Leinster Team Talk Thread (Love you Furlong time)

Aind it's a fact that Ulster players don't have the tax rebate to entice them to stay (or move from then South), and that Ulster tickets are 20% VAT.

Are those insignificant? I already said this and you literally just ignored it.

As a Munster supporter, I find this argument around central contracts embarrassing. Leinster have better players so they have more CCs. Players from other provinces need to get bitter and use it as motivation. It's like we want to bring Leinster down to our level instead of trying to get to their level

Welcome back @[Deleted User] .

I hope you choose to remain on the platform and not delete your account. As much as we disagree often, I do feel you are probably more knowledgeable than most on here.

So making 20% less money from ticket sales hasn't impacted Ulster? When we're paying for our academy, having 20% less income doesn't affect anything? Just to be clear, that's what you're saying?

Then why respond to the goal of central contracts being to keep the best players in Ireland with:

The point is the IRFU's remit goes beyond just the Irish team.

You either agree that Irish side takes priority or you dont and want to risk the success of the team.

You've rather ignored my point there.

My point was the IRFU receive X revenue from club rugby, and spend Y amount of their total (all income) resources on club rugby.

Lets say given the figures quoted in my post the revenue figure ('X') is likely something like 45% Leinster, 25% Munster, 20% Ulster, 10% Connacht very roughly. We don't know the exact figures obviously, but we can guess very roughly based on attendance figures and fanbases.

Then in that scenario it would make perfect moral and logical sense for Leinster to receive 45% of the IRFU's spend on club rugby, as a proportion of 'Y'. Each province would be receiving funding broadly in line with the amount of revenue its bringing in, as you'd expect in an very equitably run organisation.

In a more results focused organisation if anything more and more funding would be pushed towards Leinster, given they've shown the most ability to make the best use of the funds. The idea of defunding the best performing business unit, to give money to the underperformers, would be laughed out of the room.

The IRFU wants the most return on its investment. Throwing money at Munster and Ulster would, if the last decade have been anything to go by, just be wasted on NIQs or squandered elsewhere. The long term problem is management and planning, which needs to be fixed before anything else.

Because I think this is a strawman. None of the points I've been making are "in hopes of dragging back Leinster".

I'm simply making the point that it's the most inequitable distribution of Central Contracts there's even been. By a margin. That seems objectively true. And that has a direct impact on the provinces, regardless of what the goal of the central contracts is. There are implications beyond that are also in the IRFU's remit.

It'd be negligent of them if they didn't consider consequences beyond their purpose. It was reported today they're conducting a review of their contractual system, fwiw.