No sympathy for All Blacks brawn drain ?

Sandwich

Hadnt really made the connection before, but mentioned in passing on Newstalk's rugby chat this evening:

Should we have any sympathy for New Zealand loosing its players to the Euro/Pound of the northern hemisphere when they have been bleeding the pacific islands dry and and hobbling the chances of what are small nations anyway on the international front themselves for years ?

What goes around comes around.

Size=everything

Good point!

Zzippy

Sandwich wrote: »

Hadnt really made the connection before, but mentioned in passing on Newstalk's rugby chat this evening:

Should we have any sympathy for New Zealand loosing its players to the Euro/Pound of the northern hemisphere when they have been bleeding the pacific islands dry and and hobbling the chances of what are small nations anyway on the international front themselves for years ?

What goes around comes around.

The answer is no.

[Jackass]

I don't think I was ever in danger of having sympathy for the All Blacks for a couple of reasons.

1/ Because they produce such an immense amount of talent that they will always have gifted doestic players
2/ Because of your point above
3/ Because they are making a complete t!t out of managing their domestic game, international selection policy and player contracts.

The majority of players want to play in NZ and the ones that are leaving, from my impression, are being pushed out and are doing so with a bitter edge.

The only concern I have is that I don't want this "brawn drain" to impact on the development of Irish players at the provences.

It's certainly going the way of quick fixes in the provences to sign a SH player instead of having the patience to develop academy players as the competitions get more and more competetive and more intense...it's a symptom of the professional game imo and will eventually end up like Soccer in the long run with the top teams in Europe maybe having a quarter of there first team being domestic players.

Having said that though, for every player we sign to provences here, we've usually lost a player of simular quality to the GP or to a lesser extent Top14, so it's nothing major to worry about.

But only if the criteria for playing for the Irish team changes from it's current stance of you must play for Leinster or Munster or else we'll pick a very average Ulster player ahead of you unless you've won at least 1 HC and 2 to 3 domestic titles with your club outside of Ireland before you can get into the squad. (Reddan, Murphy, Brennan et al. - Casey still not getting a look in - O'Driscoll wasn't looked at when he played T14, now at Munster he's a regular in match day 22)

Sandwich

[Jackass] wrote: »

But only if the criteria for playing for the Irish team changes from it's current stance of you must play for Leinster or Munster or else we'll pick a very average Ulster player ahead of you unless you've won at least 1 HC and 2 to 3 domestic titles with your club outside of Ireland before you can get into the squad. (Reddan, Murphy, Brennan et al. - Casey still not getting a look in - O'Driscoll wasn't looked at when he played T14, now at Munster he's a regular in match day 22)

I remember Neil Francis or Paul Wallace quoting an IRFU blazer, who when asked was it official policy to select the Irish based player if a selction decision was 50-50 between an irish based player and a foreign based one said: 'if its a 70-30 decision foreign-Irish, we select the Irish based one.'

mickyt

Sandwich wrote: »

I remember Neil Francis or Paul Wallace quoting an IRFU blazer, who when asked was it official policy to select the Irish based player if a selction decision was 50-50 between an irish based player and a foreign based one said: 'if its a 70-30 decision foreign-Irish, we select the Irish based one.'

yeh its quite sad really that so many good irish players are slipping out of the radar playing there rugby in England and France.

Surely it would be a benifit of them playing in such high leagues?

I know the good thing about keeping them in Ireland is that there all used to each others play etc.. so thats how they manage to play at such a high standard for ireland and their provinces, but england, france, all those teams, they do well picking players for 7-8 different clubs rather then just the 3-4 teams max that Ireland pick there players from.

Bob Casey as an example would of been great playing for ireland through out the years. he has won player of the year over there a few years back. now thats a league thats a better standard then the Magners league.

so why overlook him and others.

anonymous_joe

Regarding the AB's - I remember chatting to someone who worked for the IRB a couple of years ago, and he was livid about the practices of NZ in terms of luring players from the Pacific Islands.

It's a pity, but it's not as if they've never taken advantage of superior economics to lure talent.

As regards Ireland not picking foreign based players, as a Leinster fan, I'm delighted we kept BOD, but it would have been good for Irish rugby if he had left for France. Because it would have forced a change in thinking.

mickyt

anonymous_joe wrote: »

As regards Ireland not picking foreign based players, as a Leinster fan, I'm delighted we kept BOD, but it would have been good for Irish rugby if he had left for France. Because it would have forced a change in thinking.

Good point, hardly would of not picked him for games.

I had hoped that it was more O'Sullivan not having the conviction to pick players from England Etc. hopefully DK will accept that we need good players in the squad regardless of location.

I mean Tommy Bowe is heading to Ospreys isn't he?
lets see if he keeps test status. although Easterby did so

I think we might of lost Neill Best from International rugby for good to.
He was on the fringes and deserved more chances, but when he goes to Northampton, I doubt he will get much of a look in. but he needs to advance his career so good luck to him

hardCopy

I'm always a little bit torn when it comes to the home based selection bias.

On the one hand it makes it harder for guys to make themselves known to Irish coaches when they can't unseat the guy ahead of them at provincial level.

But on the other hand, it protects the domestic game. If O'Driscoll had gone to Biaritz back then, who's to say a couple of other Leinster players might not have taken notice of all the money available in France, especially when they're left playing in a team without it's star player.

The selection bias is our only weapon against our own brawn drain. I'd hate to see Irish domestic rugby go the way of Irish domestic football. once we start to lose our stars (and they're few and far between as it is) we'll quickly start to lose crowds at games, then there's less money to compete with foreign teams and it could spiral quickly from there.

zAbbo

There's no tax incentive for the Ulster boys to stay.

Keeping our best players in Ireland makes sense, we get to control the number of games they play which benefits the national team.

dub_skav

I think that having all our players playing for a small number of teams (effectively 3) means that there is very little variety in the way players are coached. This can lead to stagnation and a lack of fresh ideas.

If, for example we had guys being coached by Guy Noves, Ian McGeechan, John Brain and Eddie Jones you would have lots of different ideas coming into the Irish training sessions. As it is we have all the forwards bringing Declan Kidney's ideas and most of the backline bringing Cheika's ideas.

thehighground

dub_skav wrote: »

I think that having all our players playing for a small number of teams (effectively 3) means that there is very little variety in the way players are coached. This can lead to stagnation and a lack of fresh ideas.

If, for example we had guys being coached by Guy Noves, Ian McGeechan, John Brain and Eddie Jones you would have lots of different ideas coming into the Irish training sessions. As it is we have all the forwards bringing Declan Kidney's ideas and most of the backline bringing Cheika's ideas.

Like, would you be happy if the Irish backline had players coached by Pat Howard/Lofreda, David Knox, Alan Gaffney, Tony McGahan, Matt Williams, Mark McCall (who has just been appointed head coach of Castres) and forwards coached by Jim Williams (who has just been appointed Assist Wallabies Coach), Brewer, Williams (welsh bloke at Ulster) ? Shocking really that Geordan Murphy finds it difficult to hold down a place on the Irish team considering the coaches he has had :eek:

thehighground

zAbbo wrote: »

There's no tax incentive for the Ulster boys to stay.

Keeping our best players in Ireland makes sense, we get to control the number of games they play which benefits the national team.

We need to keep the provinces competitive - and an Irish cap is a major incentive for players staying in Ireland and is probably one of the few playing field levelers the IRFU have with regard to competing for talent. I doubt very much as well if the Doug Howletts of this world would be interested in playing for Munster if ROG, POC, DOC etc. were all playing in France.

padser

hardCopy wrote: »

The selection bias is our only weapon against our own brawn drain.

That's a really strong point. It really comes down to this. Are we more concerned about the long term needs of the Irish team (and how these are probably best served by having strong competitive provences, where we can control the number of games they play) or the short term gain of having a slightly better player in the team who plays in England?

It is a little counter intuative however if we didn't have a selection bias would the provences be able to maintain their players?

hardCopy wrote: »

I'd hate to see Irish domestic rugby go the way of Irish domestic football. once we start to lose our stars (and they're few and far between as it is) we'll quickly start to lose crowds at games, then there's less money to compete with foreign teams and it could spiral quickly from there.

Yeah I'v got to agree with this as well.

I also think the Magners league really needs to come on in leaps and bounds over the next few years. Players like O Driscoll, D'Arcy, Heaslip etc spent most of the club season without top class competive action (no offence to ML but some of the games I attended were pretty terrible). That's not something that can go on indefinately.