Zebre Parma forced to change venue for Glasgow visit

So excited for this tour!

Wouldn’t it stand to reason that the province with the most clubs and the biggest clubs would get most funding?

Connacht currently have the smallest stadium of the 4 provinces and an operating budget of around 5 million euros. Again, the smallest.

They currently have 2 nailed on match-day 23 players for Ireland.

Do you see how this is all relative?

Hard to believe that big Jonah is almost ten years gone. Very sad.

Ulster are in the game they are just a good 10-15 years behind Leinster with their pathways. Every sport is driven by participation first and foremost.

The IRFU - for their own informed reasons - chose some time ago to invest heavily in Leinster and it’s schools pathways.

Rugby currently and historically has been, stronger in Leinster. That’s just how it is. There are more than 70 rugby clubs in Leinster. Plenty of the bigger ones will be stacked with a 1st, 2nd and 3rd senior men’s team, multiple age grade teams and usually boys and girls teams for each of them.

A player like Stephen Ferris, Ian Henderson, John Cooney, Jacob Stockdale etc will never slip through the system.

Even Paul O’Connell went straight through club to country having only picked up a rugby ball at 16.

Players won’t get missed by the system no matter how dominant one production line is.

Keeping a keen eye on that back row and the centre partnership. Back division does tick a lot of boxes with the dual playmaker axis and some real pace and power too.

This is the test of Tom Curry as a third lineout option as well I suppose.

Jesus wept - NONE of this is difficult. At all!🙄

Ulster - aside from a Euro cup in ‘99 - basically peaked pre-professionalism. They were routinely beating test teams in the 80’s. The Wallabies included.

Munster famously done the AB’s 12-0 in the late 70’s. The provinces used to be de-facto test teams outside of the 5 Nations.

A Leinster v Munster game in the late 90’s would literally have been 300-400 in attendance. They sold out Croke earlier this season for the same fixture with the gate profit going straight to the IRFU and back into the game at grass roots.

That is utter success by every possible measure.

You’ve just been called and raised.

The national game is my only passion. I want 4 provinces firing on all cylinders to deliver for the national team. I don’t much care if 90% are from a single province.

I will be watching every Connacht adventure in next seasons URC though. They really do seem to be on the up. An improving Leinster and Connacht raises the standards top to bottom as Munster and Ulster will have to get going to keep up.

Watching Leinster succeed with their pathway is genuinely impressive but when the Dublin driven priorities thereafter are still to then buy in top tier internationals for Leinster (including one they conned out of Munster!), rather than invest in a struggling province crying out for it, then their heads are firmly up their arses. Unless ofc, there’s another agenda at play? You know, some sort of ‘socio economic’ kinda thing…

Find yourself a nice Irish speaking area. Stand up on a table in the local pub - “lads, I say - where’s the nearest rugger club?”

God be with you!