Good half from the women - obviously a huge gulf in class. Stanley's left foot step is Tuivasa-Sheck-esque!

Tried to give the organisation the benefit of the doubt up to now, but based on the PR for today's game suggesting a record crowd for a women's rugby match of either code and huge "sales", and then seeing a largely empty stadium, its clear they are just making s*** up.

Was down as low availability again on the ticketing website, saying tickets are low availability might have the opposite effect organisers want it to, people might think only the really expensive or poor view tickets are left, when it's not the case.

Claiming tickets are limited is a common trick from promoters, for music gigs they often say '1st release sold out!' for example but you arent to know how many tickets were in that 1st release. But you have use this tactic wisely or you lose credibiliity, and this WC has lost credibility.

They have now reduced standing tickets at Wire from £40 to £25 (and seems refunding those who paid full price) which is good news but its a couple of weeks too late and the ludicrous £70 seats at Hull still remain.

Looks like they are about to sell out the cheap tickets on the ends at Wigan but how many more expensive ones they shift down the side will be interesting, for reference they sold 22k at Wigan for the 2013 quarters and in my eyes PNG are better opposition than France.

If you are going to go down the "selling out fast" route, you have to offrer up the best seats for a really great price to begin with and work out from there.

The problem we have seen is anything other than the ends is £40+ and the Centre line £70, or I think it was £87 at saints for the opening game.

You cannot start high and lower the prices as that just pisses people off.

The pricing strategy just screams incompetence to me. Nobody is saying they should have gone with the £5 ticket approach of the last world cup but they've gone far to much the other way. Sure the opening game and maybe the quarter finals onwards could support the levels they went in with. But the £40 for standing at wire for a group game etc were idiotic. On top of which you have Dutton's questionable statements and the basic nature/poor performance of the ticketing website and here we are.

What's sad is that the expensive tickets have led to poor crowds which have fed their own narrative. Realistic prices for the group games would have given them a much better chance of building the enthusiasm for the knock out stage which in turn would have seen bigger crowds even with the higher prices.

But why anyone who is supposed to be steeped in RL would think the prices for some of these games were the way to go really baffles me. It was obvious from the start that things were off.

I think what has been annoying as well has been at games seeing people move to the middle, you'd have been pretty miffed if you did fork out £70 for a halfway line ticket at the kcom say, then lots of people move to the halfway and sit around you having only paid £25 for a corner view ticket

I'll be doing exactly this at Hudds on Friday. Can't believe even one person has paid 70 quid for a ticket. Not very bright if they have.

Press release this morning "due to high demand for standing tickets, we have reduced prices in the south stand from £40 to £25" right idea but wrong message, if something is in high demand, you don't reduce the price!

The tickets weren`t in high demand though at £40, that is why the RFL needed to drop the price.

Their reasoning regarding the price reduction is just spin.