TV Rights, best avoided

I take exception to that mate. There is plenty of former students attending these games too as this article will testify to.

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40k on a Thursday night against Georgia really is an excellent attendance. You’d see the tired but happy children being loaded onto buses to go home - Duffy’s of Letterkenny, McDaid’s of Tralee and so on - and realise they won’t be home until after midnight and then up for school the next day too. Incredible support. :clap:

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The rugby lads go to a mixture of domestic and professional fixtures on this island.

Club rugby in Ireland is at best 3rd tier in Ireland. Arguably 4th tier. Irish rugby have successfully migrated crowds to their pro structure.

Football gets a big following of successful teams in Britain and when the Irish national team do well. This is why rugby now gets the cream of sponsorship in this country with the GGA pretty close. The Oirish football fan is a disgrace.

No basically what happened was post 2002 when the team were still riding high, Sky came in and bought the rights. Bertie went ape and changed the law.

Fair enough.

But the GGA and IRFU aren’t as constrained as the FAI. The only rugby property protected on the A list is Ireland rugby World Cup games, not live. The only GGA is the All Ireland finals.

It isn’t fair on the FAI to have one of their major revenue sources limited like that when the other organisations aren’t. The IRFU were very successful at blocking Eamonn Ryan a few years ago. Goes to show the difference in administration quality I suppose.

Were those tickets for the Canadian game stand alone, or did they have to be purchased as part of a trio/or combined games? Again, a Saturday evening game primed for attendance - The FAI don’t get to handpick when they get to play their qualifying games/friendlies, mate… Very tough on people down the country to attend games on a week night but they could be better for sure.

The FAI sell ticket bundles as well.

This isn’t a new thing. The IRFU have always dominated attendances. Sure the FAI were beneficiaries of the IRFU giving them a cheap rent for years, rather than been forced overseas.

Irish soccer fans couldn’t be arsed outside of the glamour ties. “Best fans in the world”.

Canadian game was standalone I’d say?

There was a mix between standalone and bundles, standard enough.

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The FAI count season ticket holders as part of the attendance even when they don’t show up, further inflating already poor attendance figures.

Association football is a world game with mass support. It just so happens that this island is next door to the country with the largest and deepest mass support for the game in the world. Therefore the best players from this island have always migrated there. Liverpool, Celtic, Everton, Manchester United, Arsenal, Aston Villa, Leeds etc. have all been backboned by Irish players over the years and all have long-established cultural ties to this country. Which is why there is mass support here for these teams. It’s pretty simple when you think about it.

Rugby union football is not a world game with mass support. For most of its history it has been amateur. Until relatively recently it has never had to compete with leagues in other countries. Therefore its players never had to/ had the opportunity to leave the country to play. People in Ireland have no interest in the English or French leagues.

The pertinent comparison here is between the League of Ireland and club rugby - and on that score the League of Ireland wins hands down, Lansdowne.

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I don’t think it was … i’m not fighting @Tim_Riggins on this thread and agree with some of his comments - But Irish international rugby have their 6 -8 games a year against the other top teams in the game sorted every year without having to do anything- the few friendlies outside the 6 nations are done with a phone call. The situation with international soccer is completely different and thus a ridiculous argument.

Where I wont disagree is the Irish fans that turn their nose up at LOI, that is a disgrace but how do you combat it with the circus that is the EPL on your doorstep and being delivered into your front room on tap. You saw what professional rugby did to club rugby here - You can’t blame lads for wanting to watch some of the biggest names in the game play, something that will never, ever happen here no matter how well the LOI was developed. Still, no reason why you can’t have both and support your local team.

The Rugby boys are light years ahead in how they promote their game, that can’t be argued and the FAI, if they cared at all, need to help clubs promote them selves. Limerick FC are an example of what can be done - decent facilities, local media promotion etc. - They were probably getting 500 if lucky 5/6 years ago above in Jackman park - they are pushing on 2k now with lots of lads I know bringing their kids along for free and indoctrinating them into the culture of local support… This is what the FAI need to be helping with.

To be fair they do that at provincial rugby games as well. Not sure about internationals.

The Canada match was very well attended though.

@Tim_Riggins claims “Oirish football fans are a disgrace”, yet conveniently overlooks how when the game went professional, rugby followers completely abandoned the club game here in favour of watching Munster or Leinster - and even at that, the attendances are hardly stellar outside of big Heineken Cup games and direct clashes between the teams. Not many people would be too bothered about visits by Treviso, Zebre, Edinburgh Reivers or the Newport-Gwent Dragons, for instance.

Which, if he is consistent about it, would make Oirish rugby followers “a disgrace”.

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shur SRFC had more than that on Friday

Where are Munster and Leinster based mate?

You’re gonna have to give me bullet points mate I can’t read that stream of consciousness

Edited into bullet points now, mate.

That’s the point.

That the best Irish rugby players all stay in Ireland is in fact a function of rugby’s failure to capture public interest in European or global terms.

Irish rugby players have always stayed in Ireland due to i) the game as a whole being amateur and ii) the complete failure of club rugby in England compared to club football, and the lack of interest in English club rugby from anybody outside the game’s heartlands there.

That means there is no pull factor attracting the best Irish players away from Ireland like you have in association football.

Irish association football players playing in England is similar to how the best basketball players from Serbia, Croatia and Lithuania all play in the NBA. It’s a dominant league in a dominant country both economically and culturally.

Irish rugby players staying in Ireland is a function of how rugby has never gained any sort of a dominant market share in an economic powerhouse country.

Rugby only has three leagues in Europe and none hold much interest outside of the countries involved, ie. there is virtually no interest in the English Premiership or French Top Quatorze in Ireland, even among rugby followers, and virtually nobody in England or France gives a toss about the Pro 12.

There are around 50 association football leagues in Europe and the major European countries all have major leagues in global terms, which attract the best players.

The biggest league in the world is next door to Ireland. English football has a massive following all over the world, it’s followed fanatically in places which have a but a fraction of the direct sporting and cultural connections the Irish have historically had with it for over a century.

Given English football’s massive global following, I find it very surprising how you can’t understand how it would have such a massive following here, given that all our best players play in it and that it’s 25 minutes on a plane from Dublin to Liverpool.

Another thing you forget is that association football is exclusively organised on a strictly nation state basis (there are a few exceptions such as Derry City, Cardiff, Swansea, Berwick, Canadian MLS teams etc.)

Therefore League of Ireland teams are effectively trapped within a very small market in European terms, as the money concentrates within five big European leagues. It has always suffered from this but never more so than now. Massive clubs in world terms like Celtic and Ajax also suffer from the same effect. European Cup winning clubs like Red Star Belgrade and Steaua Bucharest have become also-rans and their leagues have become backwaters due to the concentration of money in the big five leagues.

Rugby had to come up with a multi-country format for the Pro12 because it knew domestic rugby could not survive otherwise, but crucially, it was able to due to there being basically nobody there to object to it.

Similar proposed projects in football like the Atlantic League have never come close to getting off the ground because it would threaten the entire organisational structure of European football.

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Long-winded self-justifying post based on a very flimsy premise. NBA comparison is absolutely ridiculous. “Always stayed”? Game has only gone pro relatively recently.

No one watches the Heineken cup final in this country when there are no Irish teams involved.