Guinness Pro12 2015/2016 Season thread

neelia11

The dragons are going solo, cutting ownership from wru and newport rfc to line up fresh investment

BBDBB

neelia11 wrote: »

The dragons are going solo, cutting ownership from wru and newport rfc to line up fresh investment

Its a really interesting development if it comes off.
On one hand, they are a region that has struggled on the field since creation and so would be dissatisfied with how the wru has handled things and its impact upon them.
on the other they are the little brother of the welsh regions so how good a deal they could attract off their own bat would on the face of it be limited. If its better than the current hand they have been dealt you can see why they would be first to want out. Maybe the success of Connacht and even Leicester in soccer this season has raised a lot ambitions

neelia11

BBDBB wrote: »

Its a really interesting development if it comes off.
On one hand, they are a region that has struggled on the field since creation and so would be dissatisfied with how the wru has handled things and its impact upon them.
on the other they are the little brother of the welsh regions so how good a deal they could attract off their own bat would on the face of it be limited. If its better than the current hand they have been dealt you can see why they would be first to want out. Maybe the success of Connacht and even Leicester in soccer this season has raised a lot ambitions

Well on twitter the suggestion is this is in the pipeline for a year or more so you have to assume they have something lined up

BBDBB

I think you're probably right, they'd have to be mad not to have at least explored this before announcing it was on the cards

BBDBB

that year long pipeline you mention would probably indicate it was a dissatisfaction with the wru to be the main driver

Quintis

neelia11 wrote: »

The dragons are going solo, cutting ownership from wru and newport rfc to line up fresh investment

I wonder how this fits with the new central WRU contracts? Will the centrally contracted Welsh players play exclusively for the Ospreys, Scarlets and Blues?

BBDBB

Quintis wrote: »

I wonder how this fits with the new central WRU contracts? Will the centrally contracted Welsh players play exclusively for the Ospreys, Scarlets and Blues?

Interesting point, presumably with the Dragons being better off financially they could attract bigger/better signings and be more competitive in the pro 12/Europe, better marketing and on field success could draw a bigger fan base and get the remaining regions looking with envy at their freedom from the wru yoke. This could be really seismic for welsh rugby

neelia11

Quintis wrote: »

I wonder how this fits with the new central WRU contracts? Will the centrally contracted Welsh players play exclusively for the Ospreys, Scarlets and Blues?

well the dragons were the only region who were part owned by the WRU, so dont know if this will exclude them from the central contracts.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/rugby-union/35973882

DGRulz

I've been playing around with a few ideas in my head for a while. They all involve bringing in London Welsh and London Scottish and the formation of Georgian and Romanian club sides similar to Los Jaguares. While the London based teams more than likely wouldn't bring much in terms of competition, the league having a profile in London might be very useful going forward.

Option 1:

Divide the current teams into conferences based of geographical location. You play everyone in your conference home and away (6) and everyone in another conference home and away (8). From there we combine the two sets of conferences that play each other into two pots(A & of 8 and every team in pot A is drawn against a team in pot B for a home and away fixture (2) leading to a total of 16 regular season games. From there you take the top one or two from each conference and have semi/ quarter finals, giving a maximum number of games of 18 or 19.

Ire | Wales | Scot & Lon | Continent
Lein | Scar | Glas | Zebre
Mun | Osp | Edin | Trev
Uls | Card | Lon W | Georgia
Conn | Drag | Lon S | Rom


Option 2:

You take last Pro12 table and add the four new teams to the end. For the sake of fairness in terms of seeding you could have a once off mini-league between the four new times to decide their seeding at the bottom of the table Create 4 pools of 4 based on seeding and drawing randomly. Taking the current Pro12 standings and randomly assign one of the new 4 to each it might looks something like this. You play the same as Option 1 leading to 18/19 games max and then at the end of the regular season the bottom two teams in each pool are swapped around.

Pool 1 | Pool 2 | Pool 3 | Pool 4
Lein | Scar | Glas | Conn
Uls | Mun | Card | Edin
Trev | Osp | Drag | Zebre
Georgia | Lon W | Lon S | Rom


Option 3:

Take the scenario from Option 1 and add London Irish as a fifth team to the Scottish/London conference. Now instead of conferences being combined to draw games 15 and 16 the two conferences that would have made up pot A are kept separated and drawn against one another for a home and away fixtures. Everyone still plays 16 regular season games and we proceed to finals in whatever way as above.

Option 4:(and is never going to happen)

Option 1 in the form of a British and Irish Super League (with or without the Romanian and Georgian club sides). It would mean more regular meaningful competition again higher quality teams.

Option 5:(and is definitely never going to happen)
Options 1 & 4 but expanded. European rugby goes completely crazy and scraps all leagues(Pro 12, AP, Top 14) and the RCC and we have a European Super Dooper league.

CatFromHue

No offence but bringing London Scottish and Welsh and or bringing in a Georgian or Romanian team is really bad idea.

The current problem with the league is a lack of competition and bringing in 4 more weak teams, in any format, will kill the league.

Lets be realistic any game against Zebre, Treviso, and Dragons all the talk about it beforehand is whether a team will get a 5 pointer or not.

Zebre, Dragons, and Treviso combined have only 1 more win than the team in 9th. Ospreys have 9 wins and those 3 combined have 10.

There's a near 20 point gap between Ospreys and Dragons too.

I have little interest in watching Leinster play Dragons, Treviso, or Zebre, but I have none of watching them play any of Welsh, Scottish, Romanian, or Georgian teams.

bilston

The best way to make the league better is to make the top players available for a lot more games than they are at the minute.

johnnyryan89

neelia11 wrote: »

The dragons are going solo, cutting ownership from wru and newport rfc to line up fresh investment

Is that something that any of the Irish Provinces could attempt to do or are they stuck with the IRFU?

bilston

I read elsewhere that sky may be pulling out of the Pro 12 because of low viewing figures...great..

DGRulz

bilston wrote: »

I read elsewhere that sky may be pulling out of the Pro 12 because of low viewing figures...great..

Really? I read the opposite, that they were happy getting X amount. Although, admittedly, I think it was from someone of the Pro12 board

CatFromHue

Do Sky offer much money to the league?

If not, and possibly even if they do, them leaving could be a bonus to the league.

I'd imagine with RTE having lost the 6N's they'd be interested in getting the Pro12 back and I felt that the season before Sky got involved the league had the most accessibility it ever had.

DGRulz

Could always have Irish coverage on TV3. Matt Cooper. Every week. Fun ...

Cookiemunster

johnnyryan89 wrote: »

Is that something that any of the Irish Provinces could attempt to do or are they stuck with the IRFU?

No. Ospreys, Scarlets and Cardiff Blues were always independent of the WRU. Dragons are currently only 50% owned by the WRU. The provinces are arms of the IRFU and therefore 100% the property of the IRFU.

johnnyryan89

johnnyryan89 wrote: »

Is that something that any of the Irish Provinces could attempt to do or are they stuck with the IRFU?

This is a question that is in nobody's long-term interests to have answered btw.

The harsh reality of the setup is that the €€€ transfers must occur. Having the central body affords that chance. Someone has to lose out short term for someone else's gain, but there's long term benefit.

Cookiemunster

CatFromHue wrote: »

Do Sky offer much money to the league?

If not, and possibly even if they do, them leaving could be a bonus to the league.

I'd imagine with RTE having lost the 6N's they'd be interested in getting the Pro12 back and I felt that the season before Sky got involved the league had the most accessibility it ever had.

Wasn't it 5m (not sure if that was pound or Euros) over 4 years? That's pittance for Sky. It was Rees in the Guardian who said that Sky were thinking of getting out a year early, but that completely contradicts what the Pro12 CEO Martin Anayi earlier this week. He said that Sky were very happy with the viewing figures.

bilston

Hopefully Rees has that wrong.

It might not go down well with some but I think next time round the Pro 12 really need to go for an exclusive deal with Pay TV. They'd get more money, I don't think it would affect attendances negatively in Ireland and if anything it will improve attendances in Wales as BBC Wales and S4C would no longer carry live coverage.

Sky's actual coverage has been pretty good. However they haven't advertised it or hyped it nearly as much as I thought they would.

Cookiemunster

bilston wrote: »

Hopefully Rees has that wrong.

It might not go down well with some but I think next time round the Pro 12 really need to go for an exclusive deal with Pay TV. They'd get more money, I don't think it would affect attendances negatively in Ireland and if anything it will improve attendances in Wales as BBC Wales and S4C would no longer carry live coverage.

Sky's actual coverage has been pretty good. However they haven't advertised it or hyped it nearly as much as I thought they would.

I agree. Every match being televised reduces attendance. I know quite a few people who don't go to Thomond Park because the match is on free to air TV. Some of those are season ticket holders.....

galwaylad14

Cookiemunster wrote: »

I agree. Every match being televised reduces attendance. I know quite a few people who don't go to Thomond Park because the match is on free to air TV. Some of those are season ticket holders.....

Ya but having them on free to air TV increases the exposure the league gets does it not? More people watch the games than would ordinarily do so were they on paid tv.

Also given that the league features 4 countries it's not practical for the average fan to get to many away games so it's nice to be able to watch those games on free to air TV.

Fair point on it reducing attendances though but I don't think this is the way we should be going about trying to increase the attendance

awec

bilston wrote: »

Hopefully Rees has that wrong.

It might not go down well with some but I think next time round the Pro 12 really need to go for an exclusive deal with Pay TV. They'd get more money, I don't think it would affect attendances negatively in Ireland and if anything it will improve attendances in Wales as BBC Wales and S4C would no longer carry live coverage.

Sky's actual coverage has been pretty good. However they haven't advertised it or hyped it nearly as much as I thought they would.

NO NO NO NO NO NO :mad::mad:

I want to watch Ulster every week, not once a month whenever it happens to be their turn to be televised.

whatawaster

I agree also that an exclusive deal with Sky wouldn't be a bad thing.

It would be good for the league to get sky fully behind it and make it their flagship rugby competition. Show 3 games every weekend and a decent highlights package with analysis for all the games on a Sunday/Monday evening.

BBDBB

The thing that increases and decreases attendances more than whether its televised is the entertainment on display and the relative success or failure it creates. Whilst a significant few are die hard, through thick and thin supporters, most have a limit to how committed they are prepared to be. That alters towards the positive with more success and decreases with "failure" (an absence of success/competitveness)

bilston

awec wrote: »

NO NO NO NO NO NO :mad::mad:

I want to watch Ulster every week, not once a month whenever it happens to be their turn to be televised.

Well fair enough. With any luck any exlcusive deal would mean the broadcaster would show at least 3 games a week.

At the end of the day if we want to compete financially with the English and French you have to take difficult decisions.

The Pro 12 is a rareity in that it is a domestic sporting league that is live on FTA TV.

awec

bilston wrote: »

Well fair enough. With any luck any exlcusive deal would mean the broadcaster would show at least 3 games a week.

At the end of the day if we want to compete financially with the English and French you have to take difficult decisions.

The Pro 12 is a rareity in that it is a domestic sporting league that is live on FTA TV.

BBC Sport have done more to promote rugby in Ulster than Sky will ever do.

Having it's own dedicated broadcaster that is FTA is huge for Ulster Rugby. I get it's not great for the rest of the league, but Ulster losing that would be a massive thing.

MarinersBlues

galwaylad14 wrote: »

Ya but having them on free to air TV increases the exposure the league gets does it not? More people watch the games than would ordinarily do so were they on paid tv.

Also given that the league features 4 countries it's not practical for the average fan to get to many away games so it's nice to be able to watch those games on free to air TV.

Fair point on it reducing attendances though but I don't think this is the way we should be going about trying to increase the attendance

100% agree with this.

You will create a bigger audience having it free to air.

Higher visibility will generate more interest which will increase participation and attendance in the LONG run.

Having Heineken Cup on RTE was the prime exposure for the provinces in Ireland.
The fact that the PRO12 is now more competitive and has more at stake than before means it would would get more people interested if they could watch the games.

Zzippy

Cookiemunster wrote: »

I agree. Every match being televised reduces attendance. I know quite a few people who don't go to Thomond Park because the match is on free to air TV. Some of those are season ticket holders.....

That says more about those people than the impact of tv. Ulster are on FTA TV every home game and their attendance is very healthy...

Cookiemunster

Zzippy wrote: »

That says more about those people than the impact of tv. Ulster are on FTA TV every home game and their attendance is very healthy...

Belfast isn't Munster. Most of the people going to Ravenhill on a Friday night will be from Belfast, so don't have to travel far. A huge proportion of the Munster support live over an hour from Limerick and if the match is on TG4 and the weathers bad, they won't travel.

Also there's a reason that NFL has the blackout rule in the US and the English FA don't allow any televised games at 3pm on Saturdays. Live matches on TV takes from attendances.