BIG RUGBY UNION GATES AT HOME

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 79, Issue 198, 24 August 1935, Page 4

BIG RUGBY UNION GATES AT HOME

ENGLAND v - WALES NETTED A GOOD £15,000

International Rugby Union gates are running high in Great Britain. Unfortunately when a Dominion team goes home and wins all along the line, its Union does not get a shekel of the profits to aid the game within its own territories. The British Bugby Unions gather in all the glittering coin, while tht Dominion teams take most of the playing honours. Cricket arranges it a little differently, says the Sydney Referee. Last season the NET receipts of the England v. Wales match at Twickenham reached £15,002 —a record—so we may take it that the GROSS gate for the match was also a record. The attendance was 73,000! The biggest ever seen at Twickenham. The expenses of running the match must have been substantial, so the gross gate for the big day may have been in the vicinity of £20,000. Figures of this character may make mandarins of the great Australian game in Melbourne blink in wonder. That 73,000 crowd will be eclipsed in Sydney some day. The English Rugby Union owns the Twickenham ground, valued at £138,606

The overdraft now stands at only £lO,OO0 —no less than £17,180 having been paid off it last year. Clubs affiliated'to the English Rugby Union have been loaned for the purpose of building their grounds, £41,000. The Union has also provided a big area, which it owns, as parking space for its patrons. The Rugby Union certainly knows how to handle its finances. If the New South Wales Union, in a dim and distant past, had been similarly conservative, in the disposal of its wealth, it, too, would have been affluent. Time was when the Rugby Union housed its crowds of 50,000 on the Sydney Cricket Ground. That day may come again if the class of players that make magnificent teams —not one or two, but an entire fifteen—be found. There arc quite a few about now, not forgetting full-back K. P. Storey, the successor to Dr. A. W. Ross. If the All Blacks repeat history of 1924 by winning all the international matches, and then come across to Sydney to meet an Australian team of highpowered calibre back and forward, what size will the crowd be?