Well I think it's a no brainer that in a perfect world Te'o would remain in Irish rugby, become Irish qualified in a season and Connacht keep their man. Te'o has been one of, if not the best back in Leinster for a while now, well, until Ringrose, and would valuable to the national team and is still relatively young, has a good few years left.LeinsterLeader wrote: Interesting points. Would we be better off getting a top quality NIQ who we'd have all year or another player we're only going to have for only a handful of games? Don't get me wrong he's a great player but would be interesting if we had that choice which would you pick?
Who knows what kind of money Worcester are paying him, but I think if we're going to invest in "project players", we might as well try and get the obsessive benefit at the end of the day, get them in a green shirt. Personally I want player to become IQ to appease the communists in Lansdowne Road, I can live with losing Te'o, I understand losing Madigan, but Moore is the one that's tough to forgive.
The IRFU model has become completely outdated, as good as it was to transition into professionalism, they are dinosaurs in a modern game with no concept of how to adapt to the new commercial realities facing them. The league is a perfect example in it's inadequacy and indifference to any sort of commercial sustainability, but the old suits will grip tighter than ever and make sure they drag the ship down with them rather than relinquish control for the preservation of the sport....but I wont get started on that...
All I'll say is a single payer, centralised model is no longer commercially viable and the sooner private investment is brought into the game, the better.
I think the fact that money isn't a consideration in Irish rugby (with the pay the same whether you're at Leinster, Munster etc.), that it's a case of Leinster / IRFU unwilling to commit to contract amounts, or near to amounts, that are tabled from elsewhere. In many cases that's fair enough. Madigan for example reportedly getting 500k or something, well as important as he is in Irish rugby (#2 fly-half), he's not 500k important and good luck to him if he can get that sort of money...but a 24 year old tighthead who is already international quality....ChrisUppy wrote: Ultimately, players won't move if they don't want to. Madigan and Moore showed that they'd prefer to head abroad than be shipped to Munster.
