Irish public popularity shift away from soccer?

[jbyrne]

I'm from Cork so I can't speak for the rest of the country.
Soccer or football will always be the game of the common man because Rugby in spite of the hype is for middle/upper class people.
All the Irish Internationals in Cork come from 1 of 2 schools. CBC and PBC. These 2 fee paying schools provide OUR rugby representatives. I can not remember the last time a corkman from outside of these two schools went on to represent the rugby international team. Answers on a postcard please - it would be interesting.

This year in the munster schools cup final, CBC beat Rockwell a repeat of the final 100 years ago. (In Leinster, Blackrock won again for the one millionth time). Nothing is changing.

In Cork it seems that rugby hierarchy want us to support the teams but will not allow 'common folk' to play with the teams. There is no effort to set up a schools team from a disadvantaged area. Whereas there will be plenty of football teams in these areas who fill the sporting need.

I don't see the rugby teams, Munster and Ireland as representing me. Best of luck to them in their competitions but I don't feel that anybody can go from Knocknaheeny or Mayfield Community Schools and play for Ireland, unlike other sports.

This may be different in other parts of the country but in Cork the 'old school tie' brigade are very much in evidence.

you will find that a lot of the schools competitions in all codes are won by a select few over and over again. the IRFU actually do a lot of work in disadvantaged areas. one example is Tallaght were they are trying to promote the game through the coaching of school children.
the schools competitions in leinster have grown dramatically in recent years to include all sorts of schools.
dont try and tell me that rugby is not a working mans game in limerick for example

its the honesty of effort and consistent boxing above their weight that has led to the likes of munster and Ireland becoming very popular among our sporting public

[Shilts]

I agree that the marketing of the Munster brand has been spectacular. And that in Limerick there is no snobbery attached to sports. But in my neck of the woods there is - big time.

Rugby will never be the peoples sport until every kid has an equal chance of making it to the top. This is not the case at the moment. And don't say that you can make it to the top by joining a club when statistics show that the Internationals come through the schools game.

Also, at the moment Rugby gets much more media coverage than it deserves. This is totally due to the fact that the media guys and the marketing execs who buy the advertising are all posh rugby heads. Example, the AIL. A joke with pages of write ups.

[jbyrne]

Rugby will never be the peoples sport until every kid has an equal chance of making it to the top. This is not the case at the moment.

there are more Irish people playing rugby at the top level than there are football

Also, at the moment Rugby gets much more media coverage than it deserves.

wouldnt the tv ratings for heineken cup and internationals illustrate otherwise? the interest is out there

[Drumcondra 69er]

there are more Irish people playing rugby at the top level than there are football



wouldnt the tv ratings for heineken cup and internationals illustrate otherwise? the interest is out there

As a matter of interest, what would you consider 'top level' to be?

In any case, far easier to make it to the top in a sport that about 10 countries play seriously at most.

[DotTV]

I too from Cork, pretty much agree with all of the above.
However, I went to college in Limerick and it was only then that I saw young lads playing rugby on the streets, in the parks etc as opposed to football or gaa.
Just one point that I would like to add in relation to the above, I feel one of the main reasons Munster has been such a success from a level of supporter point of view is that it is a very well marketed product/brand. Also it has numerous individuals on the team who at least give the impression that they are from normal ordinary less privileged backgrounds like the rest of us (ie no private schooling etc etc) e.g POC, John Hayes, Flannery etc etc. The same could not be said for the Leinster team for example.

Marketing wouldn't get them anywhere if they weren't succesful in the first place.

[John83]

there are more Irish people playing rugby at the top level than there are football

And if there were as many people playing rugby worldwide as there are footballers, even Brian O'Driscoll would probably be considered a mediocre player.

You know, I'd love to see what the Brazilian national hurling team would look like if they were into it like they are into football. I mean, it's a pretty decent sport when Kilkenny, a county with 90,000 people, plays it.

[DotTV]

There's not as much quality as there is quantity in soccer, the talent is very thin at the top. Even donkeys like Bramble, Boumsong and sibierski can make it to the top of the game while people I can only class as volatile thugs with zero discipline like Materazzi, Rooney and Cassano are considered among the worlds best. There's so many players at the top who have virtually no skill and are mere stopgaps and equally loads of players who have no discipline whatsoever and can't follow simple instructions. You'd never get those kind of individuals at the top level in Rugby, all the top players are well rounded in their skillsets.

That has to be a wind up. Have you seen a rugby team out on the ****??

[John83]

What is it with this site thinking the media are propaganda spreading dictators censoring sporting events?

RTE, Setanta, Irish Independent etc have one priority and that is to get as many viewers/readers as possible and the best way to do that is to cater the most resources to the most popular sports.

While I kind of agree that people are a little over the top in that regard here, what you've posted here is not quite true. The priority of Setanta and the Indo is to maximise profits. That means selling viewers/readers to advertisers. RTE is publicly funded. They should have other priorities.

[Jinxy]

That's the first thing I thought when I saw the figures at thye top of the thread. The GAA finals' viewing figures were about 70% of the big football and rugby internationals.

You're way off.

Munster draw in viewers like no others
GAVIN CUMMISKEY

Tue, Dec 23, 2008

SPORT ON TELEVISION/RTÉ'S MOST POPULAR EVENTS:THE SEEMINGLY never-ending achievements of Munster on the rugby field, not to mention as a brand, are reflected by the RTÉ sports viewing figures for 2008.

A peak figure of 1.033 million was recorded for that cold November Tuesday (18th) when Munster, shorn of 10 international players and losing Denis Leamy to injury early on, came agonisingly close to repeating the 1978 defeat of the All Blacks - the only Irish side ever to do so - and in turn ruining the title of the long running John Breen play, Alone It Stands.

The peak was reached at 9.16pm when word clearly spread like wild fire that they were on the verge of beating New Zealand. That is until Joe Rokocoko's late try shattered the dream.

"The most impressive figure was the 689,000 that tuned in from start to finish," noted Ryle Nugent, deputy head of RTÉ TV sport and commentator on the night. "The fixture grabbed the public's attention from the outset. The choreographing of the 20-minute build-up was delivered efficiently and respectfully, including the unveiling of the plaque by the Taoiseach. The pomp and ceremony was followed by the Munster, then New Zealand haka and then the first five minutes of the match itself were played at a million miles an hour. All the ingredients were there.

"The uniqueness of the occasion made it hard to compare with the other great days at Thomond Park in recent seasons," Nugent continued. "It was an unbelievable experience. I've been at all the big Munster games at Thomond Park in the past few years but this can't be compared. It was a totally unique event. Just very different from other big games, like a European match when they are doing whatever is necessary to get out of the pool.

"It was recognition of who they are and what they are about. showing they have come full circle since 1978. As soon as people walked in the door or sat down in front of the television they knew they were in for a special, unforgettable night."

The All Blacks' trip to Limerick was a genuine departure from the norm and touring squads will not be bringing the numbers to facilitate a repeat fixture any time soon.

"It has to be an advantage that it was a Tuesday evening in November and the recession had just kicked in. Also, there was no direct competition on TV like the Champions League. It was talked up in the media at length due to the history of the fixture, so the curiosity value was there as well."

That an event organised to celebrate a 30th anniversary and open a new stadium held par with two hugely significant All-Ireland finals and outdid all other events in a significant sporting 12 months merely emphasises the growth in popularity of rugby in this country.

"Rugby is a substantially growing audience over the past five years, no doubt about it," said Nugent. "It can be measured with the success of the national team, Munster and, to a lesser extent, Leinster. It is down to the accessibility of the audience to the players, who they can potentially see walking down the street."

Rugby viewing figures were significantly down the pecking order in 2003 with the Grand Slam- deciding Six Nations encounter at Lansdowne Road against England averaging only 504,000 and placing sixth on RTÉ sports' list behind Gaelic games and soccer internationals. Munster's defeat to Toulouse in the Heineken European Cup semi-final that year attracted only 264,000.

The All Blacks match was ranked third on the average list of viewing figures behind the 709,000 who watched the hurling final between Kilkenny and Waterford, which peaked at 840,000, and the 703,000 who watched the football final between Tyrone and Kerry, which peaked at 886,000.

The Champions League final in Moscow between Manchester United and Chelsea was watched by 653,000 on RTÉ, with a peak just shy of a million viewers.

That the Irish rugby match against England at Twickenham came fifth with 553,000, peaking at 655,000, is further evidence of the growth of rugby's popularity.

The Munster viewing figures were made apparent at RTÉ's sports awards in UCD on Sunday evening, when the province was also named team of the year.

Unsurprisingly, the main individual prize on the night went to two-time Major champion in 2008 Pádraig Harrington after he regained the British Open and captured the USPGA championship.

Former former Irish Olympic athlete and Ireland hockey international Maeve Kyle was inducted into the RTÉ Hall of Fame.

© 2008 The Irish Times

[osarusan]

RTE, Setanta, Irish Independent etc have one priority and that is to get as many viewers/readers as possible and the best way to do that is to cater the most resources to the most popular sports.

As John83 said, it is more about profit, but more viewers / readers will probably mean that.

But I think it is naive to think that the media simply react to whatever has become popular, and it is naive to think the media cannot influence what we are interested in viewing / reading.

The fenzy over Sunderland and Keane was definitely fed by the media, who saw that by creating a frenzy, they could sell more of their product.

[Fizzer]

There's not as much quality as there is quantity in soccer, the talent is very thin at the top. Even donkeys like Bramble, Boumsong and sibierski can make it to the top of the game while people I can only class as volatile thugs with zero discipline like Materazzi, Rooney and Cassano are considered among the worlds best. There's so many players at the top who have virtually no skill and are mere stopgaps and equally loads of players who have no discipline whatsoever and can't follow simple instructions. You'd never get those kind of individuals at the top level in Rugby, all the top players are well rounded in their skillsets.

Did Trevor Brennan not get into trouble for punching a fan?

[elroy]

You'd never get those kind of individuals at the top level in Rugby, all the top players are well rounded in their skillsets.

oh would you stop, if ever there was a sport that accomodated all types of individuals many with little skill other than brute strength and power its rugby. Half the players on a rugby team cant even bloody kick the ball.

[EastTerracer]

oh would you stop, if ever there was a sport that accomodated all types of individuals many with little skill other than brute strength and power its rugby.

I'd have to agree with this. Rugby is one of the few sports where I have seen people take up the game late in life and still manage to play at a relatively high level. David Beggy is one example but there have been several others.

In sports like football the basic skills are developed from childhood and enhanced over a long period of time. If you're strong and quick you have a fair chance of succeeding in rugby within a year or two without any prior experience.

[Stuttgart88]

Rooney is nothing but a volatile thug? I'd say he's a superbly talented and athletic volatile thug.

[barney]

There's not as much quality as there is quantity in soccer, the talent is very thin at the top. Even donkeys like Bramble, Boumsong and sibierski can make it to the top of the game while people I can only class as volatile thugs with zero discipline like Materazzi, Rooney and Cassano are considered among the worlds best. There's so many players at the top who have virtually no skill and are mere stopgaps and equally loads of players who have no discipline whatsoever and can't follow simple instructions. You'd never get those kind of individuals at the top level in Rugby, all the top players are well rounded in their skillsets.

You have got to be joking?

[jbyrne]

As a matter of interest, what would you consider 'top level' to be?

In any case, far easier to make it to the top in a sport that about 10 countries play seriously at most.

heineken cup wins, grand slams, magners lge winners.... that kind of thing.... in other words success

[Raheen]

Two pieces both from the Irish Indo of recent days...says it all!!

All aboard rugby's gravy train

Ireland's Grand Slam heroics have blasted open a window of opportunity for the IRFU, one they can use to take the game in this country to new heights

The tip of the iceberg

The Grand Slam-winning heroes will trouser around €55,000 a man on top of their current IRFU salaries as a bonus for pulling off last weekend's historic feat. An RBS prize fund of some €1.5m will alleviate some of that financial burden.

Replica shirts, official merchandise -- such as DVDs, etc -- and subscriptions to the supporters' club should provide a regular stream of income for the marketing heads in the IRFU until the end of the year.

O2 are in the midst of a six-year deal worth €12m which runs out in 2011/12 and this week O2 Ireland chief executive Danuta Grey confirmed that they would like to extend their relationship beyond that point.

Puma have already come on board as €15m kit sponsors, while Aviva's €44m naming rights deal for the new Lansdowne Road stadium has compounded the sense of cheer for an IRFU, who have sold out every single advance seat and corporate facility at the venue.

Every penny is vital because the IRFU spends about 65pc of its turnover on subsidising the professional game; income from Croke Park internationals and the provinces' successes in turn finance the rest of the game.

"Commercially, the dynamic of the revenue streams effectively means that the professional game pays for all of rugby," revealed IRFU commercial and marketing director Padraig Power when the IRFU launched their Strategic Plan before Christmas. "So the revenue streams we can create around the professional game -- sponsorship events, match-day advertising hoardings, merchandise -- this all helps to keep the show on the road.

"What we're aiming to do is to maintain that marketing-jargoned virtuous circle, with more money, players, spectators, fans, self-perpetuating that circle of success. We're trying to bring more sophisticated marketing principles to the game."

The highest earners in the side are easily the three Os -- captain O'Driscoll, pack leader O'Connell and talismanic out-half O'Gara. All three can expect to maximise their potential earnings with all three in line to backbone Ireland's next World Cup assault in 2011.

O'Driscoll's main sponsors -- adidas, Lexus, O2, Gillette -- will have benefited substantially from the Irish captain's stunning form this season and, with a Lions tour in the offing, it is conceivable that the Clontarf native can easily smash €1m in earnings this year alone.

Expect O'Connell to elbow into O'Driscoll's earnings league -- especially if he is appointed as captain of the Lions this summer. As a stand-alone international event of enormous significance this summer, O'Connell's image will be a reliable money-spinner.

Younger players like Stephen Ferris, Rob Kearney, Luke Fitzgerald and Jamie Heaslip can also expect to become much sought-after appendages to commercial porfolios, notwithstanding the recession. Companies want to be attached to winners.

The IRFU won't lose out either -- they are hoping to increase their income from €55m to €69m by 2012. When their Strategic Review was launched, Power asserted the rise of "a new breed of fan who has never been in a rugby club or picked up a rugby ball".

It's too late for these folk to become putative Heineken Cup or World Cup winners -- the key for the IRFU is to cast its eye beyond the traditional terra firma of established schools and clubs.

(c) Irish Independent Saturday March 28 2009

Numbers just not adding up for hard sell of Aviva dream

WHEN a spanking new stadium is built, it goes without saying that the seats will be wide and padded. Like the air available to breathe inside, there are some features which are taken as given, especially when it is costing €411m to construct. But when you're trying to convince people to commit a minimum of €12,000 over 10 years, anything is a selling point.

The "wide, padded seat" might also be useful if you over-indulge in the "stadium's only licensed bars and cafes" to which you will have access. Too bloated to use the stairs? Take "the private entrance with lifts and escalators to the premium concourse," where you can read your complimentary official match programme.

Those are some of the "extras" you will receive if, as one of the FAI's football family, you are willing to shell out €100 per month until 2019 to have guaranteed access to all senior Ireland home internationals as well as the FAI Cup final, a match which hasn't attracted anywhere near 50,000 since it was in black and white.

And that's as cheap as you'll get.

If the hole in your pocket is caused by money burning it rather than not being able to afford a new pair of jeans, you can upgrade to €120 per month for a corner seat (to a total of €14,500), €158 per month for a sideline seat (€19,000) or €266 per month (€32,000) for a halfway-line seat.

As well as a better vantage point, the extra €20,000 gives you priority booking for stadium restaurants as well as two annual events hosted by the Irish Football legends -- whoever they are. The wide, padded seats are included in all options.

targets

Last week, the FAI launched two new initiatives to kick-start its 10-year ticket scheme whose selling targets, according to chief executive John Delaney, remain on track despite tens of thousands of people who have become unemployed since the original launch last September.

The first scheme offers some tangible extras to clubs who, in exchange for the deposit and annual subscription option, will receive kickbacks of schoolboy tickets for one-off use, an annual €250 in Umbro vouchers, €500 towards yearly running costs and a child member participating in the opening celebration before the game against Argentina in August next year.

The second project removes the need to pay the normal deposit and annual fee of €500 and instead offers members of the "football family" 120 direct debit payments of €100 per month to give you, as the brochure puts it, "the full premium seating experience at the new Aviva Stadium" -- or, to put it another way, a ticket for a match.

Delaney confidently predicted that the 2,000 tickets available under this scheme would sell out by the end of June while acknowledging that the grassroots initiative might take a little longer. "I know we'll comfortably hit 6,000 sales by the end of the summer, and if we're at that then that will be a hell of an achievement," stated Delaney.

Leaving aside how something that is accomplished comfortably can also be a hell of an achievement, Delaney's bullishness is baffling in the context of the figures from Lansdowne Road's previous incarnation which hosted 55 senior internationals in its last 10 years -- an average cost of €218 per game for a €12,000 outlay.

And for every Brazil, Argentina, France and Portugal who visited, there was also an Andorra, Liechtenstein, Faroe Islands or Albania that came to town.

Throw in 10 FAI Cup finals and the Four Associations Tournament, which will be little more than a batch of friendlies with a trophy at the end, and the tally for the next 10 years might just reach 80 games.

"For just €12,000," as Ray Houghton puts it in the advert, that works out at €150 per game. It doesn't take Eddie Hobbs to analyse how much value you'll get for your money.

The new advert also tells us that "Lansdowne Road gave us some great memories," even if the brochure barely lists enough to make the statement into a plural. Liam Brady against Brazil in '87 and Jason McAteer in 2002 against Holland is all the brochure can muster alongside pictures of Niall Quinn at Italia '90, Robbie Keane in Ibaraki and Ronnie Whelan in Gelsenkirchen.

Given that the vast majority of Ireland's greatest achievements have happened abroad, a saving scheme for the next major tournament might be a better option.

Twelve thousand euro goes a long way in South Africa or in Poland and Ukraine.

Delaney is right when he says that many people don't understand the initiatives which underpin a new stadium. "I understand it because I work at it every day," he added last week.

What people do understand though, now more than ever, is cash shooting out of their bank accounts for the next 10 years, and while the FAI chose to amend the methods of payment, the outlay to sit on the new wide, padded seats remains the same.

If these figures prove acceptable, Delaney will be entitled to wear his 'I told you so' hat like never before as he oversees a new stadium filled to the rafters.

If not, and people baulk at prices which have as much in common with a recession as a new Hummer, it might, as the ad would say, be time to make some new ones.

(c) Irish Independent Monday March 30 2009

[Stuttgart88]

What did Ronnie Whelan do in Gelsenkirchen? He scored a great goal in Hannover alright.

[Dodge]

While I kind of agree that people are a little over the top in that regard here, what you've posted here is not quite true. The priority of Setanta and the Indo is to maximise profits. That means selling viewers/readers to advertisers. RTE is publicly funded. They should have other priorities.

Also TV stations don't go after all viewers, they go after certain viewers.

http://www.nrs.co.uk/about_nrs/data_...f_social_grade

[bennocelt]

WHEN a spanking new stadium is built, it goes without saying that the seats will be wide and padded. Like the air available to breathe inside, there are some features which are taken as given, especially when it is costing €411m to construct. But when you're trying to convince people to commit a minimum of €12,000 over 10 years, anything is a selling point.

how much man wasnt Sunderlands stadium bulit for 12 million, and a lot of german stadiums built for far less - im thinking of dortmunds
Man thats a lot of money for a small capacity stadium