MOST people would have been relaxing with a day off work but for one group of staff Bank Holiday Monday was probably the busiest day of the year.

Ticket office workers at St Mary's Stadium faced hundreds of queuing Saints fans before they even opened for business yesterday morning.

Eager supporters spent hours outside the football ground in order to grab tickets to the semi-final Championship play-off matches against Derby County, starting with the home fixture on Saturday.

Security guards and metal barriers were even on hand to ensure people were able to flow quickly through the queue.

Head of supporter services for Saints David Luker said every available ticket window was used to deal with the demand.

Mr Luker added that the club had so many phone calls for tickets that the free 0800 booking line set up for fans crashed after too many people tried to get tickets.

"We have some 20 operators for the line but it crashed for a while and we had to divert calls to our box office for about an hour and a half to two hours," he said.

"We have been fully manned with all possible 12 ticket windows open. We have a full time staff of six in the ticket office and we have brought in 14 temporary staff to help out.

"They have been trained last week and to start with it was a bit daunting with supporters coming to the window and asking lots of specific questions but we soon got the ball rolling and the tickets selling quickly."

Mr Luker said they had sold more than 5,000 tickets to fans throughout the course of the day.

Fans of all ages waited outside the stadium to get their hands on the tickets for what many supporters are billing as the most important match since the 1976 FA Cup Final.

Mr Luker said: "We are open all week and we hope people won't mind the wait for such an important game for the team. Obviously we have had so many people down here today because they want to make sure they can be here on Saturday and we have extra staff in who have been trained to deal with the customers. It does however take time to see everyone so we hope they will be patient."

Fans outside the stadium said they were confident about beating Derby and making it through to the play-off final at Wembley.

If Saints win they will face either West Bromwich Albion or Wolverhampton Wanderers on May 28 and the club will be fighting to get their hands on an estimated £60m cash prize for gaining promotion back into the Premiership.