General Rugby Discussion

former total

The Pro12 can't expand. Bringing in rubbish teams from England or elsewhere will compound the problems, not solve them.

Bringing Russia into the mix?!

Podge_irl

icdg wrote: »

I think in the end any expansion of the Pro 12 will stay well clear of England. Too many governance problems - these are teams after all that are under the RFU's jurisdiction. What happens, for example, if (don't laugh - yes I am aware of the extraordinary feat London Welsh "accomplished" of finishing a top flight season with zero wins) the London teams, after some private investment, starting to finish in the European Cup qualification places regularly? Could that mean extra spaces for England over and above the six/seven they get already? What would that do to the already limited qualification prospects of the Celtic nations? There's too many issues.

English teams playing in a competition governed by other unions is simply a non-starter.

Anyway, expansion is the last thing the Pro12 needs.

Adbrowne

Podge_irl wrote: »

English teams playing in a competition governed by other unions is simply a non-starter.

Anyway, expansion is the last thing the Pro12 needs.

The fixtures and format this year seems to have taken the results of the survey into consideration to some degree so hopefully we see some progress there. The pro12 needs to address its current issues in the short term before any expansion plans are considered.

former total

thomond2006 wrote: »

Judgement Days would have to be moved around each year to different provinces. Easily done if you rent non-rugby grounds.

Where though? (Keeping in mind GAA grounds are not an option)

The Aviva is the only possible venue really.

thomond2006

former total wrote: »

Where though? (Keeping in mind GAA grounds are not an option)

The Aviva is the only possible venue really.

Well I am assuming that GAA grounds would be an option. I know there is a lot of red tape to get around. IMO Thomond Park could host it.

TICKLE_ME_ELMO

thomond2006 wrote: »

Well I am assuming that GAA grounds would be an option. I know there is a lot of red tape to get around. IMO Thomond Park could host it.

Haven't the GAA said no to anything other than the World Cup?

jacothelad

thomond2006 wrote: »

Judgement Days would have to be moved around each year to different provinces. Easily done if you rent non-rugby grounds.

What is the point of new purpose built stadia if they are then to stand empty for the biggest games of the year in order to lose all the revenue of massive games and pay it over to outside bodies who have sfa to do with rugby. Just because it's done elsewhere doesn't make it right for Ireland. Season ticket holders pay up front to see home games, they don't stump up the cash to have to travel for hours and have to pay again. It's nonsense frankly.

thomond2006

jacothelad wrote: »

What is the point of new purpose built stadia if they are then to stand empty for the biggest games of the year in order to lose all the revenue of massive games and pay it over to outside bodies who have sfa to do with rugby. Just because it's done elsewhere doesn't make it right for Ireland. Season ticket holders pay up front to see home games, they don't stump up the cash to have to travel for hours and have to pay again. It's nonsense frankly.

MarinersBlues

My thoughts:

Expand Pro12 to 20, two divisions of 10.

Two conferences of 5 in each.
Home and away games against teams in your own conference.
One game with each team in the other in a neutral venue, or have alternating home and away agreements between teams.
Teams seeded according to previous finishing position.

1st division has Quarter finals and a relegation play off seeded on conference finishing positions.
2nd division has a final.
Relegation losers and 2nd div winners playoff for top tier status the following year.
Can change this to one straight up/down if the standard of the second division is good enough

Stage No. of games
QF 14
SF 15
Final 16
Rel1 14
Rel2 15

Pluses
Less games, can avoid the international windows effectively.
Gives developing countries a chance.
Bring in bigger potential audiences.
If div 2 teams develop the TV money could be VERY substantial.
Give developing countries something to work to.
Keep all the derbies.
Potential for "Judgement Day" with the neutral venue fixtures

Potential Problems
Relegation, but if the league is to grow people will have to man up about this.
Less fixtures, but I think that is not necessarily all bad.








Conference 1

Conference 2

Connacht

Leinster

Glasgow

Ulster

Scarlets

Munster

Edinburgh

Ospreys

Cardiff

Dragons













Conference 1

Conference 2

Zebre

Treviso

Georgia 1

Georgia 2

Romania 1

Romania 2

Spain 1

Spain 2

An other

An other

molloyjh

At the end of the day we need to identify what the problems with the league are before figuring out the solutions. And there's a few problems.

1. Poor quality sides in the lower half of the league.
2. Poor revenues due to poor support levels & disparate markets.
3. Loss of large number of international players during international windows.

We're not going to be able to do much about the quality of the sides in the competition. There aren't exactly quality teams idle that we could pluck up and stick into the league. Our only real hope is to develop what we already have in some way(s).

The revenues are a function of the level of support and the fact that we're divided over 4 countries, 1 of which speaks a totally different language and the other which is Italian . The only way to improve the support levels is to develop the competition and build the brand. We can't do much about the way the markets are structured unless we do away with the Italians, which would help a bit. But then what? We've nobody to replace them with that would make the competition any better and it would further limit what we can do with the competition if we only have 10 sides in it.

The only thing that we can actively target and change is the loss of players during the international windows. And we can only do that by putting an end to games being played in those windows. But that limits the number of weeks we have available to us and reduces the number of competitive matches each season which isn't ideal.

Ultimately the only real options, as I see it, are:

1. Get rid of the Italians and restructure the season so that we do not play during international windows, otherwise remain as-is.
2. Look at a Conference System with the current teams with a view to restructuring the competition in a way that might make it a better product.

I don't see any other way of making 12 teams work without playing in international windows but while still improving the competition.

former total

Yep, the best thing that could happen the Pro12 from an Irish perspective is if the Italians threw their hat at it and decided to focus on their own domestic tournament.

Fewer crap games, potentially no clashes with international weekends. A bit of lost income from tickets but nothing major.

sydthebeat

molloyjh wrote: »

1. Poor quality sides in the lower half of the league.

.

i was thinking on the italian teams this morning, why they are so poor any why the seem to be regressing rather than progressing.
i came to the conclusion that since Troncon and Domingez they havent had a decent half back pairing to build upon.

This isnt helped by the fact that there are only two professional teams in which for them to develop these players at pro 12 level and get them ready for international test rugby. That means in essence that they havent been able to search or entice out decent half backs from the international scene to ply their trade in italy as their playing time would be diminished in favour of home grown players... rightly so a lot would argue.
This means however that the fulcrum of the italian teams has always been weak... with a myriad of players being tried out, in the 10 jersey especially, leading to no continuity or ability of player s around them to flourish under a system that has controlling half backs.

we might see a change this season with marty banks moving to treviso, and zebre possibly bringing in someone to replace haimona, which was a spectacular failed experiment in my opinion. Banks should be ahead Allen, but probably wont be.. and both will be ahead of Ian Mckinley in the pecking order..... canna and Padovani at Zebre dont exactly scream top quality.

as a resolution to this problem i think the italian RFU should introduce a quota system, and encourage by financial means, the ability of both teams to attract marquee players in pivotal positions.. almost like the japenese club system (though i appreciate there is much more money in japan, but some of that is due to the marquee players that play there)

Imagine the likes of Colin Slade giving a couple of seasons to treviso... or Kahn Fotuali'i at zebre to finish off his career.....

thomond2006

The Benetton Group need to open the cheque book. They could buy whoever if they wanted. It's a pity Treviso didn't build on 2011-12 when they finished just 4 points below Munster in the league, I believe the subsequent offseason was then they lost a lot of their top players (Ghilardini, Rizzo, McLean) to England and France.

molloyjh

I posted a variation on this idea a couple of months ago....

2 Conferences with 6 teams each. These Conferences are decided based on league standing from the previous season. 1st Place is the winner of the final with 2nd being the runner-up, all else based on final table finish.

Conference 1|Conference 2
1st Place|2nd Place
4th Place|3rd Place
5th Place|6th Place
8th Place|7th Place
9th Place|10th Place
12th Place|11th Place


Home and Away fixtures within the Conferences = 10 games.

Then the teams from Conference 1 play the team of the same standing from Conference 2 (home and away) to define the final table standings.

Place|Conference 1|Conference 2
1P|C1 1st|C2 1st
2P|C1 2nd|C2 2nd
3P|C1 3rd|C2 3rd
4P|C1 4th|C2 4th
5P|C1 5th|C2 5th
6P|C1 6th|C2 6th


Final League Table:

Position|Team
01|Winner 1P
02|Loser 1P
03|Winner 2P
04|Loser 2P
05|Winner 3P
06|Loser 3P
07|Winner 4P
08|Loser 4P
09|Winner 5P
10|Loser 5P
11|Winner 6P
12|Loser 6P


This ends the regular season on 12 games with QFs, SFs and a Final after that. So there are 15 games in total in the competition. Add in the European games, the AIs and the 6Ns and that's 32 weeks. There are 39 weeks from the start of September to the end of May so that gives the internationals 7 weeks rest over the course of the season. 3 of those will be during the international windows anyway (1 in Nov and 2 during the 6Ns).

That leaves November, February and March with no league games. So 13 weeks in reality. We have some options there around maybe inter-pros or even another sub-competition within each Conference. Maybe home and away legs against the 6 teams in the other Conference with finals for trophies at each level? That way you play every team in the league at least twice and the calendar gets filled up with another 13 games, giving 28 games. That's a bigger offering that what we have now (a club game every single weekend), but with the main competition having the benefit of the internationals for the whole thing. Whether squads have the depth for something like that though is another thing.

But the main competition itself will have access to the internationals for the entirety, and with a smaller number of games each one becomes more important as well.

irishbucsfan

There's no real point in attempting to restructure the club season until after the international season is restructured

molloyjh

former total wrote: »

Yep, the best thing that could happen the Pro12 from an Irish perspective is if the Italians threw their hat at it and decided to focus on their own domestic tournament.

Fewer crap games, potentially no clashes with international weekends. A bit of lost income from tickets but nothing major.

But it won't just be lost tickets sales. The competition will have fewer games and so will be worth less to broadcasters and sponsors. We're already struggling to make the money we need to from them. Reducing the number of games on offer (even if the general quality goes up a bit) will hurt the product as a whole.

And that will mean not just reducing ticket sales for those few games, it will also mean reducing the price of season tickets because people aren't going to pay the same amount for less. So we'll get hit financially from every angle if we do that.

molloyjh

irishbucsfan wrote: »

There's no real point in attempting to restructure the club season until after the international season is restructured

I thought of that all right. Hard to call it. Will it be restructured? Or just rescheduled? If it's the latter then it's just a case of rescheduling the club games so no big deal really. If it's the former then you're right of course.

MarinersBlues

molloyjh wrote: »

I posted a variation on this idea a couple of months ago....

I'd say that idea stuck in my head and grew roots.
It does make a lot of sense to me.
There could be other competitions set aside for international windows but keep the pro12 outside of them to keep it higher calibre.

molloyjh

MarinersBlues wrote: »

I'd say that idea stuck in my head and grew roots.
It does make a lot of sense to me.
There could be other competitions set aside for international windows but keep the pro12 outside of them to keep it higher calibre.

It's an option, and about the only one I can see working tbh (assuming no major changes in the international fixtures). I think it will also generate a bit more interest in the other league games. A lot of people don't pay much heed outside of their own team and the few places around them, for obvious reasons.

This model though would mean that fans will be paying more attention to most of the teams in their Conference because it will impact how they place, but also most of the teams in the other Conference because that dictates who they'll be playing against for the final standing.

Each game will be more important than each game is now. We'll have a greater rate of participation of internationals in the main competition. Having a sub-competition of some sort to fill out the calendar will mean we won't be reducing income the way we would by just booting out the Italians. We could even get sponsorship on some of the finals in a sub-competition if we went that way. There's ways and means of using that stuff to generate income.

I do think we need to think outside the box. We don't have the history or the markets of the other leagues so we need to utilise what we do have rather than looking at all the stuff we don't have.

Adbrowne

Wasps have signed kyle eastmond apparently

Podge_irl

I'm really not a big fan of the idea of conferences I have to say. I think more confusion is the last thing the league needs but also you are running the risk of missing out on certain derby games that are amongst the few guaranteed money spinners.

irishbucsfan

Podge_irl wrote: »

I'm really not a big fan of the idea of conferences I have to say. I think more confusion is the last thing the league needs but also you are running the risk of missing out on certain derby games that are amongst the few guaranteed money spinners.

I don't understand why we'd go anywhere near an idea like that. We'll far more likely see a 14 team league before a league split in two. Not only would the teams never go anywhere near a reduction in games, it wouldn't solve anything. On the other hand the increased competitiveness of the league as well as the life that seems to have been injected into the management will go a long way to solving the problems.

irishbucsfan

The new LTA has been agreed.

The EPS squad increases in size, meaning more club players will be involved with the national setup. They've also agreed official training camps multiple times a year very like the IRFU have as well as rest periods. In return the clubs are receiving 28 million per year for the first 4 years and potentially more than that over the next 4 years. This is good news for English rugby but not particularly great news for anyone competing with them.

RobbieRuns

irishbucsfan wrote: »

The new LTA has been agreed.

The EPS squad increases in size, meaning more club players will be involved with the national setup. They've also agreed official training camps multiple times a year very like the IRFU have as well as rest periods. In return the clubs are receiving 28 million per year for the first 4 years and potentially more than that over the next 4 years. This is good news for English rugby but not particularly great news for anyone competing with them.

sad but true !

bilston

irishbucsfan wrote: »

The new LTA has been agreed.

The EPS squad increases in size, meaning more club players will be involved with the national setup. They've also agreed official training camps multiple times a year very like the IRFU have as well as rest periods. In return the clubs are receiving 28 million per year for the first 4 years and potentially more than that over the next 4 years. This is good news for English rugby but not particularly great news for anyone competing with them.

Yeah, basically more time in England camp for the internationals amd more rest and more money for the clubs...what's not to like...or fear...

former total

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/rugby-union/36888593

RFU chief exec says 6N is unlikely to move in the calendar. If Ireland and England are against it, and nobody seems to be strongly in favour, then it's dead in the water.

molloyjh

former total wrote: »

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/rugby-union/36888593

RFU chief exec says 6N is unlikely to move in the calendar. If Ireland and England are against it, and nobody seems to be strongly in favour, then it's dead in the water.

I have to say I think that's really disappointing. There needs to be some sort of give somewhere on the calendar and so people need to be willing to discuss all of the options. Shutting stuff down before we even get started is poor form.

As for McCafferty and his notion that English and French clubs should have a bigger say that the rest because money, well he can just FRO with himself. He may not have said it in so many words, but we all know he meant it.

irishbucsfan

molloyjh wrote: »

I have to say I think that's really disappointing. There needs to be some sort of give somewhere on the calendar and so people need to be willing to discuss all of the options. Shutting stuff down before we even get started is poor form.

It hasn't been shut down. Not remotely. former total is completely jumping the gun by claiming it's dead in the water. There's going to be a lot of posturing before the meeting.

molloyjh wrote: »

As for McCafferty and his notion that English and French clubs should have a bigger say that the rest because money, well he can just FRO with himself. He may not have said it in so many words, but we all know he meant it.

You're right, he didn't say it.

former total

irishbucsfan wrote: »

It hasn't been shut down. Not remotely. former total is completely jumping the gun by claiming it's dead in the water. There's going to be a lot of posturing before the meeting.

Well, we'll see what happens, but with a TV deal for the Six Nations in place until 2021, the ink barely dry on the LTA and a new Top 14 TV deal signed a few months ago, I can't see it happening.

You'd have to renegotiate each of those deals and that's a massive gamble for all involved.

I'd be very surprised.

molloyjh

irishbucsfan wrote: »

You're right, he didn't say it.

Haha, I actually added that line specifically because I knew this would happen.