34,000 tickets sold so far for South Africa match

MURRAYFIELD is not going to be anywhere near sold out on Saturday when Scotland face South Africa in their second EMC Autumn Test but, despite the heavy loss to the All Blacks, ticket sales are on track to surpass the most recent attendances for the fixture.

The SRU reported that just over 34,000 tickets had been sold by late yesterday, which is more than 20,000 down on last Saturday's crowd figure, but is just 2,000 short of the total from two years ago when Scotland lost narrowly 14-10 to what was a stronger Springbok line-up. The attendance for Scotland's World Cup match with South Africa in 1999 remains the highest in recent times, with just under 60,000 inside Murrayfield that day and, when Scotland defeated the Springboks 21-6 in 2002, over 58,000 fans turned up. The attendance dropped to 44,000 in 2004 then 30,342 for a World Cup warm-up match in 2007.

There was an inevitable fear that ticket sales would slump this week as a result of the 49-3 New Zealand defeat. However, over 4,000 tickets have been sold since the weekend and the SRU remain confident that the 2008 figure of 36,037 could be surpassed by Saturday's 2.30pm kick-off time.