Whatever happened to that great old Dublin character, the on-street ticket tout? Maybe it's too early to be mourning his demise, exactly. But I didn't see him at the Ireland-France rugby match, and he was conspicuously absent at last September's All-Ireland football final too, writesFrank McNally.
Is he sick? Or has he just been squeezed out of the market by the faceless, corporate ticket agent, who operates online and has none of the street-level tout's charm and personality? Already I find myself missing the cheery catch cry - "Anyone buyin' or sellin' a ticket?" - that was once an indispensable part of the build-up to a big game. Like the first smell of burgers from a mobile chipper, it piqued your excitement as you approached the ground. And assuming you already had a ticket, it added to the lovely smugness you felt, as you checked your pocket for the umpteenth time.
I fear the on-street tout may be going the way of another threatened species: the lock-hard man. The latter used to patrol every major street of the capital in his distinctive peaked cap, flamboyantly drawing your attention to spaces you'd already noticed, and loudly advising you how to park in them, even if they were big enough for a bus. He charged a small once-off fee for his consultancy, and that was it. You never had to go back and feed his meter. In fact, despite the vague implication that he was minding your car, he was rarely there when you returned.
But then the corporates - the Corporation, to be exact - muscled in on his business, replacing him with faceless machines that dispense tickets only and never give parking advice. The few lock-hards who now struggle to maintain the old tradition have fallen on such hard times, apparently, they can no longer afford the proper headwear.
The demise of the on-street tout at this time would be ironic, in that his line of work is threatening to become respectable. It has some way to go yet, admittedly. Even in the capitalist Ireland of 2007, there is still a strange prejudice about the idea of selling tickets to a sport or music event at above "face value".
Face value is a concept that, elsewhere, is reserved for products issued by the Central Bank. And even these can be borrowed at a price determined - like the price of everything else - by what people are willing to pay. Only tickets to sport and entertainment events are considered to be above such grubby commerce.
Debate on the issue is invariably fixated on the plight of "the genuine fan", despite evidence that the supply of genuine fans - in sport, especially - is highly seasonal. But anyway, what's so special about a sports event or a rock concert? The person sitting beside you on a flight to Paris may have paid a fraction of what you did for his seat, because he booked earlier or was lucky. Nobody complains about this, or about the "genuine traveller" being ripped off. Whereas, in an era when even the GAA talks about its "product", the price structure of match tickets is still organised along socialist principles. This means that, for the really big games, many tickets are seriously underpriced.
The IRFU, for example, could reserve some of its seats for last-minute auction, thereby providing a public service to a small and not always undeserving constituency. This would include people who don't have the right connections to get a ticket at "face value", busy people who just don't like to commit themselves early, and of course people who have a serious imbalance in their money-sense ratio.
But the IRFU chooses not to do this, and so private enterprise fills the gap in the market - perhaps throwing in a free lunch and a bus transfer to justify the 750 per cent mark-up on the ticket.
The on-street touts were usually small-scale operators. Even so, they were ahead of their time, championing free enterprise and competition long before the Progressive Democrats. They were genuine risk-takers, unlike any of the other entrepreneurs who made money on the margins of a big game.
Flag-sellers, for example, have always had a classic hedging operation in the volatile market that is a football match. Before the game, they can sell both sets of colours at equal value. Barring a draw, the price of one flag will fall catastrophically during the course of the game. But the other will at least hold its value. So many flag-sellers are still there at the end, supplying the winning colours to the less committed fan, who now needs them for the journey home.
There has never been any such fall-back for the tout. His investments were always vulnerable to sudden changes in the weather or the national mood. And I knew exactly how this feels.
Back in the days when you could still buy international rugby tickets over the counter of certain shops, if you didn't mind queuing, I made the mistake once of generously buying a couple extra, on the grounds that some of my friends would surely want to go too.
None of them did, the traitors, and I still had the tickets on the day of the match. Such was the stigma attached to touting, however, that there could be no question of me standing on the footpath and advertising them for sale, even at face value. My strategy was to hang around near the touts, wait for some needy fans to identify themselves, and approach these quietly.
But it was a buyers' market, unfortunately, and not even the touts were getting face value. They weren't buying mine, as I discovered, at any price. I watched the game with tickets I couldn't afford still burning a hole in my pocket. It was the 1980s, and genuine fans were not nearly so plentiful as they are now.