Tighter returns deadline to be considered but Duffy says price hike not a factor in crowd deficit, writes SEAN MORAN

THE GAA will look at tightening up the rules on the return of All-Ireland tickets after the association was embarrassed at the hurling final earlier this month by a sub-capacity attendance.

The third instalment of the Kilkenny-Tipperary rivalry, despite having produced two hugely entertaining finals in 2009 and ’10, attracted 81,214 compared to the football final sell-out of 82,300.

“That shouldn’t have happened,” according to GAA director general Páraic Duffy. “We turned away hundreds of requests for tickets in the lead up to that final and would certainly have got rid of those tickets had they come back in time.

“We will be looking at placing a reasonable deadline on the return of All-Ireland final allocations with the proviso that counties who don’t meet that deadline will have to pay for the tickets.”

There had been speculation at the time that the rise in price of tickets for the final from €70 to €80 had played a role in the shortfall but Duffy said he didn’t believe that this was a factor, although the GAA’s management committee will be reviewing the whole area of ticket prices at its next meeting.

The €10 increase in the price of All-Ireland tickets had been introduced to offset the losses caused by the decision earlier in the summer to cut by €5 admission prices to all other All-Ireland matches from qualifiers to semi-finals.

“I think that was a fair trade-off,” according to Duffy, “and we’ve had hardly any complaints about the additional cost for finals. The overall restructure cost us in the region of €500,000 – that’s what we’re budgeting for – but for any regular followers the cost of following a team all the way to an All-Ireland final actually went down.”

This weekend the management committee will look at the overall effectiveness of price strategy and there will also be discussion of admission prices at provincial championship matches, which didn’t see a decrease in headline ticket prices although a number of promotional packages were introduced, and showed a decline over the summer whereas the attendances at All-Ireland qualifiers, quarter- and semi-finals rose.

“Obviously revenues have taken a hit,” says Duffy about the repricing, “but we would prefer to see numbers up. For example there was a lot of interest in the block purchase of tickets, which allowed clubs buy 15 for €150. For the Kilkenny-Waterford hurling semi-final something like 9,000 tickets were distributed under that scheme.”

Nonetheless Duffy cautioned that it’s difficult to draw hard and fast conclusions from the attendance figures, as every season depends to a large extent on what teams are drawn against each other.

“It’s not a black-and-white situation because the pairings are so important. For instance the Limerick-Wexford football qualifier was one of the most exciting matches of the summer and one of the most controversial and it wasn’t on television.

“Yet it drew a small crowd because the support for football in the counties is traditionally limited.”