British Basketball League

Sunday 6th January 2019

Tip Off 14.00

Surrey Scorchers 78 Manchester Giants 105,  attendance 400 est.

@ Surrey Sports Park Arena

Richard Meyjes Road

Guildford

GU2 7AD

Admission £11.50 + 57p On-Line Booking Fee, Will Call *

No Programme.

Having really enjoyed watching basketball whilst living in the U.S.A. I thought it was about time I watched a game over here to see what standard the game was this side of The Atlantic.

*I booked my ticket on-line, which meant a £3 discount of the price ‘on the door’ if booked 3 hours prior to the start of the game (£2.43 saving after the booking fee), with tickets available for collection up to half an hour before tip off. Having arrived at 13.05, I soon realised what a shambles the people running the Surrey Scorchers are. There was no ticket waiting, which was also the case for the two people behind me in the queue. I was directed to the reception desk, but as their printer was not working properly, it was a very basic print out on a piece of paper, minus any barcode for scanning. The reason given for no ticket being ready was that “we printed all the ticket orders at 10 o’clock, so anyone who ordered after this won’t have been processed”. It is hardly rocket science to print the tickets once the three hour deadline has expired, rather than an hour before on-line booking closes, is it ?

Anyway, it was a case of walking upstairs to gain entrance to the court. The person checking for tickets didn’t even check the piece of paper, but was more bothered about putting a stamp on people’s hands so that you could go in and out for use of toilets/bar etc as there are no facilities courtside. According to the website of the Sports Park the arena holds 1,000, but even with additional courtside seating it only holds 534.

The next problem was no matchday programme or even team lists, so unless you go every week you would have no idea who any of the players were, which is pathetic at this level. The Scorchers website and twitter account was a total waste of time as well, as there was no up to date information on either.

As for the match……not great, which was perhaps to be expected with this being second from bottom versus fourth bottom in the league table. Manchester only had two players on their bench, which just about sums it up. Even with four extra players available Scorchers were never really in it. These two sides would get absolutely hammered by any half decent college team from The States and would probably struggle to actually win a match at all. It is a pity the experience was so bad and not a patch on attending an event in America.