Leinster Team Talk/Gossip/Rumours Thread XII (The Byrne Supremacy)

I looked this up before, it's usually ~70-75% attendances across the year for the Irish provinces with Ulster usually highest by a few %, But all generally around the same. Glasgow are the highest, apparently, and it's not even close.

For the last four years, obviously not including last year, if wikipedia is to be believed:

The redevelopment of one stand of the RDS to get an additional 2000 seats at a cost of €50million seems high.

The Allianz Stadium in the Austrian capital, opened 5 years ago cost €53 million for a brand new 28k seater Stadium build after knocking the old Stadium 2 years previously.

Surely there must be a better option than throwing €50 million at the RDS.

Oh yeah I get it that it's the RDS that is upgrading the facilities and that it's not Leinster Rugby. The Rds and Leinster are looking for about half the funding to come from the government. €10m was previously committed and now they are looking for another €10m.

Back in 2018 the upgrade was going to cost €20million.

Then it jumped to €40 and now it's coming in at €50million.

I still think its a hell of a lot of money for the Anglesea stand to be developed and still be left with a stadium with the capacity in the region of 20/21k.

No matter how good the new hospitality facilities will be it's difficult to justify the costs.

You'd imagine a brand new 25k seater Stadium could be built for €50-60m

By the time this work is complete it will be time to update the rest of the stadium.

I’m talking about the reality of attendances at the games I have been too. Apart from two or three games a season the RDS is always about 75% full. To say it’s only half full for most league games other than inter pros couldn’t be further from the truth. The lowest recorded attendance in 2019 was just over 10,000 that’s a little over half full. They have changed the way attendance's are recorded on the last few seasons. They don’t include all the season ticket holders anymore. Or the minimum would be 12,000.

The likelihood for the big games, all being fit. Would always have been Healy covering LH. With Porter and Furlong starting.

Costelow had an absolute howler last weekend against Munster.

I'd fully expect Johnny to be giving him all sorts of grief and Josh would want to be planning on giving the poor kid nightmares about a red scrumcap.

He's only young and the RDS against a Leinster side of this calibre could be the making of him.

Worth noting that ex Leinster contact skills coach Hugh Hogan is now the D coach for Scarlets.

I'd expect them to make our lives a bit difficult in some regards

Have a spare ticket for todays match in RDS . PM me if you want it

Any post RDS pub recommendations: somewhere we can watch the Connacht match and ideally not be crammed in like sardines? Even better if it’s a covered beer garden with TVs. I was thinking Horse Show House, any others?