Ray's retiring at the end of the month, according to RTE. Be interesting to hear some of the comments here!
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Ray's retiring at the end of the month, according to RTE. Be interesting to hear some of the comments here!
Think it will be a big loss to fans who cannot do the DIY package themselves.
Oh No! Who's going to overcharge me now?
i'm sure there will be another to take his place....
Its ok for people who are able to do the DIY way. But Ray Treacy does or did provide a service to those that are not so luck and able to do it the DIY way.Quote:
Originally Posted by tiktok
RIP Ray Treacy :DQuote:
Originally Posted by NeilMcD
No seriouslly i agree with the overall point Neil is making, but wouldn'd call it luck. Id call it a lost generation. THere are many people well into their 50s and even 60s who have been using this route for years, ive met many on trips abroad, they all speak highly of him, even if he was making money at their expense that they never realised. I mean it would have been very difficult for some to get to Iran etc and those sorta places. But more importantly many of his customers were older generation people hwo computers etc etc wouldn't be there forte and hte hassle that they will now endure might stop them getting to games completely. I remember one lovely woman i met from wicklow, blessington i think, same age as my mother and i could not see her being the most computer literate, not sure of her circumstance if htere is others to help her out, but she had been travelling with this crowd for 16 years nearly. What is she expected to do?
Fair enough he was a rip off, but hte FAI were looking after their own here, which wasn't such a bad thing in a way. He was in turn providing a service to those woh could obvoiuslly afford it but may not have had an alternative, or were unaware of the alternative or unable to use the alternative. So at the end of the day there will be a few genuine supporters at a loss.
He catered for the higer end of the market and people who were willing to pay a few hundred quid extra for an away game. The celtic tiger is gone now and the volumes who paid that kind of money to travel to games are no longer around.
Reder,
Totally disagree. Treacy dealt with an older crowd and was very selective in the people who travelled with him. The people who can pay that money are still very much around.
We'd run in to him from time to time on trip, most recently in Bari when we ended up staying in same hotel as the team. He knew me da through the Derry City connections and his words were "McDaid, how the feck did you get to stay here"
He hates flying, which is a drawback when you are a travel agent. I would have thought his daugher would have taken over the running of the business.
Lads have you ever thought of someone who has a disability and needs to use people like Ray Treacy. That is who I was talking about
I actually know someone that travelled with Ray Tracey for that very reason that he has mobility problems. I am not sure there are any other travel agents in the market that could accommodate his needs.Quote:
Originally Posted by NeilMcD
SOrry neil it was something i overlooked. Good point.Quote:
Originally Posted by NeilMcD
Ray is an absoloute gentleman, and while the only time i ever travelled with his was as an innocent 19yr old whom he gave a free bus trip from Amsterdam to Rotterdam in 82 I think as I was making my own way to the game, I know he gave his cleints value for money. While his trips were expensive he always provided a 5 star service unlike some other operators.
Enjoy your retirement Ray..
In fairness to Treacy he did look after his customers. They all speak highly of him although they did pay through the nose. I won a free trip to Liechtenstein in 96 with Treacy. Some of the regulars were wealthy but I reckon some are just saving for their trips but happy to have somebody to do everything for them. My abiding memory is me chastising him for his comments about Tirana 3 years earlier. It was supposed to be a hellhole and really dangerous. I pointed out that he people were lovely and the city was fine and they could have done with 3,000 visitors rather than 300. "Where are you from? Limerick isn't it!!! Hey this guy thinks Tirana is great. Well compared to Limerick it probably is but compared to anywhere else it's a ****hole!!!!!"
A friend very nearly came to blows with a Treacy regular in Tehran. It shows the loyalty to him. He is the only Travel agent that did and could sort out his customers for tickets. He knew how to screw them though.
Fair point and one I didn't consider but I still think he was way too expensive.Quote:
Originally Posted by NeilMcD
I can hear the jingle of a Joe Duffy special on it.
I travelled once with him when his firm, JWT and Irish Travel combined to take a Jubo to Moscow in 1985. It cost £500 for three nights which might sound a lot back then, but considering that a return flight to Dublin from London without a Saturday night was over £200, this was quite good. The trip was excellent and the bloke - an ex international who I remember as a kid with West Brom - was charming.
Then he got greedy. And the reason he managed to stay afloat for so many years was that he had a deal with the FAI for getting tickets. Had we been carrying along with the numbers that were at Ireland games before 12th June 1988, I'd be writing a better career obit of the man than I am.
For most people, that was the reason to go with him. Guaranteed tickets, helped by the FAI refusing to do anything to bring in a fairer distribution plan for away games, such as along the lines of the SFA model. I don't think that being computer illiterate, handicapped or just bone idle, was a factor. With the exception of number three, any visit to a travel agent and a phone call to a country's tourism office would have sorted out a trip. Certainly I knew two lads who travelled by train and boat from Dublin to Bern in 1985 in wheelchairs, so we can discount Ray Treacy Travel as some sort of Red Cross cum SAGA Holiday outfit.
He said in one of the papers that the business isn't making money at the moment, so it looked like a good time to fold it away neatly.Quote:
Originally Posted by MariborKev
He didn't take over as official FAI travel agent until into the 90's I think. Certainly Irish Travel and Ms. Chisholm were there in 89 (remember her from Budapest) and I think for at least Italia 90.Quote:
Originally Posted by lopez
I think it is more than tickets although they were a factor. It's the
1) I'm travelling with the team.
2) everything is done for you
My big gripe always was that the margins on these trips were always huge. They were far far higher than your average package holiday where you can still probably get as good a deal from a Travel Agent as you would doing the legwork yourself.
In fairness to Treacy he did look after his customers well. I don't believe he ever did deals with places miles away and then had his customers on buses for hours upon hours.
I'll be eternally grateful to Ray for a very personal reason.
He went out of his way and beyond and managed to make appropriate arrangements at very short notice.
When I tried to pay for the service I was told, No charge, get me a drink sometime.
Quote:
Originally Posted by lopez
I can't agree with you on this, having attended my first away match in 1980 I have rarely ever had problems getting tickets for away games, and cant remember too many away matches that tickets were a problem.
While Ray was expensive he always provided a 5 star service and nothing was a problem for his clients.
I say this and I never went with him but have met many of his regulars over the years. Also as pointed out the Irish Travel agency in Dolier St were official FAI agents until the eaqrly 90s if I remember right and they sold tickets for home games from there offices.
One thing on the tickets that Lopez may be referring to as well though is that Treacy's customers get the best tickets.
There is a rule that the visiting association gets something like 200 category 1 tickets. These always go to Treacy so his clients normally sit on the halfway line as opposed to behind the goal. It caused some minor problems in Norway last year as the Treacy crew were in the away end with the rest of the fans who were standing up too much.
TBH I wouldn't want those tickets anyway as I'd rather be with the fans although I have tried to get them sometimes when I think the match programme will be VIP only and difficult to get.
You're right that for most games this was not a problem, but there have been a few times. The worst was undoubtedly the World Cup 1994, but I'd include Wembley 1991, Liverpool 1995, Belgium 1997 and Switzerland 2003. Treacy was one of a number of official travel agents of the FAI - others included Crosson Travel, who tried to swindle the RISSC in London with an overpriced trip and Funtrek - at the 1990 World Cup, the first one with 'competition' as opposed to one sole travel agent dealing with tickets. I don't think there was much competition in the value for money stakes.Quote:
Originally Posted by Greenforever
My other gripe with Ray Treacy was his throwing his toys out of the pram when the English FA decided to set aside 6,000 tickets for Irish people living in Britain for the game in March 1991. This was in addition to the FAI's allocation of around the same number, which a large part - 2,850 tickets was split between 38 members of the FAI Senior Council, leaving each member with 75 tickets. The process was you filled out a form in a newspaper and stated which country you supported, and if successful you could buy SIX tickets. I got four this way. This was done to prevent clashes between fans.
Certainly, as a committee member of the RISSC in London in 1991, I knew it was the great negotiating power of my late friend Tony Booth that secured a further allocation guaranteeing a ticket for all the RISSC's 600 odd members from the English FA. This may well have been out of the 6,000 tickets but it certainly was not taken from the FAIs allocation. In fact when Tony first approached the FAI they said they probably wouldn't have any tickets for the us and perhaps should approach the EFA. Again the EFA were being pragmatic, and when the word got out that the RISSC were so successful Treacy got a case of the green-eyed gazumbas
Treacy went off moaning to Michael Carwood in the Sunday Press that these tickets were not going to the 'real fans' - i.e. his customers - and that at most, 300 fans travelled from Britain to games. Carwood, who I can't remember, but I am quoting him from an article I wrote in the fanzine I edited at the time, On The One Road, demanded that 4,000 of this 'English' allocation should be handed over immediately to fans in Ireland and suggested the 6,000 tickets 'may well go to Irish football supporters, but will they be as well behaved as the genuine fans who made us all proud in Germany and Italy?' (Raw Deal For Irish Fans: Sunday Press 24 February 1991) I've never once after this incident considered that tickets were not crucial to the business success or failure of Ray Treacy Travel.
Wow never heard this one before. Huge problems with Wembley tickets all right. There were no problems in 95 at Anfield - game wasn't soldout and we got what we wanted.Quote:
Originally Posted by lopez
It always makes me sick when people slag off the London support. I couldn't get over the numbers from London in 1981 going to Holland and ever since.
Just found this out. Ray Treacy was in the last Republic of Ireland team of which all the players were born in Ireland !!
Quote:
Originally Posted by lopez
There were no problems for the play off in Belguim in the end if memory derves me right, this brings the no of games tickets were an issue down to 2 in 20 odd years.
For the Switzerland game the FAI distributed all tickets and of the 14 of us who were in Japan all 14 of us got tickets for this game.
Didnt make the England game in 91 for family reasons so cant comment.
I couldn't resist trying to find it.Quote:
Originally Posted by Soccer Mom
29-Oct-1975 v Turkey
Paddy Roche, Tony Dunne, Jimmy Holmes, Paddy Mulligan, Eoin Hand, Mick Martin, Liam Brady, John Giles, Ray Treacy, Don Givens, Steve Heighway. Subs: Joe Kinnear and Terry Conroy
Apart from Don Givens (born in Limerick) I believe the other 12 players were all born in Dublin.
The likes of Tony Grealish, Dave O'Leary, Mark Lawrenson, Gerry Peyton and Seamus McDonagh became regulars in the squad soon afterwards and it doesn't seem to have happened since.
Sad news tonight that Ray Treacy has passed away after a short illness. I saw him play at the end of his International career and also for Rovers.
Those of us of a certain age will also remember that he was on the RTE pundit panel before it became just Gilesey and Eamo.
http://www.independent.ie/sport/socc...-31134186.html
Do you know the team?Quote:
Originally Posted by Soccer Mom
2 posts up OF.