Leinster can offer Southern Hemisphere lads good money, a nice place to live in Sandymount or Ranelagh or Dalkey and regular sell out crowds of 18,000 or 50,000 or even 82,000.
Munster can offer a nice place to live in Douglas, Connacht a nice place to live in Salthill, and Ulster a nice place to live off the Malone Road.
Wales can offer shit money, a basket case of a team, shit crowds and renting the Hitler house in Swansea.
I don’t know anything about rugby but can someone do me up a simple graph showing how many more times Ireland have won the 5/6 nations title than wales have since professionalism and how many World Cup semi finals both teams have played in during that period also. Thanks.
Ooo you are propa nawty
Bordeaux Begles.
Racing 92
I think it’s 7 of Irelands 15 six nations wins came in the pro era.
6 out of 29 for wales in the pro era.
Spoken like a true venture capitalist.
The irish provinces destroyed rubby in Ireland. It’s essentially a cartel now for the few and irfu big Whigs.
And it’s 5-2 to Ireland in the under 20s championship as well.
Which is probably more telling. Only 30 years into pro rugby so there is a hangover too.
Wales and Ireland but had very good sides and great players from 06 to 19.
Wales are not replacing their team and the best player to play NFL.
It’s the same for all sports.
Inter county gaa has ruined club gaa.
English club soccer has ruined the Irish club soccer.
It’s dog eat dog.
The AIL appears to be going very well compared to ten years ago. Streaming services going well, good podcasts and crowds are up on ten years ago.
Despite you repeatedly saying it’s ruined.
“All you hear about is games being cancelled and kids not taking up the sport”. That’s the line that explains most of the issues in Wales, they were able to paper over it with NZ mercenaries for years but once World Rugby tightened up on that the collapse was inevitable. I see the RFU will be reporting a loss of up to £40 million next month for English rugby, the largest ever loss there by a sports governing body. The Welsh, as ever, just seem to be ahead of the curve in rugby. Hard to feel sorry for them all either when you see stuff like this.
https://twitter.com/chrisnowinski1/status/1855373243638841658?s=46
The most bitter poster on the forum is back.
Desperately telling us rugby was finished in Australia and New Zealand last year.
Not content with ruining the gaa he wants to run down any other sport out of pure spite.
The unbridled hatred of the thick gaa men is far amusing that the Ross o Carroll Leinster fan for me.
After 3 good games last weekend this looks like a shit weekend for rugby.
I’ll give you Bordeaux Begles. Racing 92 seems to be basically a subsuming of a small club into a bigger club, like the Irish Independent (incorporating the Freeman’s Journal).
The Bordeaux one probably works because it’s in a big league (the Top Quatorze is the rugby union football league on earth) and because it represents a city and therefore makes geographical sense. I’m guessing it would have been two small clubs merging to form a club that could be bigger than the sum of their parts.
Wests Tigers in the NRL is one I don’t think works. They play their games at different venues and from what I could make out a lot of their supporters refuse to refer to the merged club by its actual name, they either call it Balmain Tigers or Wests.
I recall absolute bedlam when the new Rugby League Super League proposed to merge a load of clubs in 1995 or thereabouts. Widnes and Warrington were supposed to merge into a new entity called “Cheshire” and the Hull clubs were supposed to merge and Castleford were supposed to merge with another team. None of those mergers happened.
All proposed AFL mergers failed too. The Brisbane Lions is officially a merger of the Brisbane Bears and Fitzroy but in reality Brisbane ate Fitzroy whole and Fitzroy ceased to exist.
Footscray and Fitzroy were supposed to merge in 1989 and this failed as did the proposed Hawthorn-Malbourne merger in 1996, supporters just wouldn’t have it.
Hearts owner Wallace Mercer tried to take over Hibs in 1990 to form a new Edinburgh “super team” and this predictably got absolutely nowhere.
Anyway none of the very limited criteria for a successful merged club apply to Welsh rugby regions. The larger problem with Wales is the league itself. Nobody in Wales cares about the URC. There aren’t any rivalries.
It isn’t the URC. As mentioned, they stunk out the joint with their Anglo Welsh Cup and also in Europe too.
The reason why the English clubs aren’t keen to take them is because of this. Hence why the Anglo Welsh League became a British and Irish League wish for English owners.
The reality is the top two private schools in Dublin can invest more money into the underage wru can.
The WRU have as much money as the IRFU
Amazing you haven’t blamed Munster.
Nobody in the world can compete with the private schools investment in Leinster.
It’s David v gloaith stuff.
The problem with the modern professional setup is that is doesn’t suit the Limerick mindset.
We’re a ferociously unpredictable and chaotic people. When the AIL was formed Limerick clubs won 7 of the first 9. We walked all over every bastard that came near us… Cork Con managed to rob 2 in that time … but it was Munster all the way in those care free amateur days with it’s tough Corinthian spirit.
This professional shite suits a more sterile and subservient class of people. That’s why these Leinster private school academies rule the roost today.
Not relevant to the discussion
Do you think the Ospreys squad from 15 years or so ago were underpowered?
Worth listening to John Robbie on this. Basically he suggests that Munster were better equipped than others for early stage professionalism. They then blew it the big lead.