THE SCOTSMAN REPORTS

SRU left counting cost of autumn Tests
DAVID FERGUSON
GORDON McKie has confirmed that the SRU will make a financial loss on the autumn Test series after poor crowds for the games with Romania and the Pacific Islanders, though they attracted a record crowd for Saturday's Australia fixture.

The SRU Chief Executive had staged all the games on Saturdays (with 2.30pm kick-offs) and cut adult ticket prices to £10, in an effort to reverse dwindling interest. The Tests then went up against the full club calendar for the first two weeks and McKie sparked controversy by suggesting clubs had helped keep crowds low - fewer than 32,000 bought tickets for the first two games - by not moving to other times in the weekend.

McKie is to consider moving autumn Test matches to other times, as part of an overall review with SRU staff on how the 2006 autumn series has gone.

McKie said: "We set a budget to break even this year and I remain hopeful that we'll be close to doing that, which after eight years of losses out of ten is an achievement, but there are lots of variables in a budget and one of the variables is the autumn Tests.

"We do have a deficit against our budget [for the autumn Tests], but it is a relatively small six-figure sum. There are other variables which will come into play between now and the end of April. Maybe we'll do better with Italy or maybe we'll do better with the pro games. I'm not particularly worried about it at the moment."

This article was posted on 28-Nov-2006, 08:25 by Hugh Barrow.