Your feature in the April edition in its reference to the Twickenham Ticket Office staff was guilty only of understatement. Richard Ankerson’s description of such a mammoth task carried out with such expertise, commitment and tact as “not a bad team effort” elevates modesty and self-effacement to “Olympic” standards. I have known and observed all of them in action during the whole of their service with the RFU and they are, quite simply, splendid and a credit to Twickenham.

However, I must take issue with the contention in an otherwise excellent article that “some 91% of tickets go to the game”.

10% of the seating is represented by debenture allocations, a large proportion of which were taken up by business interests and commercial institutions or nominated representatives thereof, for purposes of corporate entertainment and patronage.

The RFU was quite properly advised that in order to achieve most favourable tax treatment, applicants for debentures were required to be in membership of a Rugby Club or Constituent Body, that criterion was incorporated into the application conditions and obviously was quite easily achievable, merely by the payment to that club or CB of an annual subscription with no further membership responsibility required.

All perfectly legal, respectable and eminently sensible and endorsed at the outset by the clubs who were content to sacrifice a large proportion of their erstwhile ticket allocation in order to fund the rebuilding of Twickenham, and, I have no doubt will continue to support the roll-over of debenture contracts, if and when they are persuaded that desirable capital projects are perceived to be needed and in prospect.

Whilst many debenture holders could legitimately merit description as representative of “the game” many would not, except in the narrowest nominal sense.

However, I have no quarrel with the debenture concept (it has, after all, given us a magnificent stadium) provided that we keep in mind that the 18% of the ticketing diverted from the clubs was for a specific purpose and it must never come to be accepted as a milk cow producing income for Twickenham’s discretionary deployment.

Otherwise, well done and keep up the good work!

Derek Mann