Scotland may give up World Cup ties
Thursday December 01 2005
SRU prepared to hand matches back after squabble over ticket pricing rights
The Scottish rugby Union is involved in an argument with the organisers of the 2007 Rugby World Cup in France over the right to set ticket prices for the matches to be held in Edinburgh.
The matches at Murrayfield over November were nowhere near sold out, and SRU chief executive Gordon McKie has spken to the IRB about the problem, saying that if Murrayfield is to achieve the IRB target of being at least 80 per cent full for each World Cup match, there will have to be an 'imaginative' pricing policy.
Should the IRB remain inflexible, McKie did not rule out handing back the matches to France.
We hope that by next week we will be clearer on the pricing strategy around those games, McKie said in The Times on Thursday.
The organisers dictate the prices, not us. We dont want to host any games where we do not have any influence or control over tickets in line with market demand.
What we are trying to do next year is become much more realistic in our (Scotland's) pricing strategy but there is a significantly different price structure for 2007, in line with the Rugby World Cup protocol.
"We do not want to take one step forward and two steps back.
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