Munster fans’ ticket fury
Despite a revised distribution system aimed at keeping Munster tickets for the Red Army, a large number of tickets for tomorrow’s clash with Perpignan have been snaffled by the corporate hospitality sector.
The Munster Branch yesterday issued a detailed breakdown of their allocation to the provincial club structure.
But it said it had no controlover claims that a number of Munster clubs sold on the tickets to the corporate sector to raise funds for their cash-starved set-ups.
Clubs such as UL Bohemian, Young Munster, Garryowen and Shannon are believed to have organised corporate lunches in Dublin tomorrow, though UL Bohs have refuted suggestions that they are staging three separate club functions.
Their fixtures chief Billy Hurley, a former President of the Munster Branch, said: “we have organised a lunch in Dublin’s Jury’s Hotel and that is sold out. Apparently, some people associated with the club, but not with the acceptance of the club, have organised another lunch at a different venue. We know nothing about that.”
But Mr Hurley admitted he was slightly disturbed with the development of organising corporate hospitality events. Clubs, he said, had to do whatever they had to do to survive.
“It is a difficult and costly task to run a club these days; we have to organise race nights and auctions, whatever, to survive,” he added
But he doesn’t believe that is an ideal situation. “I do have reservations about seeing the best tickets go to people outside the club but, as I said, we need to survive.”
Young Munster claim to have fulfilled all obligations to club members before deciding to allocate 200 of the approximate 700 tickets for corporate hospitality.
The club will host a function in the Burlington Hotel and a spokesperson said: “There are all sorts of rumours going around, but we have been up front about this. We offered our tickets allocation first to club members.
“Anyone that applied would have been supplied. We then looked at ways to make some money for the club in difficult times, and we decided to organise a lunch.”
The 16 Munster senior clubs were allocated up to 700 tickets each, with junior clubs getting around 150.
Nenagh Ormond, the newest senior side in the province, decided against such a fund-raising exercise. Instead, according to club secretary Raymond O’Meara, they imposed a levy of €5 on each ticket sold to members. “We didn’t want to down the road of organising lunches or anything like that. We felt a levy was the fairest way of looking after our members whilst still making sure that we had a way of raising funds for the club. Nobody complained,” he said.
Meanwhile, Leinster are considering legal advice aimed at a bigger cut of the gate receipts from their Heineken Cup quarter final clash in Toulouse tomorrow.
Officials from the Irish province argue that Toulouse had nominated Stade Toulousain, a 37,000 capacity stadium, as one of two home venues, and should only be entitled to 50% of the gate receipts, instead of 65% on offer from ERC when host teams agree to move to bigger grounds.
The champions normally play at Stade Ernest Wallon, but decided to nominate Stade Toulousain to host this fixture. In the European Rugby Cup Ltd. guide, the club lists the two grounds as home venues.
Thus, Leinster believe they are not actually moving away from home, and should not be entitled to the extra 15% payout, even though the Irish province will significantly benefit from the move.
An ERC spokesperson yesterday suggested that Leinster’s argument could not be sustained. “All four games have been moved to bigger stadiums and that benefits every one of the participating teams. It means travelling fans have more access to tickets and the teams, all of them, make more money.
“Munster have moved to Lansdowne Road, Biarritz to San Sebastian, Leicester to the Walker Stadium and Toulouse across the city to Stade Toulousain. The upshot of it all is that the four games will be watched by more than 150,000 instead of about 60,000. Between them, the clubs will earn over e4m, so everyone wins.”
Toulouse, anticipating that several thousand more will seek tickets for this sell-out match, have set up big screens, and provided extra bar and food outlets in the vicinity of the stadium.
“There has been unprecedented interest in all the game,” said a Toulouse source. “Therefore, we decided to help make it an even bigger occasion.”
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