Munster will face financial challenge

Munster’s chief executive Garrett Fitzgerald admits life in the rugby fast lane is about to become more difficult for Munster.

Fitzgerald this week admitted the province would have to be increasingly proactive in competing financially but believes the Irish provinces will remain heavyweights.

He admitted France and English have raised the financial bar but thinks the Irish model working under the IRFU umbrella was the only way to keeping domestic rugby at world-class level.

“Money doesn’t solve everything,” he said.

“There is no point using money as an excuse, we’ve just got to realise it’s a challenge and that we improve our players because that’s the structure we work under. It doesn’t allow you to buy in teams and it never will, and I hope it never happens in Irish rugby.

“I hope it never does because it will be to the detriment of the national team.

“I still believe that, given the performance we put on against Toulon and against Clermont last year, we’re well capable of competing when we put our minds to it. The only reason we could possibly struggle with it is if we got a run of injuries because the squad might not, overall, be as strong as the opposition.

“What’s obvious in world rugby is that France have moved ahead of all other countries in the financial sphere. If you look at their TV deal alone, and I don’t know what the exact figures are, it’s around €32m up to €70m, so that whole issue has moved them into a different category between all the other rugby nations.

“Second of all, in England the BT deal is much more valuable to them than their previous deal, but I think the French are out on their own in a different financial category at this stage.

“I think it isn’t a coincidence Toulon are in the Heineken Cup final two years in a row, it isn’t a coincidence Saracens are in the Heineken Cup final, they’ve been knocking on the door. They have the squad. They seem to have the funds to assemble a broad enough unit. When you get to the end of any rugby season, your performance is probably determined by the strength of your squad.

“If you look at Leinster against Ulster last week, there was nothing in it, but what Leinster brought off the bench was what tipped it. It’s about the size of your squad, the quality of your squad and it’s going to get more difficult when you have Racing Metro, you have Clermont; you have Montpellier, who also had quite a significant investment into them.

“You obviously have Stade Francais, who have had a reinvestment, that’s what you’re competing against.”

Fitzgerald also pointed to the huge financial television gains available in France and England at a time when worldwide match-day attendances were dropping.

“The whole issue of gate receipts is an interesting thing. We have done a lot of work and spoken to a lot of people on the whole gate receipts issue. If you look at rugby attendances around the world, they are dropping.

“One of the challenges we face is there’s probably too much rugby on television in Ireland, given the size of the rugby viewing population.

There so many games on television; the TV companies are competing for space, which means a lot of our games are being played at times that do not suit the supporter. But, at the same time, we have to fully recognise rugby is being funded in a large way by television so it’s a catch-22.”