For many years I have always wondered how it was possible for people to get tickets to watch England play international games at Twickenham. If you search it in google, you had to be a member of a special club which required an annual fee in order to get tickets, and that was enough of a barrier to stop me searching further. Last week, after a long-time of trying to navigate England rugby's labyrinth of a ticketing system, we have finally managed to organise this for you as club members.

As this is a relatively new process to both you and the club, we will try and outline as much information as possible to you in this article, so that you can educate yourselves on how to get access to the ticket allocation that we have through England Rugby. Please bear in mind that some of these processes are not yet tried and tested and may be subject to change in the future.

Below is a rough outline all of the rules for you:

1. AARFC gets allocated a number of available tickets to purchase based on the amount of members that we have within the club and the league that we play in. Currently, this number sits at 14, and is not likely to increase in the coming years. I can't be certain at this stage if this means 14 tickets per game or 14 tickets for the entire rugby season, but we will find out in due course depending on interest.
2. In order to purchase these tickets through the club we will advertise the upcoming games that we have access to purchase tickets early, and you can message the International ticket officer and reserve tickets that you want to buy. Once we have received your order, we will attempt to reserve the tickets and purchase them on your behalf. Once we have the tickets that you want, you will pay the price of the ticket to the club, and the tickets will be transferred to your name on the eticketing system, outlined below.
3. In order to use this ticket, you must have an account with England Rugby's ticketing system. The ticket will then be transferred from the International Ticket Officers account, and put in your name. You will be able to use that ticket to enter the stands at Twickenham. Please note this system is not the same as GMs and some of the other England Rugby website logins. The website address is https://www.eticketing.co.uk/rfu/Events for those who want to create an account now.
4. The prices of these tickets are set by England Rugby. We do get access to a slight discount of around 10/15% off of the tickets final price. Please bear in mind the most England international tickets played at Twickenham Start at around the £50 For low interest international games, right up to £200 for the best seats at the six nations. Junior prices tend to be around £15 to £35 no matter where you are in the stadium. This is a link to the page informing clubs of the rough price scales they follow - https://help.englandrugby.com/hc/en-gb/articles/360006889951-Information-for-Club-Ticket-Secretaries-for-season-2024-25-Incl-Aways
5. The Club gets access to purchase these tickets before they go on general sale to the public. If there are leftover tickets after a certain deadline, these are then removed from our pool, and distributed out to be sold in general sale. If you ask too late after you are notified, you may not be able to purchase these through the club.
6. This service is only available to people who have paid their annual membership fees to Aylestone Athletic RFC. A club member may purchase tickets on behalf of somebody who is not a member, but that person must attend as the tickets will be in their name. If you have not paid your membership fees, you will not be able to use this service through the club.
7. Most importantly - If you are unable to attend an event that you have purchased a ticket for, you must Relist your ticket on the E ticketing website hosted by England Rugby. There is a crackdown going on by England Rugby against clubs and individuals who purchased tickets with the intention of reselling them at inflated prices through third party website. If individuals, clubs or members of a rugby club purchase tickets, and advertise them on third party resale websites outside of the eticketing system hosted by England rugby, this may cause England Rugby to fine, or in some other way sanction our club. Anyone found to be breaking this rule will, be subjected to disciplinary action by the club.

If anyone wants to try and figure out a bit more information on this from the England rugby perspective, be my guest. This might be a good place to start - https://www.englandrugby.com/run/club-management/finance-and-commercials/club-finances/international-ticket-allocation

If anyone has any questions, please contact Alex Maudsley or another committee member, and we will try and answer your questions to the best of our ability. I cannot emphasise how complicated this process has been to get this up and running for everyone.

Finally, once again, as this is a new process, please bear with us whilst we try and figure out how this is going to work. We have not done this before, so make sure you let us know in plenty of time if you do want to watch a game. Please note that for those interested in this years 6 nations, all of the tickets are on general sale already, and its only single seats left in Twickenham.

Thanks All