FOOTBALL fans' World Cup dreams were dashed again today.

Supporters face a near-impossible task getting their hands on tickets for England games in France this summer. An extra 60,000 tickets for first and second round games went on sale on a special phone hotline at 7am - but fans faced a nightmare. When the Argus finally got through on the magic number this morning, like millions of other fans we were told: "All the lines are engaged. Please try later." The same hotline was reduced to a shambles last week as 10 million callers bombarded the line within hours of the 110,000 tickets going on sale. The new batch of tickets have come from returned allocations from national football federations. And the Argus put the hotline to the test first thing. 7.30am: Reporter Danny Harding was in hopeful mood as he started hitting the phone and looked forward to cheering on the boys. The line was engaged for the next ten minutes. 7.45am: His fingers are sore after pressing the redial button constantly for 15 minutes and he is getting more fed up as time goes by. He still gets the engaged tone. 8am: He finally gets through - but to an answerphone message! After 30 attempts to hear something other than an engaged tone or dead line he is greeted by music and a female voice saying saying: "All the lines are engaged. Please try later." 8.15am: He is getting nowhere fast and his dream of cheering on England abroad fades quickly. His finger is starting to hurt. 8.45am: He gives up after 66 attempts. The line was engaged 32 times and dead 34 times. The FA is not encouraging people to try the hotline. David Davies, FA director of public affairs, said they don't know what games hotline tickets are for but it would be wrong to encourage people to think that they are likely to be for England games."

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.