Westmeath minor footballer also I think.
Bate Col Iosagain of Port on his own for Marist one year.
Your vendetta towards @gilgamboa is beyond embarassing at this stage pal, even for you.
Maybe practice a bit of that Zen that you preach about.
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24 January 2011; Brian Crombie, Colaiste IosagĂĄin, Portarlington, in action against Robbie Henshaw, Marist College, Athlone. Leinster Colleges SF âAâ Round 1, Colaiste IosagĂĄin, Portarlington v Marist College, Athlone. Portarlington, Co. Laois. Picture credit: Paul Mohan / SPORTSFILE
Farrell has the independent thought and imagination of a lamppost.
Neil Francis: âCVCâs Six Nations deal is a good investment â but not necessarily for the rugby communityâ
Neil Francis
March 13 2021 08:02 PM
The news last week that CVC and the Six Nations had agreed a deal for the private equity giant to take a 14.3 per cent stake in the competition was greeted with acclaim by all the stakeholders.
How does anyone know it is a good deal? Well, we do know it is a good deal but not necessarily for the rugby community. It is not hard to gauge which way TV rights and commercial opportunities will go.
Does it even qualify as a calculated gamble? Timing in this sort of deal is everything, but you would have to be as thick as hobby horse shite to think this was a good deal for the competition. CVC got a bargain.
Covid was a main driver here. The unions are on their knees and no one questioned how easy it was to get another 15 per cent out of CVC from their initial offering during the summer.
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The Six Nations has struck a deal with CVC Capital Partners (Steve Paston/PA)
The Six Nations committee probably thought they really stitched them up for the extra dough. This whole deal, though, is a bit like borrowing from money lenders to pay for the kidsâ Christmas presents during tough times.
CVC are a 1/7th partner now and effectively control the competition. Once you sell the children you wonât get them back.
What value is this sale to the IRFU? If you look at the âŹ56m that the IRFU will receive over five years it equates to only six weeksâ turnover. It will mostly go on wages.
The grandiose idea that this would be a game changer and that the union would be able to invest the money in infrastructure or investment in all reaches of the game is fanciful.
The share of the income for CVC from all commercial activities will be âŹ30m per annum right off the bottom line. In five years they will recoup âŹ150m of their âŹ365m initial investment at current revenue flows but that is before they get to work on the TV rights.
Next weekend is the last time you will watch international rugby on free to air TV. The rights are up, and that is when these Shylocks go to work.
BBC and ITV had to look under the couch to find the dough (ÂŁ90m) for the last batch of TV rights but the word on the street is that it will be somewhere close to four times that figure when CVC go to work with a major player.
Why could the Six Nations not be able to do this business themselves without bringing a parasite on board?
CVC are in negotiations with the South Africans at the moment for 20 per cent of their commercial rights.
An accurate figure has not been mentioned yet.
The major play, though, was in New Zealand where Silver Lake, yet another major private equity player, took a 15 per cent stakehold in the All Black commercial machine.
The Kiwis let almost the same percentage go for âŹ275m. The Six Nations go for âŹ365m and the Kiwis get âŹ275m.
Those press releases keep telling me that the Six Nations is the greatest rugby competition in the world and the Kiwis pull that number? They piss on us on the rugby field and they do the same in the boardroom.
Not that you will find that New Zealand pulled off a brilliant bit of business either. Silver Lake have engineered a coup here.
CVCâs plan is for complete world domination of the sport and they havenât a hope of succeeding without New Zealand on board.
What price the stake for Silver Lakeâs 15 per cent then? Oh, think of a number and multiply by X. Maybe CVC and Silver Lake are working together?
I would have thought that the Six Nations would have gone for broke and sold the whole thing.
The 14.3 per cent stake values the competition at âŹ2.55bn. Why not just go the whole hog and sell the entire lot for âŹ3bn and be done with it. Cede control and rugbyâs future is safe for the next 10 to 15 years, until of course CVC sell it on to another vulture.
The reason they canât sell all will become clear in May and June.
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Scotlandâs Finn Russell
The Saffers are keen to get into Europe and the Six Nations and you can be sure that once CVC acquire that 20 per cent stake that is exactly where South Africa will be going â straight into the Seven Nations.
There is pressure coming from Super Sport TV in South Africa to have some form of quasi-Rainbow Cup as a prelude to the Lions tour this June and July.
There is nothing surer than the fact that the Lions will happen this summer. Not in Dublin though.
The South Africans need a warm-up because they have had no Super Rugby.
The PRO14 sides will be in a state of exhaustion and yet will be asked to play during the summer without their masters having the slightest idea that rugby players after a long season start to fall apart.
It is called sweating your assets. Subscribers want to be entertained.
Meanwhile, there will be entertainment in Edinburgh on Sunday afternoon and as usual with any match involving Scotland, there is strong mention of their two gunslingers - Finn Russell and Stuart Hogg.
They will be the main influencers and if they play as well as they can then Scotland will win.
The problem is that for such experienced performers they react badly to pressure. Sometimes they react badly when there is no pressure.
Hogg scored a try against Ireland last season but dropped the ball in the act of scoring - it was a bizarre moment when it was such a simple task. He had no explanation for the faux pas .
A few weeks ago in the midst of one of their best performances in years when beating England there was another brain fart - but this time by Russell, who manages to conjure them up at an alarming rate.
The Scots were leading 11-6 in the 76th minute when Jonny May knocked the ball on from a long Hogg punt off a free kick into the England 22.
It was a Scotland scrum, so all they needed was one minute for the scrum set, then keep the ball secure and the game was over. Scotland, with their new improved scrum, took the heel and took it up into midfield and their forwards played train track rugby for 11 phases.
Now sometimes referees get angsty with this type of close out and from time to time they ping you for sealing off or going off your feet.
Scotlandâs forwards were doing a professional job though and with 58 seconds left, maybe three or four more drives would see it out.
But another Shakespearian character, King Lear, is out roaming on the heath consumed by madness.
A call comes from Russell who has sat back deep, deep in the pocket, primed for a drop goal attempt.
It would be a 38-metre attempt in shitty conditions but that little twinge or dibble of madness made him call for the ball.
I am sure he didnât want to call for the ball, but voices in his head made him do it. Scott Steele, the Harlequins seconds scrumhalf, should have ignored the stupidity but succumbed and threw out a truly dreadful looping pass which Russell just about caught up on his left, over shoulder high.
Luke Cowan-Dickie rushed him off his right foot and so the drop goal was surely off now. No, never mind.
Russell decided, off balance, to try one with his left. It was on only if you had a bottle of Johnny Walker in you.
Courtney Lawes blocked down the left footed attempt, leaving six England players closer to the ball than any other player in blue.
The ball could have gone anywhere as it ricocheted down to the England 10 metre line where Stuart Hogg went down on it and rescued the situation. England had a scrum in midfield and an opportunity to score a winning try when they were dead and buried. They failed.
That fine line between genius and madness was breached yet again by Russell. The flyhalfâs compulsions are compelling and if England had scored an unlikely last-gasp winning try, would there have been a Gaelic shrug of the shoulders and an inability to fully realise that he himself had blown it again?
As long as Russell is on the pitch Scotland have a chance. Conversely, as long as Russell is on the pitch Ireland have a chance.
How big would the gap be between Italy and Georgia these days?
People love the jump on the neil Frances is a gowl bandwagon too early, hes still a gowl, but heâs right here. Pro rugby is cashing out, losing its power on the game to bail itself out. The level of wages paid is too high to sustain so rather than correct this unions are selling the family silver, taking the game away from casual viewership which will stop the growth of the game. I mean ffs we have a punch drunk 35 year old on 750k a year.
Letâs be clear rugby will never reach the levels of popularity of soccer nor garner the income soccer generates. Cut your cloth otherwise the grassroots will be destroyed and you will have a sport like American football where if your not in the NFL after college there is no where to play.
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Rugby administration hasnât cared about grassroots rugby for twenty years. Grass roots rugby doesnât pay the extravagant travel expenses.
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About 2100km at the closest point on the map
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My God you are like rain man
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Thatâs the thing you go from provincial branches to irfu there isnât a fuck given about the grassroots except a collage of club jerseys at the pro14 games. The head of the irfu suggested the AIL 20/21 could be run off as a tag event and all players can enjoy a few beers.
Its all about sorting tickets for the big games and getting to the big dinner dances with sponsers
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Rugby has signed its death warrant
Very little
Thanks for posting⌠You lost me at Neil Francis however
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No way is he getting that?
But he is punch drunk?? Disgusting.
Donât shoot the messenger
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I love how o gara explains simple concepts to the rest of the panel in a tone that indicates he knows these boys havenât a clue. Rog is a top class analyst
Surely to god Scotland should be favs?