Scandal over Twickenham steward touts

I felt as if I had blundered into an audition for a Vinnie Jones movie. All around me were men for whom the word 'geezer' could have been invented. They all looked as hard as tarmac and talked in that hoarse, 'darn't-mess-wiv-me' voice.

But these were the men who control up to 10 per cent of tickets for every England international. These were the touts. And they were telling me that if I wanted to see England versus Ireland, I would have to pay them £500.

The easiest way to get a ticket is to join a rugby club, apply for one of its precious allocation and be lucky. Alternatively, befriend a generous businessman and get invited as a corporate guest. Otherwise, the only option is the black market.

I arrived three hours before the game and quickly realised that my £100 budget was a joke. A tout said he would pay £700 for a pair. What on earth would he sell them for?

Geezers march up and down the road chanting 'Anyonegotaspare ticket?' like a mantra. I asked one if he himself had a spare.

'How much you got?' he replied. 'A hundred quid.' 'You're not even at the party, mate. Four 'undred and we can start talking.'

I stopped at a burger van next to the grandly named 'International Club', a marquee on an industrial estate where Pall Mall Corporate Hospitality were entertaining businessmen who had paid upwards of £400 for a four-course lunch and a black-market ticket. A tout told me he had just paid £1,000 for three tickets.

It was clear that the geezers were not interested in selling to individuals on the street. They were feeding a huge internal market of unofficial agencies whose clients were waiting.

I decided to wait until kick-off when the market would, surely, collapse. It did not. A geezer standing right outside RFU headquarters wanted £350 each for two tickets. One clearly bore the name of 'Manchester FC', one of the oldest rugby clubs in the world.

Even 10 minutes after kick-off, tickets were still at £250 at the roundabout. I had a clear view of the club names on two tickets - 'Stoneham Park RFC' and 'Hayes RFC'. Many of their members would have loved those tickets. So who flogged them?

A full 25 minutes after kick-off, the streets were empty and I saw a trio of touts heading for home. I tried once more with my £100 offer. 'Nah. I paid more than that for these,' growled the main man. I waved £120 in his face. It was clearly agony for him to sell for less than he had paid but these leftovers would soon be worthless. He handed over a ticket.

I legged it to my corner seat in the East Lower Stand and arrived 31 minutes into the game with the score 17-6. I had missed a lot but the best was yet to come.

My ticket had a face value of £42 and was issued to 'St Brendan's OB RFC'. After the game, I contacted St Brendan's. Richard Kolanko, the secretary, said: 'I'm very sad. We distribute our tickets in good faith and this is very bad news.'

He knew the original recipient of my ticket, who is now in big trouble. The club, born out of a former Catholic grammar school in Bristol, produced former Lion Mark Regan among others, but things have been hard of late. With an RFU investigation looming, they are about to get harder.

The penalties range from a reduced Twickenham allocation to ostracism. But I hear that the RFU has secret new proposals to counter the problem more effectively.

The touts and the unofficial hospitality companies say they are just playing the market. Fair enough. Market forces certainly beat communism. Indeed, the likes of Pall Mall accuse the RFU of hypocrisy on the grounds that the governing body sells its own official hospitality packages (for around £640 a head).

I have a great deal of sympathy with any small, under-funded club which is tempted to make ends meet by selling on its Twickenham tickets to someone offering silly money. Most fans, I suspect, would not have a problem with that either.

What rankles - and what eats away at people's faith in the present ticket system - is that there are so many rugby 'fans' who would rather stay away and make a deceitful profit than let another fan sit in their seat. They have a lot more to answer for than the average geezer.