Edinburgh fans rewarded with ticket prices for cup clash By DAVID FERGUSON Published on Tuesday 24 January 2012 04:03 EDINBURGH will keep tickets at the regular price for the Heineken Cup quarter-final with Toulouse in April. Edinburgh chief executive Craig Docherty insisted that his priority was to reward the club's season ticket holders by offering a reduced charge to them as well as continue with the £5 offer to students and under-18s, and keep the £15/£20 adult prices. He told The Scotsman: "The real priority is to get the biggest crowd we have ever had for a professional club rugby match in Scotland and so we want as many rugby supporters as possible from across the country to come to Murrayfield. The half-price student deal has worked well and senior citizens will be the usual £10 and adults £15 if they buy in advance or £20 on match-day. We will also be running hospitality packages. It's not about ramping up prices and ripping people off, but using this opportunity to build on the success the squad has created by turning more people on to rugby and persuading more people up and down the east coast of Scotland that Edinburgh is their pro rugby team. This is the biggest professional game we have probably ever had in the history of Scottish rugby, so we are also keen to showcase our pro game to a wider European audience, and if we can get Glasgow fans across to help us do that too we'll be delighted. The pay-off to Scottish rugby will be significant with a split of Heineken's quarter-final pay-out leaving the SRU with around £450,000 and also the possibility that Edinburgh could take more than the normal 50/50 share in the gate receipts. A number of clubs handed home quarter-finals have switched them in recent seasons to bigger grounds to increase their income and by doing so have been afforded a 65 per cent share of gate money. Edinburgh have no need to move but may be successful in arguing that the 67,100-capacity Murrayfield is already a bigger stadium than any other home club can offer in the tournament and so they are due the same 65 percent. The record attendance for an Edinburgh game at Murrayfield is the 17,174 that turned up for the Celtic Cup Final in 2003, where Ulster defeated the hosts 27-21 with two penalties in the dramatic final minutes from David Humphreys. Toulouse have technically attracted Murrayfield's biggest crowd for a club professional rugby union match, with 51,326 flooding in to see them defeat Stade Francais in a stultifying 2005 Heineken Cup Final. Edinburgh captain Greig Laidlaw, who joined the Scotland squad preparing for the RBS Six Nations yesterday, admitted that the noise of the crowd, particularly at key moments when the team was defending its own line and then when pushing for the vital fourth try in the second half, had played a key role in lifting the side. For that reason alone, he was pleased to hear that the club is keeping the ticket prices down and doing its utmost to ensure a bigger crowd again for the quarter-final. "It's a tremendous personal achievement for the players and coaches to secure a home quarter-final," he said. We're delighted to be able to repay the support of the fans who have been right there with us throughout the group stages at some incredible matches. Yesterday's game was the perfect example of the fans playing their part in another great win. We all knew that, no matter what, we needed that fourth try to get the bonus point and the noise they created as we piled on the pressure was awesome. It's fantastic to make it this far but we're not finished yet. There's a lot of belief and talent in this young team and we're determined to go further than any Scottish team has before and book a place in the semis in front of another record-breaking crowd. The exact scheduling of the Toulouse game is still to be decided, with the quarter-finals strung out across the weekend of 6/7/8 April to maximise TV audiences on Sky. Docherty stated that they would be requesting a Friday night match to kick-off the weekend, but accepted that they may have no choice. That will be our request because we want to avoid a clash with any club rugby that is on that weekend, as is the normal plan, and because Friday nights have become really popular for us. But, we don't have much say in it. This is a big weekend for the broadcasters and European rugby, and we're happy with work with them and play our part in that. Our supporters proved at the weekend that Sunday afternoons can work very well too so we'll wait and see. If Edinburgh do win their quarter-final they will face a semi-final in Dublin, with the new Aviva Stadium at Lansdowne Road the preferred last four option of both quarter-finalists Munster and Ulster. Docherty added: "The good thing is that we're involved in the knock-out stages and we've already had the SRU management asking how they can help us promote the game, which is a refreshing move on from the past. The tickets went on sale as soon as the final whistle blew on the game with London Irish and we'll be working hard to promote this match across the country and see if we can set a new record and give the players the best backing possible against Toulouse.