OTB (Off The Ball)

There’s very little interest in English or French club rugby in Ireland. Nobody “follows” an English or French team. A final clash between an English team and a French team like last year might carry a small bit of interest but when it’s an all-English or all-French affair it’s hard to be excited.

I’m looking forward to seeing Stade Toulasain take in La Rochellais.

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Surely if the cup is the holy grail the final will be watched by those to cover it ??

I will watch the final and I wouldn’t be a huge fan of any Irish province . I will also watch the CL final . Dammit I might even watch the Europa League final .

They have a very good minor team this year by all accounts. Fred cogley brought them through from under 12

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Looking at the few new additions on Prime Time, they will need them.

On rte, 480k with an English team vs 320k without

Losing Woolie was a massive hit though, they did well to recover

Speak for yourself- I was glad to watch the 2004 Munster final all five times they showed it!

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Twas the heartbeat of a nation sure

Hard to believe a podcast involving murph pulls over 60k a month.

Is it really that much after costs and tax and split 5 ways?

3k a week less tax.Not a bad gig.

That’s big money when most of them have other gigs as well.

But there’s bound to be some significant costs too? Don’t they have an office in Merrion Sq or around there. Annual rent for that must be big?

they do

They’ve been doing it remotely since the start of the pandemic.

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That doesn’t factor in advertising either which I presume they make a few pound from.

I might watch a bit of it meself but I wouldn’t be hugely anticipating it or anything. The current Toulouse team are great to watch to be fair.

For supporters of the Irish provinces it is but it’s also one of those competitions where interest tends to rapidly diminish once Irish teams are out. I would guess there was an element of that about football’s European Cup final back in the day but since the Champions League era started the competition has showcased the world’s very best football. You can’t say that about the Heineken Cup. International rugby is a considerably higher standard.

When RTÉ had highlights of the Heineken cup the first year of sky they never showed a minute outside of Munster and Leinster in the highlights program. They put up the results of weekend at end of show.
That’s the Oirish interest in rugby summed up there. I used enjoy sky’s hour highlights show on Sunday evening where they showed few mins of every game.

That’s standard in any country.

Lads based in Ireland are getting very mixed up because people in Ireland people mainly support British based soccer clubs. So there’s a big interest in general in soccer and watching it on tv.

If Dublin, Galway and cork had teams competing in the champions league knock out stages on a regular basis you wouldn’t be getting any coverage of man united or Liverpool.