SWINDON Town fans were left frustrated on the road to Wembley yesterday, when the website providing tickets for the cup final crashed shortly after general sales began.

More than 12,000 people jammed the switchboard in the first hour alone while the online system packed up altogether under the massive demand.

Ticket Zone, the club’s sales outlet, was forced to limit the number of web users trying to snap up a place at the Robins’ Johnstone Paint Trophy final.

Frustrated supporters used The Townend supporters’ website to complain about jammed phonelines and failed attempts to buy via the website.

Nick Bamosomi wrote: “I actually got as far as entering my payment details for my tickets and then got thrown off with a system error.

“Hope I don’t end up buying two lots of tickets.”

Gk-nash said: “It’s one of the few certainties in life. Online tickets agencies will crash and people wanting tickets will wonder why they didn’t do anything when they know there is going to be a rush.”

And Konig wrote: “They would have known there was going to be a huge surge of people, is there no way of them temporarily increasing the bandwidth or server space or whatever technical mumbo jumbo it is?”

Ticket Zone, which began the sale at 9am, asked fans to be patient while it resolved the issues.

A statement on the website read: “Unfortunately, we are experiencing a much higher level of demand than normal and are limiting the number of simultaneous users in order to provide the best possible level of service.

“This page will refresh every five seconds and will let you carry on with your booking as soon as possible. Thankyou for your patience.”

The club used Twitter to let fans know of the disruption. It tweeted: “Ticket Zone are investigating issues experienced with online bookings and are advising phone sales only until the problem is resolved.”

A club spokesman said: “We spoke to Ticket Zone and they managed to resolve the issues after an initial surge for tickets. Last Tuesday 7,500 calls went in for tickets and yesterday morning, there were 12,100 in the first hour.

“The website was back up and running later in the day. There are plenty of tickets available and we would ask fans to be patient.”

Swindon had already sold nearly 10,000 tickets for the eagerly-awaited clash with Chesterfield on March 25. Season ticket holders, who also encountered difficulties trying to make purchases, were given first priority last week.

The club hope to have about 28,000 to 30,000 fans cheering the side to glory at Wembley once the full allocation has been sold. The supporters’ club has filled 30 coaches so far and expect to take 50.

Chairman Roger Bunce said: “I booked my tickets last week and it took me a few times to get through, I think on the fourth time I got there but then it was quite simple.

“Whichever way you do it, there’s no pleasing everyone. Chesterfield sold to season ticket holders on a stand-by-stand basis. But then what happens by the time you get to stand three and stands one and two have taken the best seats?

“There are 30,000 tickets so there’s plenty to go round, but people understandably want to sort themselves out.

“Once fans have their tickets they will take up the places on the coach and hopefully it should be a brilliant day which ends in a win.”