Irish Rugby Structure

The structure of Irish rugby all in all is very good with the clubs feeding the provinces, which has worked very well, however they are a few things I'd like to bring up for discussion.

Firstly we normally make points about how the Welsh regions should try and adept a system similar to Irelands, but what about we amend the Ulster Bank All-Ireland League to match the Welsh model.

In the Welsh model each team can only a mininum of 2 clubs in the Prem and a max of 3 clubs.

Currently in the Ulster Bank All-Ireland League. Promotion and relegation exists between the divisions and between the provinical junior leagues and Division 3. Currently there are 6 Munster clubs and 4 Leinster clubs in division 1A and 3 Munster 1 Leinster 4 Ulster and 2 Connacht clubs in division 2B

Should we arrange it where 1A contains at least 1 club from each Province, or at least guarentee 2 clubs per province either division 1A or 1B?

Personally I think the set up is fine as it is 1B is not much weaker than 1A and there are enough spots for each province to get clubs promoted into them, if they want another club in or promotion, it is up to the province to release players to the clubs to help them. However a guarentee to Connacht of having at least 2 clubs in 1B may help Connacht to develop as if one club got relegated it may have an adverse effect of them bringing players through.

Secondly for youth development we relay on the schools system. Personally I don't like this as it leads to the middle class thing associated with rugby (particularly in the North, where rugby has to cross a sectarian as well as class divide). I don't like that kids will just train with school teams competeing in school only competitions, and only going a club when they leave school.
Imagine someone who does't go to one of the rugby playing schools, they will join an underage club rugby team, but because the focus is on school rugby he won't get the same level of coaching or training, and because most of the best players are playing for school teams, he won't get to play with or against the best players in his age group, meaning he has less chance to develop as someone who goes to a rugby playing school.

Much better for rugby in my opinion that if the focus was removed from schoolboy rugby, to underage club rugby, and underage club rugby competitions. That schoolboys play for their local club as well as there school, the focas training and finacial help provided by the province would be directed toward the clubs rather than the schools, and the province is then feed by the clubs rather than the schools/clubs.

Thoughts?

Some interesting points. On the reliance with schools rather than clubs, to give clubs the level of attention, you would effectively end schools rugby as it currently stands which is the basis of where we are today. I see too many risks in that. Some form of hybrid approach would be interesting though, allowing club sides into the schools underage competitions. If there is talent in the clubs competing then there is a chance for both a province to identify it but also it opens up the chance of some of the schools recruiting/ taking in kids on scholarships. Did I just open pandora's box?

Kingshu, the Welsh model you describe has not actually come into force yet so we can't say whether it's successful or horsesh*t! At the moment it's just a regular old 14 team league with promotion and relegation.

I think what the WRU is doing is taking a top down approach to pro rugby. It's looked at the 4 regions and said 'how can we guarantee a relatively equal level of exposure to semipro rugby for those such as academy players in each region. As it stands it is possible for all of 1 regions premiership teams, e.g. The Dragons (Newport, Cross Keys, Bedwas, Pontypool), to get relegated over the course of a few seasons. The dragons academy players would then only have exposure in lower leagues and so would either not develop as well as they could or would move to other regions. This new system, in theory, negates the risk of losing the platform for a region to expose it's talent before stepping up to pro level. It's a sort of ring fence, but instead of ringfencing the teams themselves they've ringfenced the numbers of teams from each region. I'm not entirely sure how promotion and relegation will work though?!

I think it's a good thing and should allow regions to expose youngsters to a good level of rugby consistently, while not completely taking away the relegation and promotion aspects of league rugby. However, there will always be those who miss out and that will cause loads of infighting and bickering as we already see with teams like Pontypool and Bridgend who have been told they are not invited.

Ive sort of wondered why Wales and Ireland don't merge their leagues, It's been stated we feel 8 Welsh teams would be better but they need a minimum of 10 teams in the league to make it viable, as the clubs felt 7 home league games a season was not enough to sustain semi-pro rugby.

Would it be a good idea to add 4-8 Irish teams as well to bump up the numbers?
Or maybe the 8 Welsh teams with the A teams from the 4 Irish provinces?

You could also say the club issue isn't so big for Irish rugby, because Ireland has always leaned towards their provincial teams anyway where as club rugby is what drives Wales. The Welsh clubs will always kick up a fuss over something minor to keep some attention on themselves.

Another possibility is if Scotland, Wales, Ireland and Italy all have an 8 team nation league, then all the teams go into a mini pool after the league is finished.

So if Neath win the Welsh league, Cork Constitution win the Irish one, Melrose win the Scottish one and Rovigo win the Italian one, they would all go into a pool of 4, and play an additional 6 games.

All the second laced teams could go into a 4 team league, all the way down to the seventh placed teams, the 8th placed team would be relegated.

When it comes to the schools I dont claim to know too much about them as I play for a club side but there is a schools 'B' team in our league but from my experiance in playing and watching friendlys the gap is not that great at lower ages but in increases with age. More coaching time really does need to be invested in club players. It does put players like myself at a disadvantage when comes to devoloping, ok I'm never going to play for Ireland or Munster but there are a few players at my club who could play at a decent level or better with coaching of a higher level but may not get there because of a lack of this.

Have to say Griff I didn't want to see a sudden switch to the clubs system away from the schools, but instead have the schools tourament joined with the age group club competation and then slowly shift the emphesis away from the Schools and towards the club teams, eventually leading to the clubs being stronger, with better coaching and training than the schools.

I can't think of another sport where a school team takes prominance over a club team (American football, but thats set up different), in Football or anything else on this island the Club is the driving force behind the sport, Rugby could benefit by making the Club the driving force behind the sport also. It would break the sectarian as well as class divide down alot quicker as well.

The problem is we don't have enough clubs to cater for all the kids on the island.This will only improve over time as the game gets more popular.

I wrote this before on another thread but I'll say it again to show where rugby in Ireland is.In Meath there are currently 22 hurling clubs and they only cover about 1/3rd to 1/2 the county.Now everyone in Ireland knows hurling is far behind football and soccer in popularity.

To contrast there are only 5 rugby clubs.Now only Navan and Ashbourne play at a decent level.Kells and Rathoath are both less than 3 years old and Athboy disbanded in the 1996 and started up again in 1999.

My club Athboy have recently been looking to set up a 2nd team but it's a struggle to get the numbers,still at least we're no longer struggling to fill the 1st team as I played loads of games where we had no subs and 1 game where we started with 14 men.

Kingshu wrote:I can't think of another sport where a school team takes prominance over a club team (American football, but thats set up different), in Football or anything else on this island the Club is the driving force behind the sport, Rugby could benefit by making the Club the driving force behind the sport also. It would break the sectarian as well as class divide down alot quicker as well.

I think you hurt your argument by comparing it to other sports as is there another sport that we compete at as high a level at? If you think of the coverage and prestige of the schools final for both rugby and GAA both have seen so many players progress to play at the highest levels of their sports and this cannot be a coincidence we don't have any other equivilant in any other sports.

As for the class and sectarian divides I think it needs the IRFU or the different branches going into schools without rugby programmes to educate them on the game as there are so many who don't follow the game because they don't fully understand it

Im not the best one to talk about club rugby and to my own shame I don't follow it at that level but is the current system in Ireland really not working when you consider that Munster Leinster and Ulster topped the Magners last season Leinster won the Heineken Ireland fared fairly well in the RWC and there are a raft of youngsters coming through the provinces

As an Irish man living in Wales my insight is that the Premiership works for Wales because of logistics. Unlike Ireland, were the 4 provinces are spread out over the whole island, the Regions are all really close together and grouped in South Wales.
If Ireland were to limit Div. 1 with 3 teams from each province that would mean a lot of players from Munster would be stuck not playing regular high grade rugby well their less talented counterparts, i.e. Connaught clubs, would be. This may help Connaught but not Irish rugby.
Here in Wales are the Premiership and regions are so close it's OK to have 2/3 teams per region as players can just move to another club 5 minutes up the road. They have such a big concentration of good players here in South Wales it doesn't really matter about each region having so many clubs playing at the top level. Besides a lot of regions take players all the time of each other. Like Darren someone who played for Pontypridd, in the Blues region, has been picked up by the Dragons.

I think the Irish rugby model works brilliant for Ireland and Welsh Premiership, though underused, works for Wales.

Good post JayMaster, that's a good point about the spread of the teams in Wales. However, your post also highlights a problem in that there is a concentration of rugby in the South. While this is true to a certain extent, there is still a lot of rugby played in the North and I get the feeling we would be better internationally if we developed systems that encompassed the whole country so that we tap into the hot beds of rugby in North Wales, Mid Wales and West Wales (proper west Wales like Aberystwyth, not 'West Wales' that the Scarlets call themselves which is just south wales in everyone else's language!). Until we do that then I feel we're only running at 2/3rds of capacity in terms of rugby development.

I've always been very envious of the Irish model and the nice 'neatness' of the 4 existing provinces that rugby was able to fit into. However, I am a bit OCD about things fitting in and being neat so the Welsh model is a bit too untidy for me!

The only thing I would possibably change is that Connacht are guarenteed at least 2 clubs in either 1A or 1B, as they have only a few clubs and to keep player development going they rely on these more than the others.

Does anyone know that with the increased Funding Connacht are getting will they be able to Field an 'A' team now and enter it in the BandI Cup?

Without competing in the BandI cup it's two clubs in 1B are really important to them, and to go down to one would really hamper development of players in the province.

I still think there should be a Rabo Direct 'A' league. Like the Jeff has, each side will put an A side in to the league.

Would allow youngsters valuable game time against players they should, theoretically, then be facing in the 1st team and potentially at international stage.

"Rabo Direct 'A' league"

we have the BandI cup for this, I think it's better as playing championship teams from England is better, than regional 'A' teams and mixes up the oppentents as well

The teams in that cup should be regional teams but with the best players from the semi pro feeder clubs who haven't played for the first team.

What use is the experience to an 31 year old semi pro player who will never go pro?

Kingshu - I agree with a lot of that and think change is overdue. I'd like to comment from purely an Ulster perspective.

The Ulster Schools Cup is the second oldest rugby competition in the world and as such is unlikely to be changed, but it is harming the development of rugby in the province. There are only really about half a dozen schools capable of winning it and they attract very high levels of coaching and also the kids of aspirational rugby parents. All the other schools have much lower levels of coaching and generally fewer numbers spread over more sports, so talented individuals are big fish in small ponds with no serious competition to drive them.
The "schools" competition should become an U18 competition open to clubs as well as schools. Clubs could encourage their local 'small' rugby schools to use the club's facilities and coaches and through banding together become a lot more competitive against the big rugby schools. This would also encourage more of these players to continue with the club after they leave school and so improve club rugby in the province.

With regard to the club scene, it is little wonder that there are so many Munster clubs in the top division. This is because MR insist that if a young player wants to progress in the province he plays for a top side. This makes a lot of sense as the young players get higher competition and the clubs get the pick of the players. However the difficulty with this approach is that lower clubs are stripped of their best players and therefore can never move up the leagues - so why should they try to develop players only to see them 'transferred' to opposition when they're good!
IMO Ireland needs a regional league below the provincial one but above the AIL. This would comprise ten franchises spread over the country and every academy player would play for a designated team. The remaining players would be drawn from the feeder AIL teams in their regions. Each franchise would rotate it's home games round the clubs in its region but still train and be coached at provincial centres.

i think a big problem with the schools is that most of them dont have a rugby teams or have only started, i am talking about the public secondary schools. most if not all will have GAA teams and soccer.

There most be hundreds of kids in dublin missing out playing higher level underage at these schools, i went to a non rugby school and rugby only started there when i was in 5th year and has been slow to grow, but it is growing in most of these schools.

Now to develop hurling in dublin they made a dublin schools team made up of players from all VEC dublin schools, mainly to take on st keirans kilkenny (think blackrock of hurling) after a few years it is a roaring success with the majoirty of the youngsters on the dublin team having played on one of those teams.

now why dont they enter a combined meath schools team and a north dublin team in the senior cup, make up the teams from the best players from a few schools in that area. i think you would find these teams coming good in a few years once well organised

D24 - The combined schools is a good idea especially if they're coached within a club structure.