St Kilda tweeted: “Apologies to members who are having trouble booking tickets, it appears the influx of people on Ticketmaster’s site is causing issues.

“Members have a priority window until 3pm, so please keep trying while we look into this further.”

Ticketmaster in a statement said: “There was no malfunction or major ticketing bungle on the Ticketmaster site today.

“The site is fully operational and tickets are still available for purchase ... thousands of member tickets have been sold today and this is a great indication that fans are excited for footy to be back in 2021.

“General public sales that commenced at 3pm are also showing really strong demand.”

Earlier, Ticketmaster responded to fans who were complaining on Twitter.

“Please make sure you are following the link provided by your club to access the pre-sale. As this is a popular event, tickets are sold as long as seats are available, and sometimes they go very quickly. We suggest you keep trying the website during this sale,” it said.

”When a popular event goes on sale there are literally thousands of customers simultaneously attempting to purchase tickets across all distribution channels.”

Collingwood said that as of about 1.15pm on Monday the game with Richmond had not sold out, and advised fans to keep trying for tickets