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.”