Rugby, Do we need it?

This bit about "importing foreigners" really gets my goat.

How many of Ireland's representative teams in ANY sport rely on "foreigners" to give them any sort of credibility?

There were four players from the rugby team's match day squad of 23 last Saturday born outside of Ireland and two of them had Irish ancestry, namely Hansen and Carberry. The latter has been living in Ireland since he was a child. The other two, Akee and Gibson Park had to live here for years before they could qualify. Fair play to them.

Look at our soccer side over the years. Full of people who had barely set foot in the country in their lives ever before "declaring" for "Eire".

What about "our" Winter Olympics team. There's literally somebody called Bubba from Utah representing us. Along with a Frenchwoman and a Norwegian man.

The Irish rugby team is one of the most authentic home-grown representatives of our country that we have.

Diss it all you like. You're entitled to your opinion of the game as I am entitled to my opinion of the likes of you.

But I'll keep it on the inside. (I'd get banned otherwise)

The disparity between the backgrounds of some/most of the top players and the average rugby player in Ireland is fairly massive and completely at odds with the posh south Dublin stereotype that people outside of the sport have. Your average club player outside of D4 tends to be working class and from a public/community school as you pointed out

^^^^^^^

Would you ever dare give that opinion when other sports being broadcast on TV or on the radio are offering the very same thing to their viewers/listeners.

What's not to like about listening to those former athletes who are officially qualified to give their expert analysis on their sport of expertise when the newest generation are taking up these positions after the careers of the former have officially ended.

They are well within their given field to give expert analysis about their eventual successors in the sport whether people like to listen to them or not. You cannot just have normal randomers coming in off the street and spouting off completely inaccurate opinions about the athletes ability when they actually don't have a clue in what they're talking about in front of the viewers etc....

It would look like a car crash waiting to happen.

Explain it for us.

What I always wonder at is the perception some seem to have that rugby is some kind of elitist only game. That may be slightly true in the Leinster players (sorry to generalize a little, and even then you have the likes of Furlong who's from rural Wexford) but rest of the country the players are mainly working class / middle class lads from various places (like Keith Earls who's from Moyross, as working class area as you get).

I'd love to bring some of these people to Thomond park on the match day and see if they can hear any 'elite' accents there...

Must be weird to delight in Ireland losing.

That's only because we are one of the few nations who play it professionally.

It's like us being No.2 in the world GAA rankings to the Aussies.

Oh, yes, of course a lot play it, they need to to make up a World Cup, but they take it as seriously as we do our men's national Basketball team or our national Baseball league (which I didn't even know we had till 30 seconds ago). The 6N teams + the Kiwi's & Aussies are basically the only ones who care about it.

The Premiership is basically Coronation Street for dull, vapid men, just as soap operas are aimed at banal, personalityless women.

The game itself is extremely boring, with the vast majority of matches being unexceptional.

For that reason news outlets need to write about anything else even remotely soccer related to fill up space. So there are stories about your sad player or the guy who is now more famous for kicking a cat than a ball.

Every year, at Six Nations time, there is an anti-rugby football thread started on Boards. Same goes when the RWC is about to kick off.

There is also about four anti-GAA threads started every year on this forum.

Both rugby football and GAA fans are always able to deal with the rabid criticisms of their sports from TV soccer fans in a reasoned and calm manner.

Any threads that criticise soccer are immediately shut down as the man-childs who support their TV teams go bat-$hit.

Deep down though they know that the Emperer has no clothes and can't deal with it.

I don't include LOI fans in this as they come from an actual soccer culture, whereas Irish Premiership fans are basically just watching the sporting equivalent of I'm a Celebrity, Let Me Out of Here.

Where I live it is mainly a game for Protestants. I don't get too heavily interested in any sport nowadays as i just feel bitter at the athletes knowing they were blessed genetically and have a better life than me. For example my old school won the Ulster GAA cup today and it was grim to watch them winning at life. People like that don't even know how well they have it in life. They just jump from one success story to another.

Last night.

Biggest game in Irish domestic rugby.

Munster v Leinster.

Both teams with internationals back.

In Thomond the spiritual home of Irish rugby.

First game between the two with unrestricted attendance since late 2019.

Full house you'd expect.

Tickets would be gold dust you'd expect.

No chance, not a sell out, about 20k in a 25k stadium.

That's where rugby is at.

Even the most high profile non international game can't sell out an average sized ground.

Yeah, the Munster fans didn’t fancy seeing their boys take another beating.

But, really, you’d have imagine there was a few who would have wanted to watch the hurling league final so a pub, or home, was the better “option”. Was flicking between the 2, myself.

Some of us, here, would be weighing up the “necessity” of travelling south for the game. While restrictions are gone it’s still wise to be cautious. And that decision wouldn’t have been taken lightly, have been to Thomond, myself, a few times and it’s always a great day out.

Rugby is in rude health in this country, contrary what some malcontents, on here, would like you to think.