WALES will almost certainly abandon a contingency plan to use Twickenham as their home base for the Six Nations because of the cost.
Hiring the 82,000-seater stadium and paying for an army of stewards is estimated at around £750,000-a-match, an amount which will increase the Welsh Rugby Union’s quandary over how to avoid the infinitely heavier price of defending their title behind closed doors in Cardiff.
Transferring their home matches against Scotland, France and Italy to Twickenham would leave the WRU footing a bill of more than £2m, as well as a myriad of logistical issues over such an unprecedented move.
“They will have done their sums and come to the conclusion that the overall figure is prohibitive,” an expert in sports event management told The Rugby Paper. “The costs of hiring Twickenham have gone up significantly in the last year or two.
“It could still be worth the WRU’s while if they get 80,000 which is a big if, especially against Italy. Whatever money they make, using Twickenham will still hurt them because of the huge cost.”
Wales lost £14m last year in ticket revenue alone from having to stage their home matches against Ireland and England in front of 74,500 empty seats in Cardiff. The same grim scenario for their opening home fixture this year, against Scotland on February 12, will cost them another £6m at least.
The Six Nations is understood to have dismissed any question of delaying their 15-match tournament due to start in 27 days’ time. That gives the organisers precious little time to consider staging the entire competition in England, the only country where crowds are still allowed.
Unless tighter Covid restrictions enforced elsewhere are eased, Ireland-Wales and Scotland-England on February 5 will be limited to an attendance of 5,000 and 500 respecitvely. Both matches have long been sold-out.
France, home to Italy on February 6, will also be limited to 5,000. Instead of playing to full houses totaling virtually 200,000, aggregate attendances for the opening round will amount to fewer than half Leicester‘s average crowd at Welford Road.
Wayne Pivac’s Wales stand to be hit hardest of all, having hoisted admission prices to an all-time high of £115 for the best seats at the Principality Stadium. A contingency plan to borrow Tottenham’s 62,850-seater stadium in north London is unlikely to get off the ground because two of Wales’ three Six Nations dates clash with Spurs’ home fixtures in the Premier League.
Spurs ruled out because of Prem fixtures
Scotland would run the risk of similar snags in respect of seeking refuge across the border in Newcastle where they packed St James’ Park for home matches against South Africa and Samoa during the 2015 World Cup.
“Twickenham is undoubtedly the most sensible alternative venue to Cardiff for Wales,” a former WRU official said. “But it has to work financially. If it doesn’t, then the Union has to enter into intensive negotiations with the Welsh government and do some sort of deal.”
Wales’ First Minister, Mark Drakeford, has acknowledged the WRU’s contingency planning for an alternative venue as ‘perfectly legitimate for a multi-million pound organisation’.
Drakeford does not expect the Omicron wave to peak for another two weeks, at least. “Of course we all prefer to be in a position where the Six Nations could go ahead with people watching the games here in Wales,” he said. “The issue is whether we can do that safely, whether the number of people falling ill with the virus is so high that adding further to that risk would be a responsible thing to do. We won’t know that for a couple of weeks.”
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