RUGBY:ONCE AGAIN the IRFU have missed a trick. Although 35,000 tickets were sold for today's game as part of the package with last week's match with the Springboks, and 3,000 more tickets have since been bought for today's encounter, many of those supporters are not expected to travel from around the country, writes Gerry Thornley.
This is partly because of next week’s game against the All Blacks and a full round of All Ireland League matches today.
Although tickets for today’s game can be purchased from the IRFU offices up until kick-off at the original prices of €50 for adults and €10 for schoolchildren, would-be supporters have been given little additional incentive.
Martin Murphy, the Aviva stadium director, yesterday intimated that tomorrow’s FAI Cup final could conceivably draw a bigger crowd than today’s game.
“This weekend we’ve got two matches back to back on Saturday and Sunday and we expect something in the order of 20 to 30,000 for both of them.”
Admittedly, a crowd of 20,000 wouldn’t be so bad in itself, compared to the 17,427 which attended the Ireland-Fiji game in the RDS last season and the 21,500 at Thomond Park for Ireland-Canada two years ago.
The full 22-man IRFU committee will meet this morning specifically to discuss the ticketing issue, both in the short term for the games against New Zealand and Argentina, and in the longer term. They will also meet at the end of the month to conduct a full review of their ticketing strategy.
Nor have the ructions within the club game gone away. Some of the Munster clubs will be returning tickets for Tuesday’s Munster-Australia game at Thomond Park to the Munster Branch on Monday.
And representatives of all the Leinster clubs will converge in DLSP on Monday evening for a meeting called by the Leinster Branch. The clubs are concerned whether they will now all be reimbursed for the unsold tickets they returned.
