Greens make play for the plain people
A good move,bringing a rapidly growing sport to even more people?
Not if you believe Mick Dawson, chief executive of Leinster Rugby, who was loud in his opposition to thesuggestion on the grounds that it would end a valuable revenue stream for the province.
“You’re looking at a situation where there could be a huge hole in the budgets of the IRFU and we’re part of the IRFU family, to a certain extent,” said Dawson.
“A lot of ourfunding comes through that medium and if that happened I’m told it could take €10 or €12m out of the IRFU budget. They (Sky) are huge payers, but the real situation is that at the ERC and SixNations tables theIRFU are able to punch their weight in terms of the game we play on the pitch and the game we play off the pitch.
“If you become a non-player in these negotiations because you’re bringing nothing to the table and everything is free here, then your monies just dry up ... there will be representations made at a high level.”
Not enough opposition for you? Well, Ryan’s suggestion has met with the quintessential 21st century form ofopposition.
No, not burning a bank, the Athenian solution, but a Facebook group: Irish Rugby Fans AgainstMaking Heineken Cup Free To Air. There are any number of interesting aspects to this.
One is the recognition that despite over 100 years as an amateur entity, rugby union now at the elite level is a business, with all the hard-headed decisions that go along with that realisation.
In the emotional build-up to Munster-Biarritz one of the Munster players said at a press event that big European days were what had contributed to building the Munster brand, and “brand” was the term he used.
Romantic? No, but them’s the rules: it’s a business, and a cut-throat one at that.
The issue – there’s not enough smoke or fire being emitted to merit dropping in the qualifier “burning” just yet – is somewhat reminiscent of the mini-furore that blew up when the matter of naming rights for Thomond Park raised its head.
There was the predictable toing and froing about tradition and thehonour and glory of the name and so forth, and in the end the stadium kept its name, with the naming rights confined to the stands.
But if the issue came up now, with thepossibility of a large lump sum coming into the province’s coffers at a time when player acquisition must be a priority, would the answer be different?
When a new name was being mooted at the time of the naming rights issue, forinstance, All Black Luke McAllister was a potential Munstertarget. Sale eventually snapped him up fora rumoured quarter-of-a-million euro per year. The much-resisted naming rights would havegenerated the revenue necessary to bring McAllister on board. He wouldn’t have been a bad option in San Sebastian last weekend.
Business and finance mean big boys’ rules, but not as big, maybe, as the other sportbeing played: politics.
Eamon Ryan, the Minister responsible, knows that his party, the Greens, face an angry electorate when they go to the country in the medium term, and the lesson handed out to the Labour Party in Britain last week may be concentrating minds around the Cabinet table.
Is it possible to see this as populist? Given the noisy rugby reaction you mightn’t have thought so, but you mightalso wonder if the Green Party areplaying a longer game by appealing not so much to diehard supporters but more casual fans, the kind who measure out their credibility by their thumb-speed on the TV remote (full disclosure: guilty, m’lud).
It wouldn’t be the worst move from a party sometimes viewed as moreconcerned with granola and the ozone than with the concerns of the Plain People of Ireland.
Well, “cheap electioneering” was what a pal called it in the office, but we’re inclined to give Ryancredit.
If Mick Dawson’s figures of €10m to €12m are correct, it’s got to be expensive electioneering, if anything.
* Contact: michael.moynihan@examiner.ie;Twitter: MikeMoynihanEx
