All of the halls have pigeon holes by surnames - it will always be name/hall/university address as stated =)
The freshers ticket and freshers ball ticket are different. Freshers ticket is basically all of the things that your hall puts on, like random nights out and day trips and yes that's included in just the hall subs - freshers automatically pay extra and you have to buy your subs through lufbra.net
The ball ticket is for just the ball. You'll soon find that the students union use the whole "omg tickets are going to sell out in seconds you HAVE to buy now" type thing - but it's never the case. With the Grad Ball, they said that tickets had to be bought on a certain day, after a certain time and were super like "omg tickets are going to be super hard to get" - then there were emails saying "oh some of you have said you were so disappointed missing out - so second chance".... then another saying "uhm don't get forget that you can bring friends, non graduates and non students to the ball so buy tickets now". In the end they were still available on the night. If you want a ticket, you'll be able to buy one. The people that generally miss out are the people that don't actively attempt to get a ticket until the day before.
The exception to the rule is for the Sno annual winter trip ... those tickets genuinely sell out within hours of it opening at midnight. It's an awesome trip that I'd really recommend to even people who have never skii'd or snowboarded before.... but yeah, those tickets do sell out super quick (even then they have a small second chance opportunity for really keen people).