Hundreds of Shrewsbury Town fans queued for hours to snap up tickets for the club’s first leg play- off tie against Torquay United.

Tickets for the vital match went on sale to season ticket-holders today at the Greenhous Meadow Stadium in Meole Brace.

Away tickets were made available to season ticket-holders from 9am, with die-hard fans gathering in numbers outside the box office for more than an hour before it opened.

The club has received an allocation of 1,128 for the game on Saturday with any remaining tickets due to go on general sale on Thursday.

Fans were queueing outside the ground to get their hands on tickets for both the home and away legs from early morning today, with those turning up at lunchtime still facing a 90-minute wait. The mood in the queue was generally buoyant, with many fans convinced this will be Shrewsbury’s year for promotion.

Sandy Lovett, from Sundorne in Shrewsbury, was attempting to get tickets to the away leg for herself and 10-year-old grandson Tom Herbert. “They will win both games,” she predicted.

Peter Malpass, from Mytton, was already looking forward to a potential appearance in the final at Old Trafford, explaining he would like Shrewsbury to play Stevenage in Manchester, due to his family connections to that area.

Shrewsbury narrowly missed out an automatic promotion during the regular league season, being pipped to third place by Wycombe Wanderers on the final day of the normal league season.

A charity single of Shrewsbury Town’s unofficial anthem, Catch Us If You Can, is selling well, but CD sales will not help it secure a chart position because of distribution problems, the band behind it said today.

Covers band Hello Cleveland said delays in delivering the single meant it was not in shops until Friday, but the distribution problem has also led sales of the CD not being counted towards its official chart position.