Clubs breathe sigh of relief over tickets

NOBODY, NOT even anyone in the IRFU, can accurately gauge how many tickets have actually been sold at this juncture for Saturday’s ‘homecoming’ to the Aviva Stadium against South Africa, but judging by the feedback from clubs – none of whom have sold their entire allocation – somewhere in the region of 35,000-40,000 of the 50,000 capacity has been sold to date.

As agreed prior to another meeting between representatives from all the Munster clubs in Charleville last night, which the Munster Branch called for yesterday morning, all of Munster’s senior and junior clubs have returned their unsold tickets to the Branch offices in Thomond Park along with post-dated cheques for those they have sold.

As a general rule of thumb, it would appear that the Munster clubs have sold roughly 50-60 per cent of their allocations, which for senior clubs such as Shannon and Cork Constitution would be 200 each. It’s unlikely that the Connacht and Ulster clubs would have had any more success given the prohibitive pricing and bracketing of the marquee games against South Africa and New Zealand with the Samoa and Argentina games at €150 and €190 respectively.

Probably due to less travel demands, the Leinster clubs have had better joy with their allocations, which are about 400 each for senior clubs, but are still well short of selling them entirely.

The Union are selling tickets with restricted views for those two-game packages at €75 and €95, while individual match tickets for the Samoan and Argentinian games are available at €50 and €95, because these are tickets that have been returned by the visiting Union. It’s still highly plausible that the New Zealand game will yet be a sell-out, and the IRFU may note that Saturday’s Wales-Australia game is about 25 per cent short of a 74,000-plus sell-out.

That the clubs will not have to foot the bill for their unsold tickets (which could be €30-40,000), nor have their allocation reduced accordingly for the Six Nations will be a considerable weight off their shoulders.

“It’s a relief,” said Lansdowne’s PRO Joe Leddin. “It’s been very worrying for the clubs. We are continuing to sell as many as we can in Lansdowne, right up until the last minute. We’re all in it together and we will do our utmost to sell them, but it is a relief to us to know that once our best endeavours are finished, we will not then be left with a financial burden.”

The mood remains more militant in Munster, and Shannon club chairman Jack Keane commented: “From a Munster club’s perspective Philip Browne’s press release was quite ambiguous. There’s a lot that has to be talked through to define what he was actually saying. We’re concerned about the pricing structure and what will be the plan for the next three years.”

The clubs will also have taken note, and stored away for ever more, the words from the IRFU chief executive yesterday in which Browne said: “No club is going to be put into an untenable financial position as a result of unsold tickets.” And he added: “We are the clubs after all. The IRFU is simply a function of the clubs of Ireland and we’ve listened to what they’ve had to say.”

“Sorry” has always appeared to be the hardest word in the IRFU’s lexicon and admitting to having made “an error” in Monday night’s climbdown was undoubtedly a first. A pity that it required the biggest PR disaster in the Union’s history to make this happen.

“We’re delighted that the IRFU are going to have a look at the whole pricing structure,” added Leddin.

“If those tickets were €75 or €50 or whatever, we’d probably have them all gone.”