FAI reduce ticket prices for South Africa clash

TICKET prices for Ireland’s upcoming friendly with South Africa at Thomond Park next month have been slashed in a bid to sell out the famous Limerick stadium.

Ireland’s friendly clash with Australia last week – which the Socceroos won 3-0 – attracted a crowd of 19,400 to Thomond Park, short of the ground’s 26,500 capacity.

The cost of tickets for the match was cited as a barrier to many fans travelling to the game, with tickets priced as high as €50 for some stand seats seen as excessive.

Now the FAI have cut ticket prices for the September 8 clash with World Cup hosts South Africa, and introduced a “family-friendly” stand ticketing incentive for U16s.

Terrace schoolboy tickets will be available for €7 but child (U16) stand tickets will now be available for €20. U16s would have had to pay full price for stand tickets for €55 for the Australia match, meaning they are now €35 cheaper.

Adult terrace tickets are priced from €20 to €30, while East and West Stand adult tickets are now priced at €40, up to €15 cheaper than the Australia clash.

FAI director of communications, Peter Sherrard said: “We said after the Australia match that we would look at the ticket pricing again, so we have revised the prices.

“I think in fairness we did get a crowd of 19,400 for the match against Australia. This compares well with other similar fixtures – for example when Ireland played Canada at Thomond Park in rugby, it attracted 19,000. But we said we would look at prices again and we have come up with what we think is a fair price.”

The FAI would not be drawn on any target attendance figure for the South Africa clash, however. “We’re not going to put any number on that. We’ll just see what happens,” said Sherrard.

Despite the poor result at Thomond against Australia, team management were very content with preparations and facilities last week.

“I think it all went well – except the result, or course,” said Sherrard. “We had no big issues with access or anything and we were very happy with the organisation. We had 7,000 kids coming to training and that’s very important for the future.

“The team will have less time to prepare this time as they will be coming in from Shannon after the Cyprus game, so there will be two days less training, but we will be hoping to do an open training session again.”

Before Ireland face the Bafana Bafana, they have a crucial World Cup qualifier away to Cyprus on September 5. Giovanni Trapattoni will name his squad to play Cyprus and South Africa next Friday.

Meanwhile goalkeeper Dean Kiely has refused to admit that his international career is over but is unrepentant for walking out on the squad. The West Brom star left the squad in May when told he was not playing in the friendly against Nigeria.

Trapattoni admitted he was “disappointed” with the 38-year-old’s decision. But Kiely said yesterday: “I enjoyed a very good year where I played some really good games, Colombia standing out as a man of the match performance.

“Then in the summer I just took myself out of it a little bit... at my age, with my experience, if my efforts and endeavour aren’t being rewarded then I don’t have to do that sort of thing.”