URC and English Premiership Merger Rumours

I'd say the emerging Ireland tours are well down the list of reasons why the supposed merger wont work. The mix of privately and union owned clubs with and without salary caps is a much bigger issue. IRFU won't want salary caps, they don't want talent having to leave if they are potentially in the Ireland frame which is our biggest cash cow.

In reality I'd see a merger as see it as a good thing for the likes of emerging Ireland tours. Some of the players on that tour should be playing this weekend, Ideally you'd prefer to see the team made up of players who 100% will not be seeing club action.

Yeah if they stayed in Ireland it may not be so bad but my worry would be be players heading to France and so on for bigger bucks. In general I think a Salary cap hurts Ireland more then the likes of England. We just have less teams to spread the talent around and inevitably players will slip through the net.

Yeah it looks that way a little bit for sure, buy while the actual product on tv has been a lot better we do seem to see a lot of empty stadiums still. The last round had some pretty poor attendance figures. I'm no fan of the merger idea but you'd love to see more stadiums pumping

Yeah crazy stuff. I can't remember which podcast I was listening to this week that described it as more of an outing for many now, which is very true. Unfortunately not all the matches catch the general public's imagination.

The URC is in a really good place now with the South Africans on board. I can see it growing a lot over the next few years.

I don't know, the likes of Leicester, Exeter, Northampton, Harlequins, Bath and Saracens would make for some very attractive matches. Those games would be a lot more appealing to fans here than games against the Welsh or Italian sides.

I remember trying to buy 6 tickets together for an away Saracens game and couldn't, this would help in that situation as Saracens wanted to mute the Munster fans but overall it's a terrible idea. I've been to a lot of the English clubs either supporting Munster or at premiership games and you're always made welcome, they're the best fans for making you feel welcome to their ground.

From my experience going to games in the UK - the average age of UK match day supporters is 50+ - it doesn't matter how they segment them, I don't think you're ever going to create an "ultras" style atmosphere. They just aren't those people.

Leinster fans were all in one stand behind the goal in the Stoop in 2009 and it made for a cracking atmosphere as well. Strict segregation would be terrible but giving a block of seats to the away club to sell seems like it would be worth a go.

Separation is probably a better word for it in fairness but it ties in with what we are saying that keeping groups of fans together, without necessarily forcing them to be separated can work well

You know "closing the gap" is virtually impossible right?

Raising standards - whatever that actually means in terms of the provinces wont achieve much. You have 4 provinces that all have to play by the same rules while 1 has massive advantages in terms of population and funding at schools/grass roots level. Not to take anything away from Leinster, they played the hand they had. But lets not kid ourselves - none of the other provinces will be going any where within the current system. I wont pretend to have the answers but something has to change.

Isn't that what the emerging Ireland squad was for? Leinster have vast resources compared to most northern hemisphere clubs, let alone the other Irish sides. I don't like it, but you can't just give lads international caps for the sake of it. Anyway, to get back on topic, I don't see how merging with the Premiership will narrow the gap between the provinces.