I reckon that might just be one fella on here.
Central contract system is broken.
Iād split that pot into 4 and give an equal share to each province.
Alan Quinlan had a good whinge on Off The Ball, he solution to everything seems to be raiding Leinster for players.
Matt Cooper was also at it yesterday, within a few seconds of the piece on Munster starting and he was on about Leinster and how they couldnāt compete financially.
Munster are becoming the new FAI, they had everyone rugby mad and got nothing out of it. Itās like how the FAI squandered the legacy of Euro 88, Italia 90 and USA 94.
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For the betterment of Irish rugby, the Irish talent should be spread around the franchises, rather than one entity stockpiling.
Surely thats a no brainer?
When the Munster rubby franchise & bandwagon was in its prime, how many of the 1st 15 would have come from outside Munster? Less than 5?
There are loads of lads in Munster, Ulster and Connacht who came through the Leinster schools system. How about Munster develop their own players, whereās the money from this All Blacks game or the summer concerts going to?
How did they get nothing out of it?
Are Munster the biggest self-pity party in Irish sport?
Iām struggling to think who else across all the other sports. Maybe the Irish soccer team.
Yes because the Leinster schools players have ridiculous investment.
They then make up the bulk of the Irish underage sides who get expert coaching.
Repeat process over ten years and Leinster
Private schooled players make up the bulk of the central contracted players allowing Leinster massive wriggle room in their budgets compared to the other three provinces.
It isnāt rocket science.
Eh, what did they put in place to bring through the next generations of players? They seem to have missed a trick there.
The main focus seems to have been the new Thomond Park which is now too big and a white elephant because the āfansā lost interest.
They built Thomond for something like 40 million. It was a snip.
Drugs and hookers.
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As example there is 50 million being pumped into the rds to increase capacity from 18k to 21k.
The other 3 provincial academies got complacent since the Leinster private school rubby juggernaut skyrocketed over the last 15 years. The good news is that itās being corrected at all 3 in the past 5 years but it shouldnāt have been let get to that point. You can only blame the Leinster Lions for so much when provinces were lamenting lack of private schools and ignoring the working class schools.
I donāt think Iād blame Leinster but the Irfu could definitely done more to help.
Instead every break goes leinsters way.
There is not many pro games anymore to develop young players.
Thatās being spent by the RDS to replace an almost 100 year old stand. Leinster arenāt spending it.
āThe project has been fully costed and will be composed of RDS funds as well as Philanthropy and Government support."
Do you remember what the old Thomond park was like in 05 when they decided to redevelop it?
Absolutely the IRFU are partially to blame for the state of the academies but at the same time there were enough lads that knew better at grassroots that completely dropped the ball.
I do, but the redevelopment seems to have held Munster back financially rather than pushing them on. The IRFU have had to refinance the debt twice so far and it became a white elephant pretty quickly once the āfansā lost interest. How many times a year is it full, maybe twice?