Harrogate Town opinion: Victims of daylight robbery during underwhelming trip to Bradford City

Harrogate Town forward Sam Folarin on the attack during his side's 1-0 League Two defeat at Bradford City. Pictures: Matt Kirkham

“£48.00?” I splutter. The only sense in which this isn’t daylight robbery is that it’s after dark on a Thursday evening.

I momentarily feel like turning round and going home, after all it isn’t far, but we’re here now. Not only are our tickets £7 more expensive on the day as opposed to in advance, but Bradford City have the audacity to add on a £3 admin fee for doing nothing into the bargain.

My daughter Molly’s scanned the QR code outside Valley Parade and she’s now watching the blue polo of doom churning round and round on her screen. Computer says no.

It takes three attempts, but eventually she gets a screen where she’s able to confirm payment. Last year when we did this, they charged us twice and had to send a refund.

We walk up to the cashless turnstiles and she shows her phone to the operator. He can’t get one of the barcodes to scan. We wait, a small queue builds up behind and I get a feeling of deja vu.

Earlier in the day I’d been stood behind a woman who was trying to pay for an item of clothing in a Hebden Bridge charity shop. I say ‘trying’ because the electronic till wasn’t working.

Two members of staff were puzzling over it, pressing the odd button and then watching as it did nothing. We both waited and waited, outwardly calm, inwardly frustrated.

"Can I leave you this for this?” I eventually piped up, flashing 50p in cash and a compact disc, worried that I might seem a tad impatient. I’d only got two hours on the parking ticket and didn’t intend to spend it all queuing.

“If it’s got a gift aid sticker on it it’ll have to go through the till,” said one of the assistants. It didn’t, so I chucked the coin towards him and ran before he could protest. The poor woman may still be there now for all I know.

Yet there’s no such cash outlet at Valley Parade. Staff aren’t trusted with money these days, besides you can’t charge an admin fee on top of cash. I know my dad used to lift me over the turnstile and pay the operator a back-hander, but that was nearly 50 years ago when cameras weren’t around.

Computers are great when they work and completely rubbish when they don’t.

Eventually the turnstile operator manages to successfully scan our tickets before kick-off and we’re in. "Enjoy the game,” he says with a smile.

Barely 50 seconds have played out before Harrogate Town are one down, and that’s it. Game over. If we’d been any longer at the turnstiles, missed the start and the electronic scoreboard had been on the blink, I’d have have been announcing to all and sundry that this game had goalless draw written all over it.

Following the Boxing Day excitement of our thrilling win over Grimsby, this definitely has all the feeling of a hangover the morning after. Passes go astray in midfield, there’s very little pace in behind the home full-backs and shots are scuffed.

What makes defeat harder to bear is that Bradford are no better. If Luke Armstrong’s solitary chance had gone in, we’d have claimed a deserved draw.

It’s a match to forget in every way and even the normally vocal Town away support is stunned into spells of indifferent silence as the game meanders to its inevitable conclusion.

Nearly 17,000 Bantams fans go home happy however, having beaten little old Town at home for the first time in four attempts, one commenting online that it’s the most entertaining he’s seen them in a while.

Heaven knows what the previous games were like, but with more than 14,000 season ticket holders having already paid just £8.61 a match at adult prices (and why wouldn’t you based on match-day prices?), Bradford have them held captive.

By the time I wake up next day, I’ve put the whole thing firmly out of my memory until Molly pops her head around the door.

“Guess what...” she says. “Bradford have taken £144 out of my bank account.”

I’ll need to add attempted theft to the existing counts of extortion and extracting money under a false pretence of providing entertainment onto the charge sheet.

Footnote: It seems I chose the wrong match to attend in person over the New Year period. The second half of Town’s 3-3 draw at Hartlepool was one of those rare end-to-end, anything-can-happen thrillers in the style of the World Cup final.

In this instance I’m grateful for the streaming technology working as it should.