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

Anyone else see the chairman of the Dragons demand a wage cap be imposed on URC sides? It's apparently because Leinster outspend their rivals to a massive degree.

He trots out the usual talking points and bad faith arguments about the league being weak compared to England's and how anyone can beat anyone on the day. Which is obviously false as Baths first outright victory came last weekend.

https://www.walesonline.co.uk/sport/rugby/rugby-news/dragons-boss-calls-united-rugby-22727873

His solution is to... bring everyone down to the Dragons' level?

Irish teams will obviously never go for it.

I thought the IRFU pay the wages? I understand Dragons position and the fact they have poor finances. But, so do the Italians and the Scottish aren't rolling in gold either.

The WRU owns the regions? Perhaps some private capital is needed.

But bar Lowe and Henshaw, all of the players who'd be on big money at Leinster are produced and came through the academy at Leinster.

The salary cap in England is there to stop clubs from doing a Toulon and signing an all star team.

A salary cap in the URC would mean Leinster would essentially be forced to allow many home grown players they've invested lots of time and money in, to walk out the door. Basically punishing Leinster for their academy being too good. Which doesn't seem fair.

However the other provinces would benefit greatly, as they could hoover up the players Leinster are forced to let go to stay under the cap. So the talent would be far more evenly spread around the provinces.

Promotion and relegation would do nothing to improve standards though so why would it be better?

It wouldn't basically punish leinster for having a good academy. Leinster would still get to pick the players it wants from the academy and it would probable have to release a few more players than it does at the moment. But that's not punishing leinster. That's a silly way to look at it.

The French and English both have allowances for home grown players and players who are eligible to play for the national team. Given leinster grown most of its own talent, it might not have that much of an effect.

I suppose if you exclude Healy who's deal is up in June. Leinster only have 5 home grown player's on big money (Porter, Furlong, Ryan, Sexton, Ringrose). But you'd assume Kelleher and Keenan's next contracts will be big IRFU deals.

Henshaw and Lowe would be on big money but they aren't produced by Leinster.

So maybe you're right and it wouldn't mean letting big names go. Just more of the fringe players, which would be a good thing for Irish rugby in the grand scheme of things. There's some very talented young players who, through no fault of their own, just aren't getting the game time to develop.

Don't think so, if you had the top division say of the 4 Irish, 2 Scottish and the 2 stronger SA teams(at full strength) they'd all be good competive games. Wouldn't be any "meaningless games" as its a strong league.

At the moment a lot of the Irish teams against most of the others are pretty meaningless as you know how they're going to go.

While it wouldn't necessarily improve the Dragons and others, it would stop them getting cricket scores put against them and give them something to play for with competitive games. Yes some teams have CC to target at the moment but struggling to qualify and then getting spanked in the groups is hardly helping them.

If Dragons got up to division 1 they'd have had to improve from where they are now and would get to a level where they would at the least fancy getting a bonus point against Leinster.

With the 2 divisions it cuts out the one sided games where the top teams hammer the bottom.

Of course you'd still have big wins like any league but in both leagues the gap from top team to bottom team would be way closer so more competitive games all round.

Someone lost a girlfriend to a Leinster man!