Australian rugby fans are the big losers in Stadium Australia's decision to restrict tickets to the Test against the Lions on July 14 to just 69,000.

There are fears that the pool of tickets available to the public could be as little as 4000, which will be available in the next few weeks. Stadium Australia is undergoing a reconfiguration programme.

ARU Managing Director John O'Neill says there is understandable outrage in the community over the lack of access to the game that could rival last year's Bledisloe Cup spectacular between Australia and New Zealand in terms of crowd figures.

"This Test is a blockbuster event which could have filled Stadium Australia three times over," O'Neill said. "Now we face the prospect of offering very few tickets for public sale because of the capacity issue.

"Through a combination of Stadium Memberships, SFS members, allocations to rugby clubs, in-bound tourists on travel packages, our own memberships and other legal and contractual obligations, the pool of tickets available for public sale is minimal.

"One of the conditions of getting the British Lions out here was guaranteeing a further 8000 tickets for travel packages so Lions supporters could follow the tour. It all eats into our ability to put tickets on public sale.

"We had hoped to go to the market with as many as 20,000 seats but clearly that is not possible given the circumstances we are facing."

O'Neill said the ARU lobbied both the State Government and Stadium Australia last year to given consideration to postponing the reconfiguration programme until after the Rugby World Cup in 2003.

"Clearly, rugby union has the capacity to fill this ground for our big events. Unfortunately, other codes can't pull these big crowds, so we had little support for our proposal."