A whiff of Cordite

[Laighin Break]

Exactly Peg Leg.
The big "R" makes one delusional. Incapable of rational thought. Dissmissive of facts that don't confirm your bias.
And in Woodys particular case, the exclusive use of only one adjective "unbelievable" in all discourse.

This grinds my gears no end.

"I was unebelieveably impressed with him" - what really? Your levels of impressedness reached levels that couldn't be believed? There's a few stars of the podcasting firmament that are wedded to the term "incredibly" too. All too often their claims are perfectly credible.

"World Class" is also thrown around way too much

[Peg Leg]

Exactly Peg Leg.
The big "R" makes one delusional. Incapable of rational thought. Dissmissive of facts that don't confirm your bias.
And in Woodys particular case, the exclusive use of only one adjective "unbelievable" in all discourse.

This grinds my gears no end.

"I was unebelieveably impressed with him" - what really? Your levels of impressedness reached levels that couldn't be believed? There's a few stars of the podcasting firmament that are wedded to the term "incredibly" too. All too often their claims are perfectly credible.

"World Class" is also thrown around way too much

Throwing the words: legend, unplayable and the term conveyor belt, into the mix here.

The latter in particular applying to scrum half's produced by Leinster. We have produced 1 bona fide top level Scrummie since easterby/O'Meara.

[SoupyNorman]

Easterby and O'Meara wouldn't have been full products of the Leinster system either.

[Xanthippe]

Just a thought re Cumiskey and his ongoing columns about Leinster lads moving.

How would he feel if the Editor said to him , we have two good quality rugby journalists here as well as yourself and maybe you would be better off going to the Limerick Leader , Belfast Telegraph or the Connacht Tribune.

Is he on twitter - maybe we should all tweet this to him every time he writes a piece on our lads moving

[Twist]

Birch thinks the punishment of Saracens is “incredibly” harsh

[LeRouxIsPHat]

Apologies if this has been mentioned but do the pundits defending Saracens not realise that they had a choice in this but actually opted for relegation?

[CiaranIrl]

I think the 42 podcast is a worthwhile listen in fairness. I don't agree with them fully, but they make the arguments very well. The article/headlines don't capture the essence of the issue fully.

[The Doc]

Apologies if this has been mentioned but do the pundits defending Saracens not realise that they had a choice in this but actually opted for relegation?

No - at least Keith Woods didn't. He thought it was added to the 35 points for the breaches over the last 3 seasons

[LeRouxIsPHat]

I quite like listening to Woody at times (even if I don't agree with him) but it's often very obvious that he's not prepared. He often says that he missed games or only saw bits of them etc.

[joooooe]

Just a thought re Cumiskey and his ongoing columns about Leinster lads moving.

How would he feel if the Editor said to him , we have two good quality rugby journalists here as well as yourself and maybe you would be better off going to the Limerick Leader , Belfast Telegraph or the Connacht Tribune.

Is he on twitter - maybe we should all tweet this to him every time he writes a piece on our lads moving

Looks like Gerry is assuredly of the same mind: https://twitter.com/AssuredlyGerry/stat ... 42752?s=19

[paddyor]

Apologies if this has been mentioned but do the pundits defending Saracens not realise that they had a choice in this but actually opted for relegation?

Neither of the options were light tbf. It was a choice between a turd sandwich or giant douche. They’re both harsh sanctions whether you think they’re justified or not.

[paddyor]

A lot of crying on twitter from sarries fans about the fact that irish and French wage bills are way higher than 7mill. I know the French are but does anyone have a rough idea what our wage bill looks like with the IRFU paid players included? I know people hear the word 45 players used but a lot are on academy contracts which helps us somewhat

Most English Clubs wage bills are higher than 7 million. Thats only the base figure. There are add-ons for academy players, England Internationals, education, and nominated Marquee Players aren't counted towards the salary cap at all. A top club with lots of England Internationals and homegrown players could probably have a completely legal wage bill closer to 10-11 million than 7.

All we know is that the IRFU spends c.45 million on the entire professional game (40 million of which is player and management costs) and a further 11 million on elite player development (incl. womens rugby, sevens, u20s, academies and the High Performance Unit)

By my reckoning, a club spending to the limit will have a squad that costs £9-10m depending on the number of EPS players(80k per player). It breaks down like this.
Basic Cap-7m
Academy credits 600k for a max of 10 IIRC
Injury cover 400k
EPS players 80k each
2x marquee - so somewhere between 1m and 1.5m maybe 2m(Beale was reported to be on 1.2m though can’t remember if the was AUD)
Saracens are probably well over £10m there. That’s before you factor in their test players rake in 28.5k per test team.

I think the French cap which is a flat €11.3m with allowances of €100k per French test player. Comes in at about around £9.5m before credits depending on how or when Brexit is happening.

In comparing Leinster it’s worth remembering that the €40m( excluding academies) works out a little over £33m. That’s funding for 4 squads(c180-190 full time pros) and 5 coaching tickets including the national team. The EPS players in test squads get 28.5k per game and hick works out at over £7m. I think the welsh figure is around £15k per game or over £4m in total for 12 tests. So there’s a figure in there that’s purely related to playing for Ireland ( arguably for a good few contracts it’s all of it with some incidental benefit to the province’s) and there’s also a portion relating to the image rights of the players(remember sexton advertising KBC bank). The deck is fairly stacked towards keeping the national team in Ireland. We'renot going to pay T’eo or Madigan £500k pa but we’d easily have them on at least 40% of that(possibly more) if they’re on the fringe of the national team with a chance of earning more playing for Ireland.

Leinster have easily one of the more expensive squads in Europe. If you work back thru the PRL salary cap,
Easily get the academy credits
Haven’t signed a proper injury joker since Thorn( Van Dyke doesn’t count) and it seems we’re not allowed so maybe we get more academy credits?
+10 test players easy
3 marquee signings - Sexton is a player only a handful of teams could afford even if most people think of him as “ours”, from the outside it looks like us throwing our wallet around. And we didn’t really sign him, the IRFU did. We get about 60% of him?

So the effective cap for us is probably over £10m I’m not sure if we’re hitting that mind. If you look at the players in and out in the past 5 years for us and Saracens it doesn’t really compare. Even if you just go by names in and out that doesn’t really account for the fact that squad turnover is much higher in the GP(about double the P14).

[johng]

We are nowhere near that

[Ruckedtobits]

We are nowhere near that

+1

Those estimates are more than €2m north of reality. Leinster doesn't cost as much as it did 2 years ago. IRFU figures probably also include Men and Womens Sevens and Irish 20's and all National team and support costs. To get rough cost of Pro14 teams go to Provincial accounts and work backwards based on Squad sizes.

Unlike PRL, we don't waste money and have active Squad movement through Academy, Development, Provincial Contracts and National Contracts. There is a much flatter line in PRL contracts and Players like Te'o pushed well beyond good value when he went to Worcester and this demonstrates the distortion in the PRL.

The biggest difficulty is quantifying the value of National Contracts to the different Provinces although Leinster no longer have as many as before.

[Dave Cahill]

Those estimates are more than €2m north of reality. Leinster doesn't cost as much as it did 2 years ago. IRFU figures probably also include Men and Womens Sevens and Irish 20's and all National team and support costs.

Those figures are separated out by the IRFU accounts. 40.5 mill on players and management, 11 mill on womens teams, sevens, under20s, age grade, academies, and the HPU

[paddyor]

We are nowhere near that

+1

Those estimates are more than €2m north of reality. Leinster doesn't cost as much as it did 2 years ago. IRFU figures probably also include Men and Womens Sevens and Irish 20's and all National team and support costs. To get rough cost of Pro14 teams go to Provincial accounts and work backwards based on Squad sizes.

Unlike PRL, we don't waste money and have active Squad movement through Academy, Development, Provincial Contracts and National Contracts. There is a much flatter line in PRL contracts and Players like Te'o pushed well beyond good value when he went to Worcester and this demonstrates the distortion in the PRL.

The biggest difficulty is quantifying the value of National Contracts to the different Provinces although Leinster no longer have as many as before.

€2m less would still put us at the top end of the GP salary table. And sure, we’ve lost some big name players like Heaslip and SOB but the replacements contracts are only going to go up in value at this rate of development. What provincial accounts? Afaik Leinster so about €10m in ticket sales and work on turnover of about €17m. That’s snippets gleaned from twitter etc.

I reckon there’s a few SH unions who think we have massively inflated wages. We, though maybe not to the same degree, are considered big spenders in the game. And the provinces have had their fair share of flops(not just big names like Douglas, but Franco van der Merve or Pat Howard). We’re part of the reason T’eo and Madigan could command those wages. Before Gopperth was GP player of the year he was a Leinster player. And I would go back to the fact that Sexton is a marquee signing that only a handful of clubs could’ve made and it was Leinster/IRFU who made it.

The point I’m trying to make is, it’s hard to compare because some of pro game costs is related to international appearances(and being an international itself will add value to a player on the market) which is the carrot the IRFU can entice players with(amongst others). But when you apply external metrics(however badly) we have one of the most expensive squads in Europe. We’re in a position to depress wages(like other unions - thru test selection rules) so we maybe aren’t spending to over a theoretical cap but still an “expensive” squad and that’s how it’s seen outside of Ireland.

I think this will become a far more salient issue if a B&I league ever comes about.

[blockhead]

Headline in the Mirror.

Tadhg Furlong and Jack Ryan back Ireland newcomers Caelan Doris and Ronan Kelleher to become Test stars

Are we all to call him Jack now?

[joooooe]

Headline in the Mirror.

Tadhg Furlong and Jack Ryan back Ireland newcomers Caelan Doris and Ronan Kelleher to become Test stars

Are we all to call him Jack now?

He is a clear and present danger

[Peg Leg]

Headline in the Mirror.

Tadhg Furlong and Jack Ryan back Ireland newcomers Caelan Doris and Ronan Kelleher to become Test stars

Are we all to call him Jack now?

He is a clear and present danger

Booooom.

Lock the thread, we're done here.

[Ruckedtobits]

Headline in the Mirror.

Tadhg Furlong and Jack Ryan back Ireland newcomers Caelan Doris and Ronan Kelleher to become Test stars

Are we all to call him Jack now?

Tom Clancy is rumoured to be after the movie rights but he told insiders it needs a re-write as he finds some of the narrative unbelievable.