European Cup Rugby

Oā€™Driscoll was nearly gushing about him and how he runs moves, runs the backline. Acknowledged that byrne got the team to the final so must be doing something right but was clear on who he preferred.

Sure itā€™s easy be wise after the event.

https://twitter.com/PremSportsTV/status/1823646825821147337?t=Zz0CAyBVuvXYMgARv0HqOw&s=19

Hope this isnā€™t the end of Mrs Easterby being part of European coverage.

3 Likes

Stephen Jones will be in the Sunday Times now looking for the Welsh provinces to break up and their clubs join the English league. Itā€™s not good for the competition in fairness, Premier is much lover key than BT even if everyone in Ireland who has BT has Prem with how they package it.

Not sure of the story in the UK.

1 Like

Premier Sports were showing the 2010 Hurling All Ireland last night at 10pm.

They get it.

6 Likes

I like their coverage. Wonā€™t make a great difference here but could see less engagement in the UK for an already somewhat waining competition.

RTE coverage gone as well so or do they still have some of the provinces games?

A British and Irish League with Promotion and relegation to rival what they have in France is the way to go. There needs to be more jeopardy. Include the Iberian countries in the European Cup to pad that out.

1 Like

I fear the competition is on the way out, itā€™s getting worse year on year and now theyā€™re only to show 2 games from each round of the Challenge Cup. Iā€™m assuming sponsorship will reduce as a result and we will see some sort of spiral effect.

1 Like

The new pool formats have done more damage than the TV deals in recent times. Qualifying for the last 16 by winning a single game is a woeful change.

Nowadays I donā€™t think the competition really kicks off until the semi-final stage.

4 Likes

EPCR seem to have gone down the GAA route of doing anything it can to destroy its own competition.

4 Likes

Not quite at that point yet. However if we hear rumblings of a split seasonā€¦

1 Like

By any chance did we win it this time round?

In the words of Jerry Kiernan, nobody has Premier Sports and nobody will watch European Cup rugby.

1 Like

Rte will still have free to air games and the final is free to air.

We can only hope

Premier sports has European cup nowā€¦and the URC and the top 14ā€¦surely consolidation of comps onto one platform is positiveā€¦if they had the English league it would be ideal

Theyā€™re starting a rugby channel.

Not a real one though, the rights are still spread all over the shop.

Itā€™s one of the great follies in world sport and I canā€™t believe there isnā€™t a book about that war and the fallout yet.

They moved the organisation to Switzerland because they were jealous of how the Irish teams were doing. Iā€™m sure whatever tax benefit there is is more than wiped out by the T&E expenses.

They claimed they wanted more sponsors than just Heineken but ended up back with them as title sponsor.

They pissed off the biggest sports broadcaster in the U.K. in Sky with their behaviour. The English clubs have zero relationship with them on any level.

Nobody understands the format now.

The only thing they did that was positive was bringing FTA broadcasters back but that was likely to happen anyway.

4 Likes