ONCE again, the patience of Blackburn Rovers fans is being stretched to the limit. Last season, the festive joke played by the ticket sales administration manager was to close the sales office to allow staff to recover from the previous night's festivities, without telling the frozen fans who were waiting to buy tickets.

This year, he surpassed even that by not posting pre-paid tickets for the Spurs game. This led to thousands of fans still queuing at the two collection points at kick-off time.

Blaming the Christmas post is no excuse as there were sufficient posting days between Christmas and the match.

This problem could obviously have been foreseen and dealt with adequately.

It is very upsetting to pay £17 for a ticket and then see only half a match though you have gone in good time to watch.

Yes, there may have been 30,000 fans watching, but past history warns the Rovers management not to take us for granted.

We still have not forgiven the Cup Final fiasco with Wolves when the ticket allocation was so unfairly administered - and that was a long time ago.

STUART HOLBROOK, New Hall Cottage, Read.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.