On another topic..
WTF is going on with Brendan Mullin??
Jail time for financial fraud and now back in court for Shop-lifting???
https://www.irishexaminer.com/news/courtandcrime/arid-41859525.html
He should have gone for Old Spice.
Must be mental illness...he was my hero growing up...himself and Simon Geoghegan were the superstars....
Thats depressing reading.
Not nicking t shirts from Penney, just some Hermes from BTs.
You couldn't make it up.
He can’t be out from his previous sentence for very long. Clearly some sort of compulsive behaviour problem on top of whatever financial issues there might be. Not a good situation to be in
Good to see the class system alive and well. When it's one of the rugger goys robbing stuff suddenly becomes a mental disorder.
Watching the prem playoffs and french lower divisions the past couple of weeks really hammers home how sh1te the URC latter stages are. Wish we could just play everyone home and away and have no post season. Makes more sense with the 0 away fans.
That's a 30-game league season. And 12 games in Europe for SA teams instead of the current 6 plus potential knockouts.
No more then the French teams do.
South Africa should have it's own league. Surely there is enough fans and money for them to have something as good as the Premiership or Top14.
Pro D deux is 30 plus up to three knockout games. But they don't have an equivalent of the European Cup adding 4-8 games to their season. Top Quatorze is 26 plus up to 3 knock out games. So neither of these would be as many as the potential 38-game season for an Irish province playing in the URC with the format you suggest and the current European Cup.
Well they do have the Currie Cup, which I suppose would be stronger if they didn't also have Super Rugby or the URC as a focus.
Not the English though.
In fairness both URC semi finals were tight games. The Northampton v Leicester was high scoring but my goodness some of the defence esp Leicester was awful. Only watched highlights of the Bath v Exeter so I can't comment.
Lots of absolute blow outs in the EPL this season.
Going forward I think it's inevitable that an Anglo Irish Italian league will be formed. The SA governing body are looking at what competitions they should participate in. Logistically a SA league would make sense but would sponsors be interested? The URC has greatly benefited from the inclusion of the SA teams.
As for us. I'd imagine sponsorship and TV money would be good. Logistics easier. A more equal league structure would benefit the Irish teams. The Scottish teams less so.
Then how would it work? 2 leagues would make it fair but and it's a big but who goes where? Governance and the EPL losing it's grip would be a problem.
As for the European competitions. Well I'd thought I'd never say this but personally I'm not that bothered. Fed up with all the changes and format. It's on its death bed anyway. I'd imagine even the French will just shrug their shoulders and give it a meh if it goes.
Sorry for the long rant but I believe we need Rugby to move on. Less but more meaningful games for all teams. Spectators and players would benefit. The men in blazers might not agree.
SA being in the URC brings in a massive amount of TV and sponsorship revenue. More than half the league's total revenue is now from South Africa.
And at this stage all of that money is now relied upon now too, if they were to depart it would completely destroy the Welsh clubs, possibly do similar in Scotland, and heavily damage the Irish provinces.
Rugby has 1 functioning healthy league in the entire world.
Its way part time the sport took a hard look at itself and stopped delaying the inevitable with leagues cobbled together from all over the place.
In ideal scenario, there could be B&I league, the Top 14, and some array of an Iberian, Italian, or generalised REC league. Spain and Italy have the potential to support leagues, if the finances could be viable. If the Welsh teams end up leaving the URC, I'd be happy to get Spainish and Portugese teams to replace them.
The Spanish and Portuguese are at AIL level. Any talk of Spain is just more evidence that people really don't understand how small a sport rugby is in the grander scheme.
There is one and only one fix for rugby and that's stop spending so much money.
The problem with this approach is that the French have no intention nor need to stop spending money so the end result would be basically everyone of any use going to play in the T14. Which isn't sustainable either.
So cease the entire capitalist system. Rugby to set itself up as some sort of socialist utopia. As a card carrying trade unionist I have to say I'm intrigued. Do tell,how would this work?
Theres delaying the inevitable and theres making a very stupid decision that will half your revenue.
Very few businesses in the private sector would survive their revenue halfing over night, thats not something remotely unique to the URC and how its run.
That's pure hyperbole. 100s of sports get by every week without going bankrupt. It's clear that unsustainable levels of money are being spent on teams and by unions.
It will end up that way regardless. Either everyone except the French spends less and lose players to the French or go bankrupt and lose players to the French.
It would be sad to see it end up like the dominance of the Premier League in soccer but in the short term I can't see it not happening.
Their WC performance would say otherwise. If they can reach that level in a one off tournament, the potential is clearly there. A professional league is necessary for Tier 2 teams to improve to be consistently competitive.
I agree with respect to your point on money. The growth of player salaries outstripped the profitablity of the sport. I'm happy for players to get paid their worth, it's a challenging problem, because I don't know how you square that circle now.
I dont think an Anglo Irish Italian league will be formed at all.. South Africa in league on their own logistically should make sense but theres no money in it or it would have happened.
The South Africans need to be playing elsewhere or playera will leave in even larger numbers than already have left the country.
Two healthy leagues. Top14 and ProD2
Well, Spain has been quite open about our long-term URC ambitions. In fact, some believe we could have an announcement regarding a Challenge Cup wildcard for next season in the coming days.
Came across a random rugby pitch in a tiny town in northern spain.
Turns out it's in front of a military school
I think my chances of finding somewhere to watch the URC final are slim to none though with the football on everywhere.
Have a search on google for the instagram / facebooks of any local-ish rugby clubs, there should be some in Northern Spain, its not an unheard of sport there. Then DM them and ask them where they'd recommend to watch the game.
I've done that a good few times while travelling in countries like Brazil or Spain where rugby is a small minority sport but theres a big global game on that I'd like to watch, and I've ended up watching the games in some cool places. Sometimes the local team will just invite you to join them watching it in their clubhouse if they have one which is always very fun.
