In spite of being set to receive an unexpected windfall with more than 60,000 tickets already sold for Saturday’s fixture, the Scottish Rugby Union has said that it has no plans to match the £75,000 goodwill payment that its English counterpart has offered to the touring Samoans.
The Rugby Football Union’s gesture was a response to a crisis that has seen Samoa’s Prime Minister Tuilaepa Sailele Malielegaoi take to the radio airwaves on the island to make a public fund-raising appeal because their rugby union, of which he is also chairman, could not afford to pay off debts with banks and also need funds to pay players in the national sevens and fifteens squads. The contribution from Twickenham officials matches a similar one made to Fiji last year ahead of a fixture from which they are set to raise £10 million and which will see the host nation’s players collect £22,000 match fees compared with £650 for the visiting players. The Scottish Rugby Union is also set to make much bigger profits than would normally be expected for a visit from one of the lesser nations, however Murrayfield officials pointed out that unlike some leading nations Scotland has previously helped the Samoan Rugby Union by touring the Pacific Islands and allowing them to generate funds by hosting major Tests.
“Our level of support will meet what we normally do,” said an SRU spokesman. “We’ve got a good relationship with the Samoan Rugby Union which goes back a number of years and we were there in 2012 so this is a reciprocal arrangement and we are sticking to the normal protocols.”
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here