Iāll indulge your fantasy for once @sidney. For almost itās entire professional existence the munster players were split between two cities, Cork and Limerick. They did their own drinking and gym bunny stuff in smaller groups and met up a couple of times a week for training. Theyāve only based themselves together in the last couple of years. Iām sure your nonsense argument about the city life still stands though.
Indeed, they were based in cities. Youāve just agreed with me.
How many professional teams arenāt based in a city? Would limerick cork galway or belfast even qualify as a city in the UK?
Edit. Looking forward to the deep dive into qualifying criteria for what a city is now. Multiquotes galore
Bar 1 or 2 here, most of em are only watching the rubby for a couple of years but are now experts on the gameā¦ Most of them wouldnāt even know where their local club is. Itās fascinating to read them throwing out analysis on the gameā¦ It just shows how simple a game rubby is really, a game full of jargon rather than substance.
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Mattie knows the score about schmidtball.
The point is that the three major provincial teams on this island - Leinster, Munster and Ulster, and you can throw in Connacht as well to make it four, all had a pre-existing history with a defined geographical area which had a wider identity outside of rugby, ie. there is such a thing as an Ulster identity, there is such a thing as a Munster identity or a Connacht identity. While few people identify as being from Leinster, Leinster were based in a large city with a rugby history and the team itself had an identity.
Dublin, Belfast, Limerick and Cork are all cities which do have rugby strongholds to varying degrees and thus had a ready supporter base for those teams.
In Wales, there were no pre-existing provincial teams, and thus they tried to transfer the pre-existing club structure to the professional era. From 1995 to around 2003, you had Llanelli, Cardiff, Swansea, Neath, Bridgend, Newport, Pontypridd, Pontypool and Ebbw Vale all competing in European competition. Their talent was spread far too thinly and bar the exception of Llanelli those teams couldnāt compete properly.
When they decided to do away with the club structure and go with five regional teams, they had to effectively merge clubs into franchises which was extremely messy and annoyed a lot of people. One of those new regional franchises only lasted a year. There was no pre-existing loyalty or identification with Gwent or Ospreylia (as they laughably called it) or a franchise called the Celtic Warriors.
Wales now has four teams, but two of those four teams are still effectively continuations of old clubs - Cardiff and Llanelli, one the Ospreys, is a messy merger of Neath and Swansea, with Neath effectively disappeared out of existence, and the other, the Dragons, another merger with Ebbw Vale subsumed into Newport. So unless you were a previous supporter, of Llanelli, Cardiff, Swansea or Newport,itās likely youāll feel your team has disappeared and the teams they have donāt particularly lend themselves to attracting floating support - Welsh rugby has always been very clannish, and place and identity orientated - yet the Valleys, a huge traditional stronghold of the game, effectively has no team to represent it in the Pro 14.
In Scotland, the traditional strength of rugby was in the border regions, but clubs such Melrose, Kelso and Hawick were deemed too small to compete in the professional era, so they were subsumed into three franchises - one in Edinburgh, one in Glasgow which is a rugby wasteland, and a regional Borders team. These all failed to varying degrees. Borders was set up, went out of existence, was set up again and went out of existence again, due to a combination of a lack of population base and it being a merger team with a lack of real identity.
Glasgow is a football city and always will be and few give a shit about a rugby franchise with no history. Edinburgh might have been expected to do a bit better, but again it is basically a football city with Hearts and Hibs there and strong support for Celtic and Rangers too.
So another area where Irish rugby was lucky was the lack of rival professional sports teams who play on a regular basis. which Scotland and Wales have.
If, say, Irish rugby had divided its franchises into teams named after cities, and which were the products of club mergers rather than pre-existing teams, say, something nonsensically corporate like the Dublin Destroyers, the Belfast Bullets, the Limerick Dockers, the Cork Rebels and the Galway Tribe, it would have been a much harder sell.
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excellent post
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No one can argue with any of that.
Unrealā¦ Franchise rugby killed the game in Irelandā¦ Decimated the game in Limerick especially. They lied to clubs and thereās still a lot of staunch rugby men bitter about it.
Real rogbee men
You were never at a hurling match in limerick outside of the gaelic grounds and the Mary I pitch yet you are limerick hurlings āno. 1 fanā
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There was fellas choking back tears here the night ireland beat the Italian seconds in what was a dead rubber for Italy at the Euros. The same boys now hopping up and down like sauages in the pan at a real achievement
Fascinating to watch
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You are seething after this great achievement. All night chasing your tail and you wake up still angry.
When Ireland beat Italy, people were happy
You are mad
With a load of foreigners playing
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A load?
Bundee heaslip carburry dj stander?
They the only 4 ?
But seriously, youve never been to a club game in limerick or anywhere, you wouldnt find 5 club pitches in rhe county. Its very very strange to see the likes of you taking that stance agin rubby fans.
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How do you know this mate
Name them
Whatās it got to do with you?