I would definitely say more people watched the soccer than the rugby whatever the ratings say. Soccer is miles more popular
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The ratings say more people did
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It’s not even a serious argument surely. The place was losing the plot last week, Tuesday would have been some craic
Troy the boy helps a lot, The🐧 doesn’t connect with audiences the way the Sexton/O’Gara did. Garry Ringrose isn’t on the town and polling Page 3 girls like Drico did. Tadgh Beirne is a miserable cunt and has never asked a teammate if they scared anybody (on camera anyway).
James Lowe iland his fat arse and smug face and ponytail is the most interesting Irish player.
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The progressive decline in the “star quality” of Irish rugby players over the last 15 years or so is interesting.
The birth of the professional era here in the year 2000 led to an explosion of “stars”.
There are no real Irish rugby “stars” now like O’Driscoll or O’Gara or O’Connell or Donners or even Horgan or even Stringer or even Bowe or even Zebo.
Simon Geoghegan was a much bigger star than any of the lads there now and the teams he played on always lost and he got hypothermia waiting for a pass.
Bundee Aki is the biggest “star” of the officially still currently active players and Bundee might already have played his last game for Ireland.
Most of the players now though have profiles similar to Nick Popplewell or Reggie Corrigan or Gabiel Fulcher. As in most people wouldn’t know them if they passed them on the street.
Is this because of the decline in Keane Edge style Sunday Independent gossip columns and the similar decline of the early to mid-INTERNET era equivalents like VIP Magazine or VIP.ie or Goss.ie or Joe.ie or Cunt.ie?
Could you call it the de-Krystleisation of Irish rugby?
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I agree with you that they are not half as famous but I don’t think that’s it. Paul O connell and John Hayes were never in Krystle and they were very famous.
Heineken cup being on RTE maybe?
Do those figures even factor in the countless people who watched the match in pubs?
Caelan Doris is one of our best players but quite a boring individual. From the John Maughan school of posh Mayo accents.
It’s been back on RTÉ recently but they made a fuck of the competition format.
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The spivs like Mark McCafferty and “Premier Rugby” smashed Humpty Dumpty.
You can’t smash Humpty Dumpty and put him back together again.
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Perhaps it’s linked to the RTE rugby panel having identifiable personalities. Back in the day everybody watched the RTE rugby panel as they stood uneasily on their makeshift gantry on the end of the old new stand at Thomond Park.
Now nobody watches the RTE rugby panel.
Nobody watches TV3 in a general sense.
But nobody watches the RTE football panel these days either and people still know who Caoimhín Kelleher is and they know who Adam Idah is.
The decline of Munster has been huge. The halycon days of the Heineken Cup were massive events.
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Streaming has not grown by 400% in two years, use the noggin.
Except that isn’t the case. The rugby game outrated it (marginally).
This is a bit of revisionism. Sexton was a huge star, but only really in the last six years (post France drop goal) consistently. You’ll look back at the end of the career and say X or Y was a huge star and what a loss but there’ll have to be something that made them.
Very few athletes figure in the Teneo list annually (Katie Taylor is a fairly unique athlete in Irish terms). Even McIlroy bounces out of the list all the time.
The rubby heads livid that their views have been trumped 
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Yeah. They arent happy streams have increased for some reason
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I streamed it
‘Team of Us’ me hole. The rugby is grand but it will never capture the attention or imagination like the soccer team does. Arguing over streaming numbers won’t change that.
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Yeah same
Kimmage nailed it here, years ago.
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Whats the logic for discounting valid streams?
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