How It All Began...

It all started on Saturday 15 May 2004. I was 9 years old at the time. My dad and I watched Sepp Blatter pull the name of South Africa out of the envelope......and that's when the planning of our 2010 roadtrip began.

It's always been my dad's dream to watch a World Cup finals tournament live, but the chance has never presented itself. Over the years he got me excited by talking about the drama of previous tournaments. I myself had been an avid follower of the 2002 World Cup in Japan & South Korea, so my appetite was there and I was more than ready for 6 years of planning for this once in a lifetime opportunity.

It's been fascinating to watch the progress in South Africa since 2004. Slow at first, and full of controversy, this project has slowly taken shape. Before our very eyes, the magnificent Green Point stadium in Cape Town has slowly risen from the site of the Metropolitan Golf Course and the old athletics stadium. Around the country 5 already impressive stadia have been upgraded while 5 have been built from scratch. And as the stadia slowly took shape, so also did our plans for the ultimate World Cup roadtrip.

Pic, right, shows me, Dad, Mom (Ingrid), my 12

year old sister Shea and my 6 year old sister

Megan touring the site of the new Green Point

stadium in 2008.

After that day in 2004 when we found out that we would be hosting the biggest event in the world, we always used to talk about this distant dream we had of touring the country,visting cities and watching matches as we went. We would talk about what it would be like during the world cup, what the atmosphere would be like, and where would be the hotspots around South Africa.

For the first four years or so, we talked a lot about this dream, but never actually knew how it would turn out or how we would accomplish this. Then, with about a year and a half to go, it was nearly time for us to apply for tickets. This was the moment where our planning really took off.

With about 3 days until the tickets went online, we sat down one night and worked out our perfect roadtrip. Using the schedule of matches for the tournament, we planned where we wanted to go to watch matches. This was our 2010 World Cup Wishlist. We spent hours planning this down to the last day, giving ourselves a month of non stop soccer action. Although we were already talking about how everything was going to happen, we first had to get the tickets.

On Friday 20 February 2009, the tickets for the World Cup went on sale. That night, we sat down by the computer, and started a long process.

The Fifa ticket application process is very complicated. Every applicant has to register first. After you have done this, you may begin applying for tickets. This isn't simple either. For each match you apply for, you have to register each guest you intend to bring to the match. You are only allowed seven matches per applicant, and after you have chosen your seven matches, you can send in your request. After completing this at last, you aren't even guarenteed these tickets, as they go into a lotto draw.

This didn't put us off though, and we sent in our applications after hours of setting them up. The only problem was, this being the biggest event in the world, a lot of people were applying, causing internet traffic. So our applications sat there for hours, waiting to go through. Eventually we had to try again two days later. We finally sent in our applications for our roadtrip.

One of the most exciting things was getting our applications back, not knowing if you have been succesful or not. We were extremely anxious about this. With a lot of tension in the air, we read our results...

On the 4 May, the second round of ticket sales began. We had planned our approach very carefully, wanting to get as many of the outstanding tickets we had planned for as possible. We sent in our second round of applications. The wait to find out about these tickets was much shorter, and within a week we had our resluts. As this was now working on a first come first served basis, we were a little more confident that we had what we wanted.

After reapplying many times, spending up to 30 hours on the internet and changing our plans to fit in with our match schedule, we finally came out with tickets to a very nice group of games, including the final.

We now knew which matches we were going to, so we could plan a definite roadtrip. This was another very complicated step of the planning process. We had tickets all over the country, so we had to plan carefully in order to get everywhere in time. We sat down one night and worked out where we would have to go at what time, and how we would get there. We had now completed the first section of our dream...