Peter Jackson: WRU see sense with price cut

When he retired after captaining Wales at the 1995 World Cup in Johannesburg, Mike Hall began to make the most of his degree in land economy from Cambridge University.
It led him into the property business involved in the Cardiff City Stadium development and a seat in the boardroom. His conversion from rugby captain to football club director makes him unusually qualified to compare and contrast the two codes.
Club football in Wales is booming as never before.  Swansea City are in the top half of the Premier League and through to the League Cup final at Wembley later this month. Hall’s club are so far clear at the top of the Championship that something will have to go badly wrong if they are not to join their neighbours in the promised land.
The perceived threat is that rugby could find itself caught in a pincer movement, that Manchester United et al making at least two trips to South Wales from next season would hit the rugby market.
Hall has proffered a stark prognosis for Welsh rugby at a time when the four regions are fighting for their lives. He does have a vested interest, of course, as a director of the Bluebirds but his warning about flaws in “fundamental strategies in Welsh rugby” cannot be swept under the carpet.
“I think they are walking blindfolded into the abyss,” he said.
His words paint an extreme image, the hyperbole spelling out a serious situation with the potential for dire consequences. It would be if the two football clubs played in stadia with room for 100,000 instead of half that number.
At least the Welsh Rugby Union is doing something to pre-empt the threat of declining attendances. This column has been unwavering in its criticism of the Union’s policy of making a largely working-class clientele fork out an escalating amount for international tickets.
The most recent hike, as revealed in The Rugby Paper earlier in the season, took the price for a seat at the Millennium Stadium yesterday to £80. After weeks of protests from fans and complaints that the working man has been priced out of watching his team, the WRU have at last seen the light.
They have reduced prices for next season’s home matches against Scotland and Italy and they are to be commended for doing so. Their decision is a tacit admission that the prices are too high although they will remain for next year’s home match against France.
In a commercial world, they carry more cache than the Scots and the Italians. Top prices for the Azzurri have been slashed to £65, a reduction of 18 per cent. The most expensive tickets against Scotland are down to £70, a drop of 12.5 per cent.
Chief executive Roger Lewis says the WRU wants to “play its part in supporting Welsh clubs and fans in these tough economic times”.
It may have taken them inordinately long, given that the hard times have been here for some years, but they deserve credit for grasping the nettle.
Sheer pragmatism left them no alternative other than row upon row of empty seats.