Jan de Koning puts SARU's Ellis Park attendance narrative under the microscope and finds it doesn't hold up. SARU claimed near-historic capacity figures for the England Test — 52,900 against a benchmark of 56,420 — and used that to dismiss media reports of sluggish sales as 'erroneous.' But the piece identifies the obvious hole in that defence: if sales were healthy, why did SARU slash prices midweek? And crucially, how many of those 52,900 were free tickets distributed on the Friday and Saturday before the game? SARU declined to answer both questions. The piece also revisits the simmering Loftus suite-holder dispute, where long-term leaseholders accuse SARU of overriding existing agreements to extract more money from their own privately leased boxes — again met with 'no comment.' De Koning's conclusion is pointed: SARU appear to have badly misjudged demand for the Nations Championship Tests while hiding behind opaque language, and the governing body should own that miscalculation before it becomes a legal problem. The Boks-All Blacks series in August will sell itself regardless — the question is whether SARU uses the breathing room to reset their hosting model or just banks the goodwill and repeats the same mistakes.