Ireland Team Talk XII: Farrell's First Fifteen

The provincial stuff is very…provincial. IRFU annual revenue is at least e100M. Beyond funding the Irish team and their own admin I think its safe to say that all the rest of that money is spent on the provinces in one way or another. Better underage coaching - that's a development subsidy to the provincial team. Funds of local clubs - that's another indirect subsidy that supports the provincial team, etc. Pissing and moaning about this or that particular detail around how those subsidies show up in either IRFU accounts or provincial accounts is really playing with half the deck. There is far more we don't know about this than what we do know.

From a provincial pov we'd be better trying to figure out why our provinces are arguably underperforming. Leinster, with the lions share of the worlds best rugby team™, has underperformed for a decade, arguably. The less said about the past ten years in Munster and Ulster, the better. But its safe to say in both cases they've struggled with coaching and internal management which has limited their achievements and potential. For munster consolidating the team in Limerick was overdue but they don't seem to have benefited greatly as a result. Yeah they won the league but Muster are a European power house, or should be. Ulster have a fantastic squad but too many players go backwards there (hoping their current purple patch persists), Ive said it before but if their homegrown backs were in Leinster several of them would be involved with Ireland. Etc etc.

I thought the criticism of Munster for overdoing it in the revamp of Thomond was well wide of the mark. Munster's ambition should be to fill that stadium as many times as possible every year and when they do get back to the level where they are contending for Europe and winning it they will fill it.

Without drifting off point, there's an argument that not only is the Aviva too small for the vast majority of international matches, Croke Park is too big for the vast majority of GAA matches. Only in Ireland!

It’s used so much, especially at this time of year there are finals on all day Sunday for weeks, 2 clubs using it constantly. As you say Ranelagh GAA rent it. My u9s were down there playing on Sunday morning.
schools matches, the Leinster ladies team I think, Leinster sub academy use it. Plus I’m sure other games we don’t really hear about. The investment in those two pitches has been one of the best decisions made in domestic rugby. It’s a great facility.
I understand it’s close to due to be re laid soon

If Scott Wilson isn't already better than Jager it's a close run thing, and I'd be surprised if his ceiling doesn't end up being significantly higher. The third choice tighthead isn't likely to see much (if any) actual gametime given it's only a two-Test series, so Wilson is likely to get more out of being involved than Jager would. I'd like to see Wilson get the nod to back up Furlong and Bealham - that's assuming Tom O'Toole will go more as a loosehead, but maybe that won't be the case.

Where O'Toole fits in is interesting. The three best looseheads in Ireland right now are Porter, Healy and Loughman, but will Farrell try to develop TOT as a loosehead instead of Healy or Loughman? Maybe he goes covering both sides. Farrell has selected only 5 props in squads in the past.

Could be mind games from Ireland, letting the South Africans know how confident they were and also trying to get the South African players thinking about the Final so they took their eye off the QF against France a bit.

This is the kind of thinking that has many of our posters here talking about rugby in Ireland as if it were organised in some other way than it is. The IRFU is the politburo, provinces aren't privately owned or ordinary stand alone businesses anymore than county teams of the GAA are. My local GAA club that has membership of a few hundred people and has a couple of pitches and an all weather fenced training area plus a club house and bar that can cater to a few hundred people at a time. There is no spectator seating and I'd say it would be a rare day when you'd have a hundred spectators there. It would be gone in 6 months if you looked at it as some sort of P&L oriented private business. Many rugby clubs are no different, maybe without the parish halll style club house. These are not viable businesses, but the sport is viable so its organised nationwide in a way that maximises the sporting and participation gain from what resources are available. Judging Thomond's development by reference to gate receipts over the course of a few years might be interesting but its irrelevant.

I probably should have quoted the offending post, in hindsight, but in case it wasn't clear, that was a parody. Scroll back a few posts.

The Aussies and Kiwi's manage ground shares between Cricket/Aussie Rules and Rugby/Soccer with movable stands. The adjustments needed for GAA to Rugby/Soccer are comparatively a piece of cake.