A look back at the weekends Autumn Rugby Internationals, show a mass of empty seats. How will this be written off. The Welsh Rugby officials have blamed a “blip” for 20,000 empty seats for Wales’ opening autumn international at the weekend. They then continue to say that they are looking at ways of filling the 74,500-seater stadium at the less popular fixtures, especially during the current tough economic climate. ‘Less Popular’, this was the Australians, not Fiji or Samoa. If they cannot sell for this, they must be charging a ridiculous amount which does not help anyone.

Now we come to the Irish. To rigidly adhere to their double-match package right up until kick-off on Saturday, this is to say they were demanding people paid for a double ticket for the South African and Samoan matches. This policy was just sheer stupidity. What price the ticket, was it 80% South Africa, 20% Samoa or why was the price 150 euros? The Aviva Stadium is a wonderful venue for most people. Appalling safety issues have been compounded by seats with obscured views, seats which are drier than others. In fact it could be referred to has a ‘splash zone’ (watch out for Shamu). The gate reciepts because of the missing 15,000 at face value, means a loss of over 1 million.

And that figure does not take into account the cups of tea that were not sold, the sandwiches unmade or the beer bottles left unopened. Even the car park attendant – and let’s not forget, he needs to eat too – went un-tipped!

This rigid selling of over priced tickets by all RFU’s is causing no end of problems to our members.