And from a financial point of view would they make more using the Aviva rather than renting the RDS?
Still have to rent Lansdowne.
Yes. But IRFU own half the company they would be renting from?
Yes, but the running costs are a lot higher. I don't know the exact figure, but have read before it needs about 25k people to make cost sense vs the RDS.
I think playing in the Aviva should be the long looooong term goal, but we're a ways away from that yet.
The cost of Garda, staff, etc would be a lot higher for the Aviva than for the RDS
At the moment with 12500 season ticket holder, the odd URC game selling 20k and the bigger games selling higher the model works….
If you can’t afford to purchase an asset, you rent instead. Sensible business management.
I don't have a dog in the race but the lat time I lived in Dublin my kids GAA training was in Donnybrook, along with 100 other kids. That ground is used more than most by many different organisations and sports.
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.
It's not just about what you can afford though. Ireland never really did municipal stadia, the GAA built one in each county, some larger than others and they had Croke Park, rugby & soccer shared Lansdowne Rd. The provinces prior to going professional used pretty low capacity grounds which weren't suitable once they started to pay panels of 40+ players to play something like 15 home games a year.
The GAA weren't in the mood to rent out their stadia to other sports, especially to Soccer & Rugby
Leinster had started to modernise Donnybrook and realised in time it wouldn't meet their needs. Luckily for them, their base is in Dublin and up the road from them they had the RDS which had a fine arena that was used once a year for the Showjumping. The decision by the RDS to lease the ground made huge financial sense to them, something, the GAA has started to do now as well. If PuC hadn't a huge debt associated with it there isn't a hope in hell Cork GAA would agree to lease it to Munster rugby.
Munster had a decision to make, upgrade Thomond Park, Musgrave Park or start afresh somewhere else.
There is some comment, that they built too big, they had to build bigger otherwise we'd lose even more games to the Aviva, fine stadium owned by the IRFU but it's a ~100miles outside the province.
The IRFU paid out far more money to revamp the Aviva per additional seat than Munster did to revamp Thomond Park. There is also an argument to be made that The Aviva is too small for international rugby matches.
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.
We will seldom fill it for regular URC games, Leinster don't fill a much smaller RDS for similar games but yes, Munster need to get more bums on seats and for more games. To be fair to the URC their scheduling has been much better than previous versions of the same tournament e.g. during one RWC we had 3 X 6 O'C kick offs on a Friday evening, one of those being away from home.
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 a fair point but the pitch in the Aviva is too small for GAA and the pitch in Croke park is frankly a bit **** for rugby. It's unfortunate.
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
Yes. GAA pitch is 145 x 90m playing area wheres try line to try line in rugby is 100m and width is 70m.
Yeah but apart from that it's a complete white elephant!
Yeah, it's not just a little large, it's an 86% bigger surface.
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.
Thoughts? Perhaps PR for the upcoming fixtures?
https://www.independent.ie/sport/rugby/arrogant-ireland-underestimated-new-zealand-at-the-world-cup-says-springbok-eben-etzebeth/a359171887.html
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.
I agree with this post but it is only the case because Munster have the provincial sugar daddy IRFU to help get them out of the hole they're in.
Redeveloping a stadium with top tier facilities and it very rarely coming anywhere close to filling it would have been a financial disaster for most privately owned clubs - leaving a club extremely hamstrung, if not facing bankruptcy.
Never a wise decision to build a stadium that is only close to full on big days, but when you have the safety of the IRFU backing you might as well go big and ask for forgiveness later.
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.
Leinster have absorbed close to 20 years of opportunity costs from catering, corporate hospitality and third party event rental incomes that could have been generated had they developed their own modern midsized stadium in South Dublin.
When you consider Dublin's economic growth in the last decade in particular, they could be charging absolutely stupid money for corporate suites these days. Serious opportunity missed thanks to dreadful vision and leadership.
Thankfully they at least have their IRFU sugar daddy to bail them out each year, as their operations would otherwise be terminally unsustainable.
And there's the shark jumping........
Well done all
That's just something you say as a sort of commiseration. Etzebeth talking shite as usual.
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.
Ah thanks makes sense now Neil thanks.
Maybe a winky face at the end would help the slow guys like me.
😉
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.
They were probably saying to Eben 'see YOU in the final'…..which was the case tbf!
From February to the end of April/Early May that pitch is in use pretty much every day of the week between Schools games , Club junior play-off and finals etc.
Back when it was a grass surface it would be completely bald at this stage of the season , covered in sand and you'd get cut to ribbons on it.
Without exaggeration, that pitch probably has 75 games a season played on it and perhaps more.
![Photo of [Deleted User]](https://wd.vanillicon.com/v2/dd23f423fe14831a2a84d9f17c825ecc.svg)
