Rugby Union Thread

PostRe: Rugby Union Thread by **Knoyleo** » Sun Feb 12, 2023 3:06 pm

Caught up with the Wales game late last night after putting the boy to bed, and wished I'd just looked at the score and not bothered. Terrible game with so many unforced errors. Both sides making mistakes, but Scotland actually punished Wales for theirs while Wales gave Scotland a free pass all the time. Russell was also looking about a thousand times better at 10 than Biggar was. I know Biggar gets chopsy, but the way he was screaming at such a junior international in Dyer about that loose pass in the first half was unacceptable, especially for someone who then sent him such an unworkable through the leg pass he couldn't catch at a later potential try scoring opportunity as well.

Looking forward to seeing Italy hopefully hold England to a similar performance they gave against France last week, but who knows if they can pull that out the bag again the same way.

PostRe: Rugby Union Thread by **still** » Sun Feb 12, 2023 3:51 pm

Better from England but not exactly riveting.

(Agree re Biggar bollocking Dyer - completely out of order and embarrassing. Besides which, for me, it was Wale’s younger players that provided the brighter moments for Wales.)

PostRe: Rugby Union Thread by **Knoyleo** » Tue Feb 14, 2023 7:43 pm

Wales 6N campaign looks like it could still get a whole lot worse. :dread:

twitter.com/_AlexBywater/status/1625541113401511936

PostRe: Rugby Union Thread by **Rax** » Wed Feb 15, 2023 8:52 am

Its a truly insane situation. I dont know the details of the problem but I really cant understand how a seemingly rugby loving nation like Wales cant support 4 professional sides. Over here rugby is the 4th sport in terms of popularity but still manage to maintain 4 fully professional, competitive teams and we can all see the benefits at international level. Im not saying the Irish system is perfect but it is doing a great job of maximising the talent available and being financially sound in their planning. The fact that Wales is so fractured and chaotic in its approach to professional rugby is mind boggling. The Welsh team, much like the Irish team, brings in the money, yet this doesnt filter down to the regions, theres some disconnect there somehow. The regions (or at least a large portion of the fan base) eant to break away from the URC and join with the English clubs, but the English system is even worse off financially at the moment and within a couple of seasons all the Welsh regions would be relegated to the championship anyway so it would be a form of suicide to break away.

Anyone got any insight into the problems with Welsh rugby? From what I can see its just woefully mismanaged from the top down.

PostRe: Rugby Union Thread by **Knoyleo** » Wed Feb 15, 2023 9:37 am

Rax wrote:Its a truly insane situation. I dont know the details of the problem but I really cant understand how a seemingly rugby loving nation like Wales cant support 4 professional sides. Over here rugby is the 4th sport in terms of popularity but still manage to maintain 4 fully professional, competitive teams and we can all see the benefits at international level. Im not saying the Irish system is perfect but it is doing a great job of maximising the talent available and being financially sound in their planning. The fact that Wales is so fractured and chaotic in its approach to professional rugby is mind boggling. The Welsh team, much like the Irish team, brings in the money, yet this doesnt filter down to the regions, theres some disconnect there somehow. The regions (or at least a large portion of the fan base) eant to break away from the URC and join with the English clubs, but the English system is even worse off financially at the moment and within a couple of seasons all the Welsh regions would be relegated to the championship anyway so it would be a form of suicide to break away.

Anyone got any insight into the problems with Welsh rugby? From what I can see its just woefully mismanaged from the top down.

From the Squidge analysis of Ireland Wales:

From what I'm aware of, there's a huge amount of debt in the Welsh rugby system, and there's massive disagreement between the WRU and the regions over how that's shared/paid off otherwise covered. While a large portion of debt is related to covid, with the WRU only securing £13.5m support from the Welsh government then applying for a £20m loan from Natwest to be repaid with interest in 5 years, there's always been this imbalance, and the WRU's latest push is for the regions to seek their own benefactor investment in order to cover their own funding, while the WRU continue cut their own funding the regions, so they can instead clear down some of their own debt. A funding agreement that is still being deliberated months after it was supposed to come into effect. There's the ghouls of private equity firm CVC constantly hovering in the background of all this as well. Then the WRU do daft things like consider investing in a Cardiff centre hotel over investing into the regions, or their own development programs, because that might potentially be an earner on international weekends, despite them having no expertise in hotel management, and it saddling them with currently unknown ongoing running costs, and tying up vast amounts of capital in the short term.

Player livelihood is then tied into a horrible system of dual contracts. When the WRU realised that the requirement of playing your club rugby in Wales in order to play for the national side wasn't enough of a pull on its own to keep the most valuable players from wanting to strawberry float off to another country for better pay, they started tying their biggest stars into dual regional/national contracts, so their pay is funded by both parties to top up their salary beyond what the regions can afford, but this creates a two tier system where less valuable players at national level are then unable to secure higher pay at regional level, and the mess we're in now where the dispute between WRU and regions means these players don't even know if they'll have a job come next season.

Then there's all the other disaster stories coming out of the WRU, about the management and culture of sexism, racism, and homophobia. It's an old boys club that's concerned primarily about protecting itself and keeping things the way they are, rather than developing or growing the game. The English RFU are seeing the women's team turn into a world class side, bringing in ticket sales, not just from existing rugby fans, but new supporters, growing their base and overall revenue. Meanwhile, the WRU heads would rather threaten to sexually assault people as a joke and bully any women out of the game, than fund them and support them to potentially achieve the same. A shower of dinosaurs who all need putting out of their strawberry floating misery.

PostRe: Rugby Union Thread by **Rax** » Wed Feb 15, 2023 11:26 am

I had no idea the finances in Wales were so bad, £23.5m isnt enough to fund the 4 regions, nevermind fund the rest of Welsh rugby. Looking at the IRFU accounts they spent over €60m on the professional game last season (provinces and national team), this is in addition to €14m for elite player development, presumably that covers the U20s, womens game (they only went "professional" this season) and possibly some academy expenses, and then on top of that another €13m for the domestic game. So €87m to field teams and play games which is about 2.5 times what Wales were allocating to roughly the same thing. strawberry floating hell, its no wonder the players are considering strike action.

PostRe: Rugby Union Thread by **Tomous** » Wed Feb 15, 2023 12:11 pm

The WRU are terrible and I hate them.

PostRe: Rugby Union Thread by **Victor Mildew** » Wed Feb 15, 2023 12:22 pm

We used to go to the rugby so much. Now it's disgustingly priced to go to the millennium stadium. We know quite a few people here that just don't go now because of it. We used to be members of the wru and they wrote to us a while back asking why we'd stopped. It's too expensive to go and watch Wales lose every single time.

PostRe: Rugby Union Thread by **Tomous** » Wed Feb 15, 2023 12:24 pm

Victor Mildew wrote:We used to go to the rugby so much. Now it's disgustingly priced to go to the millennium stadium. We know quite a few people here that just don't go now because of it. We used to be members of the wru and they wrote to us a while back asking why we'd stopped. It's too expensive to go and watch Wales lose every single time.

Ticket prices are a disgrace but they still pack out the stadium for the big games so this isn't an issue commercially. Still a disgrace though.

The issue with tickets is the regions can't seem to sell any kind of significant number for club matches.

PostRe: Rugby Union Thread by **Victor Mildew** » Wed Feb 15, 2023 12:26 pm

I don't know this of course, but it's got to be a large portion of tickets being sold to the away sides and corporate now. It's just madness how much they want for a ticket. You're looking at about £300 for an hour or so with some drinks (for two people that is).

PostRe: Rugby Union Thread by **Drumstick** » Wed Feb 15, 2023 12:56 pm

WRFU needs to be nuked from orbit and started afresh, along with the FIA and all these other institutions that are not fit for purpose in the modern age.

PostRe: Rugby Union Thread by **Photek** » Wed Feb 15, 2023 1:18 pm

I don't follow the sport outside of the 6 nations and WC so this 'Ireland being pretty decent' is something of a shock tbh. Looked into it and Rugby Ireland had something of a reset a few years ago afaik.

PostRe: Rugby Union Thread by **sawyerpip** » Wed Feb 15, 2023 1:31 pm

Tomous wrote:
Victor Mildew wrote:We used to go to the rugby so much. Now it's disgustingly priced to go to the millennium stadium. We know quite a few people here that just don't go now because of it. We used to be members of the wru and they wrote to us a while back asking why we'd stopped. It's too expensive to go and watch Wales lose every single time.

Ticket prices are a disgrace but they still pack out the stadium for the big games so this isn't an issue commercially. Still a disgrace though.

The issue with tickets is the regions can't seem to sell any kind of significant number for club matches.

It is maddening that in 20 years they haven't been able to build up any substantial following for the regions.

Victor Mildew wrote:I don't know this of course, but it's got to be a large portion of tickets being sold to the away sides and corporate now. It's just madness how much they want for a ticket. You're looking at about £300 for an hour or so with some drinks (for two people that is).

There are still reasonably priced tickets available, you just have to be a member of a rugby club, or know a member, to have any chance of getting a hold of them. So there is still a substantial number of Wales fans going every game.

The top end of the general sale tickets are now at the £80-120 mark which is very steep, but is in line with what the other home nations charge from what I can tell. My tickets for the game at Murrayfield Saturday were £115 and from what I've heard Ireland and England tickets are even more expensive. Still a disgrace but it seems to be the going rate.

For comparison you can get a campaign ticket for Wales football which covers 4-5 games for not much more than this, and while it wouldn't include any historically 'big' games as you get every year in the 6N, there has been a much better atmosphere and general experience at Wales football games than rugby in recent years, where it now seems like it's mainly an excuse for a massively expensive piss-up, which again is another complaint the other home nations are struggling with at the moment.

PostRe: Rugby Union Thread by **Tomous** » Wed Feb 15, 2023 1:50 pm

Drumstick wrote:WRFU needs to be nuked from orbit and started afresh, along with the FIA and all these other institutions that are not fit for purpose in the modern age.

WRU
FIA
UEFA
FIFA

For starters

PostRe: Rugby Union Thread by **Knoyleo** » Thu Feb 16, 2023 8:04 am

twitter.com/Steffan_Thomas1/status/1625939418954493952

The WRU are insane. Not even London Welsh. WTF?

PostRe: Rugby Union Thread by **Knoyleo** » Mon Feb 20, 2023 1:35 pm

twitter.com/SquidgeRugby/status/1627659261760217089

PostRe: Rugby Union Thread by **Rax** » Tue Feb 21, 2023 11:22 am

It really does seem like Welsh rugby is totally strawberry floated and it will take a serious effort, as well as a huge cash injection at this stage, to salvage anything in the short term. Gatland is apparently getting £2m for coming back and his players dont know if theyll be getting paid beyond 3 months from now. Complete madness.

PostRe: Rugby Union Thread by **still** » Sun Feb 26, 2023 3:23 pm

Woo, all of a sudden this has become very interesting. (Not entirely for the right reasons though…)

Edit, we maybe not!

PostRe: Rugby Union Thread by **Knoyleo** » Sun Mar 05, 2023 2:46 pm

twitter.com/whalaholo/status/1632165546249580544

twitter.com/whalaholo/status/1632165551962308611

twitter.com/whalaholo/status/1632165558090190848

twitter.com/whalaholo/status/1632169786200170496

A horrific situation for any professional sportsperson to find themselves in, and entirely of the WRU's doing. Being asked to put your body on the line for your club and country, not just this week or this season, but potentially with lifelong impacts to your body and mind, then being offered not even enough to get your family through the month, let alone what they might need to support themselves in the future. It's insulting, and is going to be forcing good players out of the game because they can't justify it as a career any longer.

PostRe: Rugby Union Thread by **Knoyleo** » Sat Mar 11, 2023 4:31 pm

Holy gooseberry fool, Wales can still play well and win. Chuffed to see the line up changes work together today.

Rugby Union Thread

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