Croker bonus to push Six Nations crowd over one million

CROKE PARK will help the Six Nations championship achieve record attendances this season.

Tournament chairman Jacques

Laurans yesterday predicted that the crowds across the 15 matches will break the one million barrier.

Both England, with the capacity of its Twickenham home extended to 82,000, and Ireland, whose home games will be now played at GAA headquarters, where the capacity now stands at more than 80,000, while Lansdowne Road is redeveloped, are set to play matches in front of increased crowds.

Laurans said: “This year we are expecting to welcome for the first time over one million spectators. The average attendance in the 2006 season was 61,000 per game. The Six Nations is the best attended international sporting event in the world on a per game basis,” the Frenchman added.

“In the absence of Lansdowne Road, the inclusion of Croke Park and the increased capacity of Twickenham we will look to increase this by an average 6,000 spectators per match.”

Ireland play reigning Six Nations champions France at Croke Park on February 11, a match described by Laurans as “an historic encounter“, before England arrive on February 24.

Laurans added that 2006 had been a record year for the tournament’s television audience, with viewing figures in the UK alone in excess of 4.25 million as well as what he said were “big increases” in France and Ireland.

He added the tournament’s total worldwide cumulative audience last year had been 120 million.

In addition to the silverware on offer for the tournament champions, the Triple Crown winners (the team from one of the four ‘Home Nations’ of England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales that beats all the others in the course of a Championship season), a new trophy has been commissioned for the winners of the women’s Six Nations.

And there is a new prize on offer for the winners of the match between Italy and France, which replicates the

Calcutta Cup competed for by England and Scotland, rugby union’s oldest international nations.

The Guiseppe Garibaldi Trophy, named after the 19th century hero of Italian reunification, has been designed by former France captain Jean-Pierre Rives who now works as a sculptor.