United media officer and first team kitman Andy Hall spoke to BBC Radio Cumbria's James Phillips on Friday evening ahead of Carlisle's League One match at Swindon tomorrow, Hall first talking about the fact that this week Blues boss Greg Abbott signed a one year contract extension with the club :
" I think John (Nixon) and Andrew (Jenkins) and Steve (Pattison) have been talking to Greg pretty much since the start of the season. If you look at the signings that have been made, you are not going to allow somebody to make those signings unless you are backing him all the way.
" I think that has been pretty evident from August onwards, infact all the way back to June onwards that Greg has been the man to take Carlisle United forward. We think he is doing that, I think the board are happy that he is doing that. So I think with the way that the season has been going, with the fact that we now have to start talking to players as well as a club, and as a manager, he wants to do that.
" A decision had to be made so the decision was made to give him the extended contract and as I am sure he will tell you himself, he is absolutely delighted with that. The board of Carlisle United are delighted with that and we think that we are now in a position, with the improvement that has been made, where the club is only going to keep kicking on. "
" He wasn't involved in training today, he took very much a watching brief, he stood back. Dennis (Booth) was very much in charge of this session, Kav (Graham Kavanagh) was involved in the session himself and Kav actually went in goals for a bit at the end of it which took us all by surprise.
" But I think it was more Greg wanting to step back and make sure that what he said about Tuesday night has sunk in. Because he was disappointed with that, the whole club was disappointed with that. He wanted to see a positive reaction and from what he said at the end of the session, I think he got that.
" You can say that we missed chances against Huddersfield, but I think everybody is looking at the overall performance. It was just disappointing, it is not something that Greg would accept I don't think, again I think he will tell you that himself. He wants to see a positive reaction, Swindon are a very good side, they are going to give us a real test and he wants the boys to be up for it and ready for it. "
" A few minutes ago (6pm) I spoke to Dick Young who is up there, not in charge but overseeing the ticket sales at the moment, and we are standing at around about 6,000. Which is pretty much where you would expect it to be on the first day of season ticket sales. We have got another day of season ticket sales tomorrow, we would expect it to do another 2,000 or 3,000 on top of that.
" We then go on to the top of the other club members thereafter and into the general sales next week. I think 6,000 on the first day is exactly where you would expect it to be, it leaves us 18,000 to shift, I think we expect to do that so it is all building up to be exciting.
" Tickets being sold early is something that, I don't know where it came from last night. But I received a phone call at about 11.30pm from a season ticket holder who was really angry about the situation. He was asking what the point was of being a season ticket holder if the club is going to sell tickets before the season ticket holders get a chance to get one themselves. "
" I can guarantee that what happened yesterday was our ticket office manager, Christine Metcalfe, finished off the counting of the tickets in the office around about 8.30pm-9pm. They were all locked away because they have to be, they have to be sold in blocks, they have to be accounted for.
" What we will admit that we did do is that the club staff, we allowed them to fill in a form to say how many tickets they wanted so that we have catered for the people that work at the club. I am sure that everybody out there would understand why we would do that.
" But what we didn't do, what we couldn't do, and what we would never do anyway was take any tickets out and give them to anybody ahead of the 10am sales deadline today. We also heard that people were getting them on the telephone, impossible, because the telephone line wasn't activated, well it was activated yesterday for a test. But it was a test only by club staff.
" It wasn't activated this morning until 10am so it is a rumour that is damaging, it does hurt the club because people will take that as a fact. They will read it, they will believe it and they will start to spread it around and we get labelled with something which we haven't done, which is disappointing. I can guarantee it didn't happen because our ticket office manager was at the club until late last night counting the tickets herself. "