To your first point, as I understand it, the tickets for OneHotspur+ members have indeed sold out. The time it took was irrelevant to a degree. If there were say 4,000 available, it comes down to how long those take to sell.
However, I'd be interested to see what seats are available tomorrow, as there was a huge block available behind goal in North Lower, that are now showing as sold out. If they become live again in the morning, then it blows my theory about membership priority out of the water completely!
To your second point, nope, there's no separate link or back route in that I know of.
Like you (I assume), as soon as I click on tickets and get redirected to the e-ticketing site, I am presented with the queuing wheel.
I presume that the grey/blue wheel represents a queue. I think of it like a NEXT Boxing Day sale. You can get there early, join the queue, then when doors open you'll eventually get into the site as people get their goods and leave.
If you rock up at 10am expecting to walk straight in, you'll undoubtedly be disappointed at the wait.
Now whilst that all sounds good in theory, what I can't answer or fathom is how many people seem to be able to get into the site having logged in after a friend who's still stuck in the queuing system.
I have also had problems where I've been booted out and seemingly gone to back of line.
No idea if any of that helps! It should have course just be bollox and it's all pot luck!!!!!
