Hi Guys
For us in Munster we view the addition of the SA teams has been a great success to Northern Hemisphere rugby has bee a great success and we see from the growth in the TV viewership seems to support this view across the board. Just wanted to get your views on what you thought of last season and the outlook for the future.
https://www.unitedrugby.com/latest/news/rising-audiences-sees-urc-break-broadcast-record-again
Look, I will always miss the old Super 12, 11 league games, semi final and final. You could follow 4 SA teams, watch a game on Friday Morning, Friday evening, Sat Morn and Sat afternoon.
Your lowest rank team could beat the top ranked team. Best players at all time.
I know the game has move on and teams need to play more games.
So we end with some dud touring teams coming down south.
I do appreciate the fact that Munster normally sends their best team, but don't like what Leinster does.
The Welsh and Italian teams have been really disappointing.
But overall, I think it is a good standard and allow SA teams to play at a decent level
Europe is the only Achilles at the moment and the travel schedule.
It is getting better and hope to get to a few games next season
Super 12 =European Champions cup not URC.
Also Leinster are far the best team in the league. Their second team is better than 90% of the rest of the teams in the league. They have done this by continuous rotation and not sending out their stars to every match and build a very powerful squad. For SA supporters I understand it was very disappointing that the last two Leinster matches were in SA and they prioritized on the main event. They still won 1 of them sending out their kids and suffered their only loss in the last match of the league
I hope next year we can challenge them a bit more and they have not qualified for the quarter final as no 1 seed by Week 14. They then will send a strong team. Their primary focus is winning the Champions cup.
Miss SR 12 & 14, but am enjoying the URC very much...Heineken cup not so much though...although it's fun watching SA teams play fro. the best clubs in Europe.
I read that SA teams will have longer tours north and I should imagine the same for teams arriving here. Leinster will have to send their best here in that case, making it a more enjoyable spectacle.
The First tour will be 4 weeks in Oct / Nov / Dec. Then there is the euro comp, but teams still have to fly back for one match. Still a bit dumb to me and then again in the 2nd part in Jan.
That is why I would say for SA teams team send youth teams to play in Europe for now until they can figure this out.
There needs to be better alignment between the URC and Europe. I would have preferred a 4 week tour, but 3 matches URC, followed by a Euro opening match.
Then for rnd 3 and 4 there is another Euro so I would try to link that leg up as well
Although, we are down from 6 trips to 4 now
