arcade game - as tickets become erratically available you have to select your category of seat, hit order and then enter a five letter/number code as quickly as possible otherwise you will be presented with the ever-so-polite, but irritating nonetheless, message: "Reservation not possible. Sorry, someone was faster than you."

How? I ask you.

Three times today I have logged on and tickets for the Ghana v USA game, the next one Fletch is accredited for, have blinked yellow but I've struck out on each occasion.

Although obviously not the most secure means of obtaining a ticket, I did look on ebay yesterday and found someone offering two tickets for the Holland v Ivory Coast game here in Stuttgart at what seemed a reasonable price.

With the bidding on 77 Euro, the winner would meet the seller outside the stadium and join them in going into the ground - thus hopefully avoiding any identity questions relating to the ticket.

At first we joked why this seller could not find two friends to take the tickets off their hands.

Alas, it soon became obvious why the tickets were being sold.

Within a couple of hours of adding them to my watch list they had spiralled beyond my price range - in fact they finally sold for 605 Euro each.

So, as I actually want to return home one day, I'm stuck endlessly refreshing the online ticket page, in fact I've already wasted too much time on this blog entry...

Don't forget to for the chance to win some fabulous Sport Relief prizes, including a Pele-signed table football and our very own Shevchenko-signed Fletch and Ricco t-shirts.