Re: Leinster 15/16
Posted: Wed Apr 20, 2016 5:01 pm
3 match ban for Fergus. Can play again in the final
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The Ulternative Alster Fan Club supporting Ulster Rugby!
https://www.uafc.co.uk/
GuffawDave wrote:Does McMultiplayer's ban cover all the positions he plays?
Actually Santa I'm a bit surprised that he has been given the equivalent of a red card, I very much doubt any ref on the planet would have red carded him for that. The ref would have done him a favour by yellow carding him which is probably what it was worth.Setanta wrote:Does not say much positive about the referee!!
http://www.irishexaminer.com/sport/colu ... 95256.html for full article.Over the course of the next two day,s in a sequence of IRFU meetings in Dublin, next season’s operational budgets for the four provinces should be finalised. There are strong indications that Grace and his committee, at Munster’s instigation, will offer a cash injection of close to this season’s reported deficit, with very few onerous strings attached, to kick-start a revival in the provinces fortunes.
Leinster, Ulster, and Connacht are sure to fight their corner as, apparently, Munster aren’t the only province facing potential losses this season. Right now however, there is a recognition within the IRFU that Munster’s plight needs to be addressed for the good of the game in this country.
Indeed.BaggyTrousers wrote:yet they nor the IRFU own the RDS
Twas Leinster and Munster who posted losses this yearRuss wrote:Ulster may post a loss this year. Logan must go
All adds up..... wouldn't laugh too hard Rooster whether we like it or not we're all in this communist IRFU system.Rooster wrote:Twas Leinster and Munster who posted losses this yearRuss wrote:Ulster may post a loss this year. Logan must go![]()
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An early exit would be a damaging if certainly not fatal blow to Leo Cullen’s new regime. Yet the implications – both sporting and financial – from what would be to all intents and purposes Leinster’s earliest exit since the ’90s, could be significant.
Leinster have become increasingly self-sufficient, with an annual turnover of about €15 million, excluding monies from the IRFU towards the cost of provincially contracted players. The union pays €90,000 towards 17 of these contracts, and €50,000 toward the remainder.
In Leinster’s case, this amounts to 27 of their 34 fully contracted players, and the IRFU committee was informed that the €2.3 million the union contributes towards these contracts is about €300,000 down on the comparative figure in 2006-07.
Hence, the province’s need to generate their own monies has been accentuated. However, not alone would there be no financial spin-offs from appearing in the knockout stages, much less with a lucrative home quarter-final, the campaign to promote ticket sales for the marquee fixture against Toulon at the Aviva Stadium on Saturday December 19th upon the full-time whistle last Sunday in the RDS sounded like a particularly hard sell.
Ticket sales for that game are supposedly in excess of 35,000, but they will be a harder sell still if they lose today and to Toulon away six days before hosting them; all the more so with Paul O’Connell hors de combat. Viewed in that light, Leinster would assuredly struggle to match the 43,000 tickets sold for last season’s December fixture in the Aviva against Harlequins, and that was for an unsuitable 7.45pm kick-off. The Toulon game kicks off at a more spectator friendly 5.15pm.
The province’s marketing department would have an uphill task to emulate the 47,370 which attended the Northampton game at the Aviva in December 2013, or the near 49,000 tickets sold for the return meeting with Clermont in December 2012.
In the longer term, were there no Pro12 quarter-finals to look forward to when Leinster host Munster in April at the Aviva, that fixture would also lose some more of its lustre.
International contracts
Then there are the potential implications for the IRFU’s negotiations with Seán O’Brien and Cian Healy, the two Leinster players whose international contracts expire at the end of the season.
All of this and more is being underlined to the IRFU at the moment. At the union’s behest, the chief executives of Munster and Leinster, Garrett Fitzgerald and Mick Dawson, presented the full IRFU committee a breakdown of their current well-being and their prognosis for the future.
Ulster, Connacht and Munster have been bailed out with lump sums over the years, but all the provinces have seen their funding reduced. Munster appear financially the worst off, with an estimated debt to the union from the redeveloped Thomond Park of around €9 million.
With the region, and especially Limerick, hardest hit by the recession, and crowds dwindling, they are apparently making little or no imprint on that remaining debt. Moving between Limerick and Cork is another financial albatross around their necks.
Their under-age/academy structure is also contributing far less to the Irish under-20s than of yore, while emigration has contributed to a huge shift in the balance of power at club level from Cork and Limerick to Dublin.
Nor are Leinster and especially Munster supplementing their ranks with the same quantity or quality of overseas signings as when dominating European club rugby.
Where Leinster had six overseas players when winning their first Heineken Cup in 2009, they have four now. Munster have six, and Ulster five, but David Nucifora (who ratifies all signings) and the union are now far less inclined to approve foreign imports.
Leinster’s reduced funding from the IRFU toward their overseas’ players applies to the other provinces as well. The union now pays roughly €150,000 less to each of the provinces toward the salaries of their foreign imports compared to 2006-07. Compared to then, the provinces also play their foreign players’ PRSI, and bonuses over a certain mark.
Furthermore, where there used to be 30 central IRFU-contracted players in the high of 2006-07, this season there are 13 players on union-funded international contracts. All this comes at a time when the IRFU’s dividends from the Six Nations, the ETC/EPCR pot and the Pro12 have consistently been increased.
Leinster have been hardest hit by this reduced funding, in several ways. Although they supplied 17 of Ireland’s original 31-man World Cup, which was further supplemented by late call-ups for Mick McCarthy and Isaac Boss (as well as losing Zane Kirchener to South Africa), Leinster only have seven players under IRFU international contracts – Rob Kearney, Johnny Sexton, Seán O’Brien, Jamie Heaslip, Cian Healy, Mike Ross and Devin Toner.
For all the denials from the likes of Jordi Murphy and Kurt McQuilkin, the flatness of last Sunday’s performance must have been partially due to a World Cup hangover, along with the disjointedness from having a revamped side and a host of injuries.
Empowered
As happened in France, some of the English clubs have been financially empowered by benefactors with wallets to match their egos and a new television deal.
There’s little doubt within the corridors of the IRFU that five European Cup triumphs in a seven-year period from 2006 to 2012 by Munster and Leinster giving way to back-to-back Six Nations titles is a fair trade-off, even if the provinces’ golden era also embraced a Grand Slam in 2009.
Of course, it is a delicate balancing act, but the union would need to be careful where they tread here. The 2009 Grand Slam was backboned by a core of Munster players who had won the Heineken Cup in 2006 and ’08, in teams featuring Trevor Halstead, Shaun Payne, Federico Pucciariello, Doug Howlett, Rua Tipoki, Lifeimi Mafi and Paul Warwick.
The back-to-back Six Nations titles of the last two years were backboned by a core of Leinster players who had won three Heineken Cups. This sequence began in 2008-00 when Rocky Elsom, Isa Nacewa and CJ van der Linde were bought to supplement Felipe Contepomi, Chris Whitaker and Stan Wright, not to mention the enormous contribution of Brad Thorn to the 2012 success.
Their impact on their indigenous team-mates was immeasurable. But that kind of foreign infusion is a far cry from nowadays. You reap what you sow.
What is even worse is the suits in D4 probably think the same wayAird wrote:I used to think that Ulster supporters were particularly Paranoid but reading Babbling Brook makes me think that we are really only novices.
Apart. From the weeping and nashing of teeth in some quarters over Clancy's excellent decision on Saturday they have the gall to take Connacht to task for recruiting one of their Accademy players who they have hardly used all season.
They seem to have had a mass memory loss that they have recruited Henshaw from Connacht.
Ulster having exposed the weakness in their back line , they are talking about the need to strengthen this.
Having gone through their academy and found he candidates wanting they're suggesting Nelson who just happens to be under contract to Ulster.
Also running through the general theme is criticism of Nucifer for wanting to balance out the resources between all the Provinces.
This is of course wrong as the rest of us lesser Provinces should be channeling our resources to keep Leinster top of the pile.
What's more they are capable of believing that this's for the good of IrishRugby.