Newcastle United staff have not seen scenes like these for some time after thousands of supporters queued to buy tickets for the final pre-season friendlies of the summer.
Newcastle welcome Italian side Atalanta and Spanish outfit Athletic Bilbao to St James' Park for a double header on July 29 and 30 respectively. Tickets for both games went on general sale at 10am on Tuesday and such was the demand, at 10.20am, there were still more than 14,000 users in the online queue with an estimated wait time of more than an hour.
At St James' meanwhile, there were fans physically waiting in line outside the box office as the queue snaked around the Alan Shearer statue. Initially, only the lower tiers of the stadium were on sale and, it shows the clamour for tickets right now that supporters could only order a maximum of six tickets per booking for the friendly.
