Munster Team Talk Thread - New season title pending....

thats cause limerick have the majority of the games (all the good ones anyway), the training base etc,.

cork has a few lower-profile games and the offices, not really great engagement with the teams largest population debate.

i know UCC have been very annoyed that everything has been moved to limerick in terms of training. havent been involved with them for a few years now but the thinking a few years ago was that they would miss out badly on young players as anyone in the academy would almost definitely go to UL. hasnt exactly turned out like that i suppose.

also, for those that were asking why didnt UCC make a better case for a proposed base to be located there, its my understanding that the sports executive wanted to use the Farm grounds in curraheen for this (a regular training area for munster previously) but the college quashed this as they wanted to sell the site (to the expanding business park as far as i know, something which i think has recently happened recently)

i dont think its a debate really in cork, i think most of the rugby community want more interaction with the team seeing as it is the 'capital' of the province. nobody is expecting all to have all/ a majority of games in cork, but a more even split of URC games and a higher profile home game (ulster perhaps) each season in musgrave wouldnt go amiss. nor would the idea of playing a knockout euro game in PuC either, but hopefully at least that could be on the table if the SA game goes well

With the exception of Covid years Musgrave Park has been hosting pool games since the very start of the Celtic League. Every other Irish province (bar Leinster hosting Munster in the Aviva) host all their pool games in the same stadium, we send 3 to Cork so a stadium sponsor has 3 less games to get advertising from and remember we have fewer games to begin with in the current format of the League and the ERC. I just don't see how a stadium sponsor wouldn't tie Munster to holding the marquee games in Thomond Park

right, pool games means europe though, hence why i was confused

i also said that since thomond park doesnt have a named sponsor currently so thats what im basing my thinking on. if that changes then maybe the options lessen, but thats not the case as of yet so im not dealing with the hypotheticals for now

again, the other provinces arent based outside their largest population centre so the comparisons arent too accurate

except that explanation wasnt really how things were from what im aware of. my understanding of limiting the increase to musgrave park was that the planning dept/council (rightly imo) questioned the need to have large/larger stadia in the city for soccer, gaa and rugby, they had wanted a combined larger municipal stadium ideally to be shared between each. obviously this was unlikely due to gaa rules (alot of this was pre-2005) they had wanted the munster fa and munster rugby to develop a shared 15-25,000 capacity stadium, which i think the munster fa quashed (cork city were planning on moving back to bishopstown if i remember correctly).

as already explained, the idea that UCC werent 'bothered to put in an application' is untrue also. the sports exec wanted to develop The Farm but the sale of the land by the college had been on the table even back then so it didnt get anywhere

Is there a doubt about our game v Cardiff now that the UK is in 10 days of mourning.

So in a nutshell Cork was in disarray in what the various sporting bodied and the LA wanted while Limerick assisted Munster in getting the stadium re-developed, same with the training facilities.

I'd sooner get a game under our belt

era i dont think civil war is the way to put it, just that people in cork want one or two more games tbh

disarray is a leap. the planning dept/council knew that a shared stadium in a city the size of cork would be better than each sport having their own. i seem to remember PuC getting planning permission on the condition that it be made available to other organisations and not just the gaa - could be incorrect on that though i'll admit. theyre completely right too, no city/large town in ireland has the population to need separate stadia for gaa, rugby and soccer - obviously part of the obstacle there is the gaa but shared stadia should be the way going forward.

To date there still isn't a fully shared stadium in any city in Ireland. There's a few shared between rugby and dog racing, soccer or showjumping but none with the GAA.

Munster couldn't possibly wait for the various associations to get their act together to develop a stadium with a capacity greater than 12k

Personally I hate watching rugby in a stadium with huge spaces around the field like we had to endure while we used Croke Park so I wouldn't be keen in using a GAA grounds on a long-term basis.

unless there is a global calendar and a move to summer rugby then it is how we should be proceeding in this country, having multiple medium-sized stadia in large towns/cities is ridiculous when our population is structured the way it is, especially when the inter-county gaa season doesnt have too much overlap with rugby. maybe there might be a bit of a bottleneck with soccer as the LoI is in the summer too but im sure it could be worked out. most likely wont happen anyway unless the gaa join the 21st century.

i dont know about the not waiting part too tbh. maybe if they had waited a bit longer for a better solution they wouldnt still be paying off stadium debt, or at least to the same extent

Very hard to see any Champions cup semis in PUC as it currently stands because fixtures will be made for the Munster hurling and football championships before the semi finals are decided, and thats before Munster even play well enough to earn a home semi.

Where do I start with this shift in the discussion??? We've now shifted away from Munster developing their own stadium to an ideological argument about having municipal grounds for the various sports. Munster couldn't possibly wait around for Local Authorities and sporting organisations to agree on all that that would entail. Are we even close to something like that today coming close to 20 years after Munster starting looking at redeveloping a ground for their needs.

Back of cigarette box calculations

There were some obvious peaks and troughs so let's assume Munster increased their match attendance in TP by 10k for each match held there since the redevelopment and that each ticket was €20 and that TP held 10 games per year in the following 10 years.

10 matches X 10k tickets = 100k ticket sales x €20 = €2m a year. That's €20m for the 10 post redevelopment that you want Munster to wait and see what might happen in Cork or elsewhere around sharing grounds.

That income excludes corporate events held during matches or corporate events/concerts held outside of match days.

as much as i see where youre coming from, i disagree. the 'well this solution is better than nothing' way of looking at things is usually questionable, especially when it comes to large assets like a stadium development. obviously there is a fair bit of hindsight in this too but the level of debt that the stadium is still incurring relative to its new capacity suggests it may have not been the best decision

i did say in another post that this was pre 2005 from what i remember so the decision to 'open' croke park hadnt been taken yet. i was talking about stadium policy in this country going forward too, we should be developing multi-use municipal stadia from now on and ideally the gaa would be on board. wont happen though most likely

yes an extra 20 million over 10 years sounds great........in theory

the problem is, a quick google search for thomond park redevelopment costs puts the estimate at 42 million - that is from the irish examiner in june. by your calculations it'll take 20ish years to pay off, thats quite disproportionate compared to the increased capacity (obviously facilities were improved too). that article says its at 6.5 million after 15 years (slightly out since the re-opening was in 2008).

i dunno, i like the new stadium but the maths dont add up

That’s it, if pitch size and politics weren’t an issue Leinster and Dublin could share a 22/23k stadium but it makes for a poor product for those attending.