Ireland Team Talk XII: Farrell's First Fifteen

Whatever about some of the guys (Keenan, Baloucoune etc), I think there is a very clear argument that Zac Ward and JJ Kenny wouldn't be playing pro rugby if not for 7s. Both had been overlooked by the provincial academies, and were only still in the system at all because of 7s.

The language used was all about savings, and unquestionably it's a factor (allied with the fact that the 7s doesn't generate any money in and of itself), but the purported savings (€500k per season) are not that material in the context of the scale of the IRFU's finances.

It was highly associated with Nucifora - he was described as the driving force behind it (he pretty much immediately launched a pro 7s programme in Scotland as soon as he took over the performance director role there too), and does look to me as a way for Humphreys to put his own stamp on his new role.

Financial backers of the 7s programme (David Barry) spoke out saying they weren't even consulted or given a heads up before the announcement was made to cut it, so it doesn't look like they even made attempts to see could they procure more funding to further close that €500k gap. This is a direct quote from him, who, once again, is a guy who provided substantial funding to the 7s programme over the past decade:

"It’s hard to accept that this decision was taken solely on financial grounds as I cannot see any tangible effort expended during the so called consultation period to solve the purported funding challenge. A sad demise to a wonderful programme!".

It's very widely reported that that is the annual saving to the IRFU, including in articles citing IRFU sources. Given the blowback they've gotten for this, if the savings were more substantial than that then I feel they'd be very quick to get that messaging out there.

As per the comment I posted earlier from the guy who had provided some funding support to the programme for years, it doesn't look like they went to great lengths to see if they could further close that funding gap either (given they didn't even pick up the phone to that benefactor).

Is its dead why is the womens still playing?

But women's 7s have an opportunity to gain professional contracts unlike the men's 7s

It doesn't have to be but it can be for Ireland because we only have 4 provinces.

You can have a core of 7s players and then other players who drop in/out with the view of been 15s players longer term

Shutting it down just shuts just closes that possibility and to me it was done as Nucifora was the person who brought it to Ireland

Genuinely have no idea what you're trying to say here.

They ran a €4.2m deficit last year. There isn't tremendous detail in the annual accounts, but they report €9.6m of Admin & Overheads expenditure (comprising €5.4m Salaries & Pensions, €1.5m of Professional Fees, €1.0m of Office Maintenance, €640k of Miscellaneous Admin costs, €536k of Rates, Rent, Insurance etc and €447k of Governance Costs).

Some of those are insufficiently clear, and the €1.5m of professional fees looks pretty high IMO.

Amongst some of the other cost line items, there's a €5.4m charge lumped under Men's Professional Game costs (broken out separately from Player & Mgmt Costs - €39.6m and National Tours, Camps & Squads Costs - €1.3m) and I've seen others speculate that the pretty significant expenditure on committee members etc travelling to away 6N games and committees etc is likely lumped in here.

I don't know the details of this, but people have been griping on the expense on committee members for years now - business class travel, expensive hotels, expensive dinners, free match tickets etc.

To me - the bigger question is around the long term sustainability of the RWC in its present guise - it is completely illogical that the participating unions run enormous deficits the years they compete in that tournament.

Not sure what the point is here apart from calling someone opinion "daft"