Pro14 Season 2019-2020

connachta

https://www.walesonline.co.uk/sport/rugby/rugby-news/rugby-morning-headlines-amid-reports-18347191?fbclid=IwAR1xfXuxE5l_DWVjbt1rxvQgMXt_CiQr_sjCzNOK1N7hdnY1HIw1AO6qYsc

The Lost Sheep

OldRio wrote: »

The TV rights could be very lucrative in SA. Same Time Zone as Europe. No matches being televised at 'silly a clock' (unlike NZ, Aus and Argentina.)

Re arranging the Global game in time zones does make a lot of sense regarding revenue. Now more than ever maximising revenue is vital.

except it wont do anything to help Australia and New Zealand as the biggest market for rugby union coverage and main driver of their income from TV will be gone in south Africa. Will just further erode the game in Australia and put New Zealand rugby in trouble in terms of keeping their players there

icdg wrote: »

The bigger isn’t always the better when it comes to the competition though. There are 38 professional top flight clubs in Europe already (12 Pro14 excluding SA, 12 PRL, 14 Top 14). That’s not including ProD2 and the English Championship. Realistically 14 is probably the most clubs that the double round robin (the fairest system) works with (and the French have had to run midweek games in the past to make that work). You’re into a number of options to make a continental league work:
- Ringfencing is a given obviously, but are you the one that’s going to tell the club lying 12th in PRL that going down is the end of their ambitions, for ever doomed to be a minnow in the Championship? Or the club #1 in ProD2 that sorry, it’s all been for nothing?

- Chopping the number of clubs? - bye bye Connacht in that case, everyone will have to take the pain and Ireland won’t be excluded. And incidentally that’s the main reason the Cheetahs and Kings are playing in Pro14 in the first place, because they were chopped from Super Rugby and the SARU didn’t want to close them down.

- A system of conferences - The Pro14’s was designed explicitly to preserve local derbies, but how realistic is that in a continental league? In Super Rugby you had more or less even conferences in numberic terms but certainly not in strength which meant if there was a standout team in one conference it could waltz to the playoffs (2017 Lions anyone?)

-Tiers with promotion and regulation? Even worse than the above for derbies. The nightmare scenario for the IRFU sees Leinster and Munster in two different divisions and don’t think that with 38 clubs spread across three tiers that couldn’t happen. And inevitably with a tiered scenario the top tier clubs will eventually want to break away to take a bigger slice of the tv rights for themselves (there’ll be little room for that money to go to the unions in that picture).

conferences in a continental league is easiest to set up. Each country gets their own or two countries aides combine depending on numbers.
Tiers for promotion and relegation could still keep derbies depending on number of games that would be played
All top teams could do is try have a ring fenced top tier division and considering nearly all aides in this are union owned is breakaway realistic? No.

molloyjh

Icdg was talking about an intercontinental European league. The English & Frencb clubs aren't Union owned while the Welsh clubs are at best only partially Union owned. So most clubs in the league would be privately owned.

sydthebeat

molloyjh wrote: »

Icdg was talking about an intercontinental European league.

The vast majority of icdg's post is about the Pro 14 if the SA SR teams join??

CMcsporty

sydthebeat wrote: »

The vast majority of icdg's post is about the Pro 14 if the SA SR teams join??

The post excellently highlights the folly of more than 14 teams.

Clearly it’s was also a hair brained concept to have the SA in the Pro14 anyway.

I would hope that the virus lockdown would show how ridiculous it is to be flying nearly 10,000 km to play club rugby. It’s impractical given the NH rugby calendar as it was.

molloyjh

sydthebeat wrote: »

The vast majority of icdg's post is about the Pro 14 if the SA SR teams join??

Okay, I'm getting seriously muddled up. I thought it was following on from the European league idea???

OldRio

The Lost Sheep wrote: »

except it wont do anything to help Australia and New Zealand as the biggest market for rugby union coverage and main driver of their income from TV will be gone in south Africa. Will just further erode the game in Australia and put New Zealand rugby in trouble in terms of keeping their players there

conferences in a continental league is easiest to set up. Each country gets their own or two countries aides combine depending on numbers.
Tiers for promotion and relegation could still keep derbies depending on number of games that would be played
All top teams could do is try have a ring fenced top tier division and considering nearly all aides in this are union owned is breakaway realistic? No.

I was talking in terms of the Pro 14.

The Lost Sheep

CMcsporty wrote: »

The post excellently highlights the folly of more than 14 teams.

Clearly it’s was also a hair brained concept to have the SA in the Pro14 anyway.

I would hope that the virus lockdown would show how ridiculous it is to be flying nearly 10,000 km to play club rugby. It’s impractical given the NH rugby calendar as it was.

I dont see that it was hair brained to add the south Africans.
If its ridiculous to fly 10000km then what else do south Africans do? Is it really better for the sport that the south Africans who have the playing base to just drop these teams?
More than 14 teams isnt an issue. Having conferences and all sides playing even number of games is fine.

sydthebeat

CMcsporty wrote: »

The post excellently highlights the folly of more than 14 teams.

Clearly it’s was also a hair brained concept to have the SA in the Pro14 anyway.

I would hope that the virus lockdown would show how ridiculous it is to be flying nearly 10,000 km to play club rugby. It’s impractical given the NH rugby calendar as it was.

i dont think its hair brained at all..

you dont have look far to find fans / players / coaches who think the Pro14 is a bit of a sham... existing only to provide players to a national team.
Too often its shadow sides playing each other. The welsh have been complaining about it for years.
In its 18 years of existance its had an irish winner 11 times !!
Only once has a scot team won.

id love to see this league being comparative to the premiership or top 14, and if that required the addition of the bokke SR teams then absolutely great.
Id love to go to see leinster play the stormers with PSDT and Kolisi and jantjes etc. or watch munster front up against the forward might of the sharks.

we could have a league that a myrid of teams could realistically win it ... not the one or two we have currently.
Only 7 differents teams have featured in the Pro 14 final over the last 10 years !!

sydthebeat

molloyjh wrote: »

Okay, I'm getting seriously muddled up. I thought it was following on from the European league idea???

i think the clincher is where icdg says that 14 teams is the right number for the double round robin format... and then they continue on from there.

the HC doesnt have a round robin format

CMcsporty

sydthebeat wrote: »

i dont think its hair brained at all..

you dont have look far to find fans / players / coaches who think the Pro14 is a bit of a sham... existing only to provide players to a national team.
Too often its shadow sides playing each other. The welsh have been complaining about it for years.
In its 18 years of existance its had an irish winner 11 times !!
Only once has a scot team won.

id love to see this league being comparative to the premiership or top 14, and if that required the addition of the bokke SR teams then absolutely great.
Id love to go to see leinster play the stormers with PSDT and Kolisi and jantjes etc. or watch munster front up against the forward might of the sharks.

we could have a league that a myrid of teams could realistically win it ... not the one or two we have currently.
Only 7 differents teams have featured in the Pro 14 final over the last 10 years !!

Maybe it’s my lockdown rage but The whole SA thing in NH make me angry!

I can just imagine the post match interview now...

“Obviously I’m delighted to win the LargerCup. It’s always been a dream of mine to play against this Franchise team. Beating them here in the great InsuranceCompany Stadium is special. I’m delighted BailedoutBank was able bring me back to my Franchise team. I suppose none of this would be possible without VultureCapitalistGroup. A sincere thanks to all.”
AtBrandBlandRugyPlayer

It’s all about the Benjamins

And nobody will say boo because they need the sponsor.
Hashtag Everybody All in

awec

sydthebeat wrote: »

i dont think its hair brained at all..

you dont have look far to find fans / players / coaches who think the Pro14 is a bit of a sham... existing only to provide players to a national team.
Too often its shadow sides playing each other. The welsh have been complaining about it for years.
In its 18 years of existance its had an irish winner 11 times !!
Only once has a scot team won.

id love to see this league being comparative to the premiership or top 14, and if that required the addition of the bokke SR teams then absolutely great.
Id love to go to see leinster play the stormers with PSDT and Kolisi and jantjes etc. or watch munster front up against the forward might of the sharks.

we could have a league that a myrid of teams could realistically win it ... not the one or two we have currently.
Only 7 differents teams have featured in the Pro 14 final over the last 10 years !!

Pro14 needs re-evaluated from top to bottom. The teams in it, the competition format, the scheduling, the TV rights etc all need to be fixed.

The league has so much potential but those who run it just don't give a crap. It's pure negligence.

So long as they refuse to address the underlying problems with the current setup then the league is going to struggle for relevance. Right now the competition is complete and utter muck.

troyzer

awec wrote: »

Pro14 needs re-evaluated from top to bottom. The teams in it, the competition format, the scheduling, the TV rights etc all need to be fixed.

The league has so much potential but those who run it just don't give a crap. It's pure negligence.

So long as they refuse to address the underlying problems with the current setup then the league is going to struggle for relevance. Right now the competition is complete and utter muck.

What do you propose?

Former Former

awec wrote: »

Pro14 needs re-evaluated from top to bottom. The teams in it, the competition format, the scheduling, the TV rights etc all need to be fixed.

The league has so much potential but those who run it just don't give a crap. It's pure negligence.

So long as they refuse to address the underlying problems with the current setup then the league is going to struggle for relevance. Right now the competition is complete and utter muck.

But those who run are also those who play in it, so it's not clear where the impetus for change will come from. Hopefully CVC will light a fire under some of the less interested parties.

icdg

sydthebeat wrote: »

The vast majority of icdg's post is about the Pro 14 if the SA SR teams join??

It wasn’t intended to be - it was, to be absolutely clear, entirely based on the 38 team European league scenario (though I think equally applicable to a 22 team B&I League). I don’t think the first will happen and although I think there’ll be moves towards the second I think it may prove unworkable without some clubs being cut.

The remaining SA provinces joining the Pro14 is workable but I don’t think it will happen either - I think it’s a threat that is useful for SA to hang over Sanzaar.

sydthebeat

icdg wrote: »

It wasn’t intended to be - it was, to be absolutely clear, entirely based on the 38 team European league scenario (though I think equally applicable to a 22 team B&I League). I don’t think the first will happen and although I think there’ll be moves towards the second I think it may prove unworkable without some clubs being cut.

The remaining SA provinces joining the Pro14 is workable but I don’t think it will happen either - I think it’s a threat that is useful for SA to hang over Sanzaar.

apologies for misunderstanding

in any event, i dont think there is a snowballs chance in hell that we woudl lose the Pro 14, Premiershoip, Top 14 and the European Champion and challange cups to create one intercontinental super league.


where is the commercial interest in losing five competions for one?

troyzer

sydthebeat wrote: »

apologies for misunderstanding

in any event, i dont think there is a snowballs chance in hell that we woudl lose the Pro 14, Premiershoip, Top 14 and the European Champion and challange cups to create one intercontinental super league.


where is the commercial interest in losing five competions for one?

For the same reason as why the Six Nations are now aggregating the AIs and Six Nations into one package: it's more valuable than the sum of its parts.

Purchasing the rights to an intercontinental super league gives you a near global monopoly on rugby broadcasting outside of international windows.

AbusesToilets

icdg wrote: »

The bigger isn’t always the better when it comes to the competition though. There are 38 professional top flight clubs in Europe already (12 Pro14 excluding SA, 12 PRL, 14 Top 14). That’s not including ProD2 and the English Championship. Realistically 14 is probably the most clubs that the double round robin (the fairest system) works with (and the French have had to run midweek games in the past to make that work). You’re into a number of options to make a continental league work:
- Ringfencing is a given obviously, but are you the one that’s going to tell the club lying 12th in PRL that going down is the end of their ambitions, for ever doomed to be a minnow in the Championship? Or the club #1 in ProD2 that sorry, it’s all been for nothing?

- Chopping the number of clubs? - bye bye Connacht in that case, everyone will have to take the pain and Ireland won’t be excluded. And incidentally that’s the main reason the Cheetahs and Kings are playing in Pro14 in the first place, because they were chopped from Super Rugby and the SARU didn’t want to close them down.

- A system of conferences - The Pro14’s was designed explicitly to preserve local derbies, but how realistic is that in a continental league? In Super Rugby you had more or less even conferences in numberic terms but certainly not in strength which meant if there was a standout team in one conference it could waltz to the playoffs (2017 Lions anyone?)

-Tiers with promotion and regulation? Even worse than the above for derbies. The nightmare scenario for the IRFU sees Leinster and Munster in two different divisions and don’t think that with 38 clubs spread across three tiers that couldn’t happen. And inevitably with a tiered scenario the top tier clubs will eventually want to break away to take a bigger slice of the tv rights for themselves (there’ll be little room for that money to go to the unions in that picture).

It would have to be conferences. Ideally 32 is a better number imo, for the sake of symettery. As it stands now, you could do 4 team conferences. 1 Irish, 1 Welsh, 1 north Britain (2 Scottish and 2 English), 3 x English, 3 x French, 1 East ( 2 x Italian and 2 French). That's 10 conferences, 20 team split if you're following an NFL style set up. There's obviously wiggle room there, no SA or other European Jaguares style teams included. If you wanted you could add a SA conference and Euro one, say Germany Spain, Georgia and another.

It's a lot of teams, but with seasonal rotation, the number of games wouldn't have to be crazy. 2 vs your conference, Home or Away against the rest of your League, and Home or Away vs a conference in the other side of the League. 20 game season, plus play offs potentially.

connachta

Conferences will inevitably transform into Tiers,
Rich clubs would be too happy to get rid of Dragons, Newcastle, Connacht, Agen, Zebre...


S-Af in Celtic League, please

sydthebeat

connachta wrote: »

Conferences will inevitably transform into Tiers,
Rich clubs would be too happy to get rid of Dragons, Newcastle, Connacht, Agen, Zebre...


S-Af in Celtic League, please

Very denigrating to put connacht into the same realm as those other teams.

troyzer

sydthebeat wrote: »

Very denigrating to put connacht into the same realm as those other teams.

icdg

The problem with the NFL scenario is that it virtually eliminates derbies. Most NFL derbies (or rivalries as they would put them - there only one true derby, Giants-Jets, although that’s about to change) get played as competitive fixtures only every four years. The NFL solution is to play them in preseason, and anyone who has watched a preseason NFL game knows that it’s only slightly more fun than watching paint dry (although at that stage Americans starved of gridiron football for seven months are eager to watch something!)

connachta

sydthebeat wrote: »

Very denigrating to put connacht into the same realm as those other teams.

We're far better. But for IRFU, and French/English billionaires, it clearly doesn't matter.
We'll be put in 2nd Tier and, as football, the budget gap will widen


no thanks

troyzer

icdg wrote: »

The problem with the NFL scenario is that it virtually eliminates derbies. Most NFL derbies (or rivalries as they would put them - there only one true derby, Giants-Jets, although that’s about to change) get played as competitive fixtures only every four years. The NFL solution is to play them in preseason, and anyone who has watched a preseason NFL game knows that it’s only slightly more fun than watching paint dry (although at that stage Americans starved of gridiron football for seven months are eager to watch something!)

I'm not sure how this would apply to a super league.

Teams in the same division play each other twice a year. You'd still get an Irish round robin and a Welsh round robin etc.

8 groups of four in two conferences.

Conference A:

Ireland:
Leinster,
Munster,
Connacht,
Ulster

Wales:
Scarlets
Ospreys
Dragons
Blues

Italy/Scotland:
Warriors
Edinburgh
Zebre
Treviso

South Africa:
Bulls
Sharks
Stormers
Lions

Conference B would then be made up of two English divisions and two French divisions.

Each team would play every team in their division home and away.

Each team would also play each team in their conference that finished the previous season with the same standing.

Each team would play one entire division in each conference either home/away.

That's how the NFL works.

There are no rivalry issues as you suggest, not at the local level. You play every team at least once in a four year cycle. But it's true that Leinster could only play Saracens in either a final or once every four years.

irishbucsfan

icdg wrote: »

The problem with the NFL scenario is that it virtually eliminates derbies. Most NFL derbies (or rivalries as they would put them - there only one true derby, Giants-Jets, although that’s about to change) get played as competitive fixtures only every four years. The NFL solution is to play them in preseason, and anyone who has watched a preseason NFL game knows that it’s only slightly more fun than watching paint dry (although at that stage Americans starved of gridiron football for seven months are eager to watch something!)

But divisional rivals play each other twice per year.

And good teams, ie competitive rivals, will often meet in the playoffs.

I think it works quite well. It basically just eliminates rivalries that aren’t local ones, but there’s hardly many of those in rugby anyway

Burkie1203

So it seems very likely now pro14 will finish the currwnt season at the end of August/start of September. Then a short break before new season begins at the start of October.

If a global calendar comes into being by end of August the new pro14 season will be pushed back until mid/late january


Thats from a Small article with Munster CEO in today's Herald.

connachta

"There has been speculation that a PRO18 could be split into three regionalised to conferences to limit the amount of travel in the Covid-19 era, an idea Roux embraced when appearing on the SA Rugby Podcast. "

Clegg

Burkie1203 wrote: »

So it seems very likely now pro14 will finish the currwnt season at the end of August/start of September. Then a short break before new season begins at the start of October.

If a global calendar comes into being by end of August the new pro14 season will be pushed back until mid/late january


Thats from a Small article with Munster CEO in today's Herald.

Should just cut out all the busy work and award Leinster the title.

Thrashssacre

Is the plan to dissolve the Kings and have the sharks for one year then the other teams the year after or have them all come at once? Seems to be alot of conflicting reports going around.

Burkie1203

Clegg wrote: »

Should just cut out all the busy work and award Leinster the title.

Derbies to keep tv companies happy. Plus a grand final. Then dish out prize money.

Europe rumours have gone quiet.