Queue jumper: Zappia's positional play offside with Eels fans
May 22, 2009 - 12:15AM
EMBATTLED Cronulla chief executive Tony Zappia was given an official written warning from his previous employer, the Parramatta football club, for organising an employee to jump a long queue in 2005 to secure hard-to-get finals tickets.
And the tickets - about 30 in all - were for his friends and associates, including Roy Spagnolo, who last month was elected president of the new-look Parramatta Leagues Club board.
Spagnolo and Zappia are firm friends, and there is continuing speculation that Zappia will be recruited by the Eels board to replace the incumbent Denis Fitzgerald.
But the Herald understands that four years ago there was enormous consternation surrounding the ticket queue-jumping among the Eels' season ticket holders, it almost caused a riot. The security staff at the Leagues Club had to restore order.
The finals match in question involved the then minor premiers Parramatta playing eighth-placed Manly. Tickets for the match were under the control of the NRL, and distributed through Ticketek. However, season ticket holders had a short window before the public release to secure a limited number of seats.
Zappia, who was the club's football manager at the time, was reprimanded by the Eels, who detailed in the official warning their concern about him abusing his position.
The club was concerned that Zappia had organised for his assistant to go straight to the front of the queue at the ticket office in the Leagues Club to purchase the tickets just before the designated selling period was to begin.
The queue was more than 100 metres long and had snaked outside, around the club and up to O'Connell Street. Some supporters had camped overnight.
The fury that erupted when the employee tried to get in first was ferocious, said Eels sources. It prompted an immediate investigation by the then Eels chief Fitzgerald.
Jacquelin Magnay
