I think the issue wasn't the lateness of the sale, but the fact that the ticket was a 'resale ticket'. It had a little washing machine type icon next to it, but not much else to indicate it was a resale ticket. These seem to be treated differently than other tickets for the purposes of distributing them, which maybe makes sense longer term, but doesn't given the rest of the t&cs for these first three fixtures.
There were people on twitter who seemed to be able to sort this through contacting the ticket office, but given the timescales involved i was unable to, even went to the ticket office first thing in the morning to try to sort, but it wasn't open til 10:30 (though the stewards there thought it was going to be 9!), and in the end the owner was able to attend in my case.