While scuffles broke out at South Africa's ticketing centres and football fans (including myself) grew irritated at yesterday's computer ticketing collapse, leaving many empty-handed, one man sat exceedingly pretty.

He hadn't needed to sleep overnight on the streets of Cape Town nor Johannesburg - where one devoted couple hired a hotel room near a Fifa centre so they could tag-team for a 20-hour marathon that eventually yielded two much-coveted tickets for the final.

Nor had he encountered an unwelcome burst of pepper spray as police took drastic action in Pretoria to control the ticketing frenzy.

For Thulani Ngcobo already had his ticket for the final, and the semis, and the two quarters: in fact, cutting to the chase, he has tickets for over half the World Cup matches - courtesy of winning a sponsor's competition last year.

World Cup ticket winner Thulani Ngcobo

With his crown came the chance to make history for the football-daft Kaizer Chiefs fan will be attending 38 of the World Cup's 64 matches - taking in all the groups and stadiums as he watches the equivalent of a Premier League side's championship season in a month.

"I feel like the luckiest man in the whole world," says the smiley asset controller, 29. "This is a dream come true for everyone. Breaking this record is going to be as easy as shooting a butterfly with an AK47!"

That's probably not as easy as it sounds: nor will be breaking the record - even if there isn't actually one to beat since no one had previously applied to the Guinness Book of Records, who've since set the tally at 20 (please step forward if you've been to more!).

But if Thulani is to make his mark, he'll be wary of long half-time queues for the toilet and the impending traffic gridlock because he can't miss a minute of action. Not that he'd want to anyway. "I can't wait to see Lionel Messi's magic tricks. He's the best ever! But I'm most excited about Bafana Bafana's opener against Mexico - more than the final."

Yet the real bonus for Thulani is not that a man who spends his own money following Chiefs home and away will be being paid for, but that he didn't have to rely on Fifa's ticketing system. "Before winning the competition, I tried to buy tickets online but the connection was so bad I couldn't apply - and it was the same for many friends."

Many believe the over-the-counter availability came too late for it meant South Africa's traditional - i.e. less wealthy - fans would be left with the scraps. And if European sales had been on par, the 500,000 tickets available yesterday would have been far less.

A quarter of that tally was exclusively reserved for South Africans, at just $19 a ticket, and given that, why couldn't a similar number of tickets have been set aside in each preceding phase?