Rugby Union 21/22/23 Discussion | RWC time!

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RIP Eddie. I never saw him play but heard him commentate and he was quality behind the microphone.
 
This round of Rugby Championship games contained 57 penalties and 8 yellow cards across 164 minutes of rugby.
 
Breaking news this evening that Wasps have filed for bankruptcy.

Worcester look likely to go a similar way.

The professional game in England is looking over the abyss.
 
Darcy Swain will miss 6 games for this incident - 3 Australia A games and 3 tests. He's lucky to get just 6 games. He was also sent off against England in July. Swain certainly has disciplinary issues to iron out.

 
New Zealand 40 Australia 14 at Eden Park. This result means the Boks have to beat Argentina by at least 39 points to win the Rugby Championship.
 
We might have just seen the dumbest piece of captaincy ever in Durban. The Boks need to beat Argentina by at least 39 points and do so by scoring at least 3 more tries than the Pumas. So with that in mind, the Boks take a shot at a penalty goal with the score at 14-0 in their favour. Frans Steyn kicks the ensuing penalty but Argentina score a try on half time to take the score to 17-7 in SA's favour. You need to win by a big margin scoring a stack of tries. Kicking penalty goals is surely the last thing you do.
 
Jesus we are shite, losing to this lot is embarrassing, Patterson is also not up to it at this level yet, he was atrocious last week and played a simple pass end over end gave the receiver no real chance of controlling it
 
Watching a doc now with Steve Thompson and his early onset dementia.
It's wow stuff.
Fair play to him
 
McGrathsipan said:
Watching a doc now with Steve Thompson and his early onset dementia.
It's wow stuff.
Fair play to him
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Some insane stuff in there. I’m not surprised at the stuff that happened in Thompson’s career, but even more worrying is that the RFU still seem to have their head in the sand, despite it being so clear for a long time now.
 
Dan_F said:
Some insane stuff in there. I’m not surprised at the stuff that happened in Thompson’s career, but even more worrying is that the RFU still seem to have their head in the sand, despite it being so clear for a long time now.
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Really sad that the RFU won't look after him.
Him and his colleagues are the reason the RFU exists.

Seems like a lovely man
 
England may need a new defence coach pretty soon if reports in Australia linking Anthony Seibold with a return to the NRL, more specifically the Manly Sea Eagles end up being true. Basically, the Sea Eagles have told their current coach, club legend Des Hasler, that he will not coach the club beyond the conclusion of the 2023 NRL season. Manly want Hasler to accept Seibold as a member of the club's coaching staff next season with a view to Seibold taking over in 2024. If Hasler doesn't accept this, Manly seem keen on sacking Hasler and putting Seibold in charge for next season.
 
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christy87 said:
What has happened to the professional game in England, half the league seems fecked
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Most of the teams are running at a loss, with only wealthy owners seemingly able to pump cash in to keep them afloat.

BT sport own the rights to most games and yet seem unable to market the product effectively. Eg yesterday all the fixtures were 3pm kick offs, with only 1 on telly.
 
christy87 said:
What has happened to the professional game in England, half the league seems fecked
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Worcester have been run into the ground by incompetent owners.

Wasps are a little different….they’ve multiple businesses based around the Coventry arena being an entertainment venue….and they suffered massively with covid shuttering their other ventures.

The league as a whole is struggling though and it’s weirdly at odds with the actual quality of the league which is incredibly watchable and competitive
 
antsmithmk said:
Wasps have now gone bust. All 167 players and staff have been made redundant.
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I still can’t quite believe it. I tend to think of Wasps and Leicester as the premier clubs of English rugby (as they were when I was young). It’s just unthinkable they’ve vanished into dust. I’m fecking gutted actually
 
I've just seen on Reddit that Wasps have been losing on average for £175,000 a week.... For the last seven years. This was taken from their accounts lodged with companies house. Mind blowing.

I don't know much about the 4 Irish teams and their finances. I do know that the 4 Welsh teams are struggling and have potentially looked at becoming 3 teams.

I think it helps that Scotland, Ireland and Wales have got the URC with some new blood from South Africa and the Italian teams as their league.
 
unchanged_lineup said:
It's pretty mind-blowing stuff. Really makes me hope that none of the Irish provinces have any secret debt issues waiting to emerge.
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Munster are still in dept for the stadium, but generally the IRFU will write of any major dept the club's have and the IRFU is a money making operation, if the Irish clubs were in dept I have no doubt there would be a few buyers there to buy them anyways.
 
antsmithmk said:
Wasps have now gone bust. All 167 players and staff have been made redundant.
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I heard from a friend connected to.the women't team that it will continue as a separate entity but minus the proportion of their funding that they previously got from the main entity. This means they have withdrawn from the cup competition to save $ but they will.continue in the league, at least for now.
 
antsmithmk said:
I've just seen on Reddit that Wasps have been losing on average for £175,000 a week.... For the last seven years. This was taken from their accounts lodged with companies house. Mind blowing.

I don't know much about the 4 Irish teams and their finances. I do know that the 4 Welsh teams are struggling and have potentially looked at becoming 3 teams.

I think it helps that Scotland, Ireland and Wales have got the URC with some new blood from South Africa and the Italian teams as their league.
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That is over 63 million pounds. Sounds too much but they are 2 million in debt to the tax office alone and may have to repay a 35 million bond they got to relocate to.Coventy in 2014. So maybe.
 
I just heard a rumor that Wasps are actually 100 million in debt and that all/most top level clubs left owe between 33 and 65 million so there could be other clubs in danger, especially as fewer clubs = reduced revenue. Leicester will apparently lose 700k due to this weekends games with both Wasps games being cancelled.
 
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Munster stadium debt is owned by the IRFU. It's like a 10 year old being in debt to his dad.

The IRFU release audited accounts every year and is in a relatively healthy position. They posted a Covid influenced deficit of €10m last year down from the €36m deficit the year before. Those losses brought cash reserves down to €52m from the €98.6m pre pandemic level but I'd expect to see the usual surplus in November when this years accounts are released.

The setup over here is completely different to the English model. The 4 provinces are the IRFU and as such, are managed within the means of the national umbrella. The policy of picking only home based players for the test team, along with the post retirement tax breaks afforded to sports people who remain in Ireland for their careers, helps us to keep a reasonable lid on wages - without getting dragged into a rat race bidding against the French and English sides.

There have also been documented instances of wealthy and "anonymous" benefactors chipping in to subsidise the wages of certain marquee signings. Sexton's return to Leinster is definitely one such case and it's rumoured that the RG Snyman deal is similar.
 
Relegated and records from this season have been expunged.

 
Japan nearly pulled off the biggest upset in history. With the score at 35-31, I was wondering if Ian Foster brought his resignation letter with him to Japan.

 
It's becoming apparent that we might not be as good as we thought we were in the summer.
 
Rassie's mate Nic Berry isn't mucking around - he yellow carded a Fijian player in the 2nd minute of their match against Scotland.
 
France's women's team lost an epic World Cup semi earlier today at Eden Park. How I would love to see them lose later on at the Stade de France. Antoine Dupont is more likely to make our blokes look pretty silly though.
 
Xaviesta said:
France's women's team lost an epic World Cup semi earlier today at Eden Park. How I would love to see them lose later on at the Stade de France. Antoine Dupont is more likely to make our blokes look pretty silly though.
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That kicker is going to live with that for the rest of her life
 
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