ENGLISH RUGBY CHIEFS are looking into how a Test match ticket allocated to fly-half Owen Farrell ended up being sold for more than six times its face value.
The £70 (€85 euros) ticket for the 13-10 Six Nations win against Ireland at Twickenham on Saturday sold for £440 the evening before the match.
While Farrell is understood to have acted correctly and not profited from the sale, Rugby Football Union officials will still want to know how the ticket ended up on re-sale website Viagogo.
Although Twickenham has a capacity of more than 80,000, England internationals at the south-west London ground routinely sell out, with tickets — distributed via rugby clubs and not usually on direct general sale — hard to come by.
For several seasons the RFU have been trying to crack down on black market sales and a spokesman, who absolved Farrell of blame, said: “We are looking at how this ticket came to be available on a secondary ticketing site, something we take extremely seriously.”