A Timely And Worrying Warning From Ireland

MAYBE the Irish have got it right when it comes to sport. Or perhaps not. Nothing is ever straight-forward where Paddy is concerned.

Great Britain's smaller neighbour has traditionally been the poor relation of the two largest islands in the British Isles archepeligo. A mainly agricultural economy with a tradition, perhaps stronger even than in Scotland, of the brightest and best leaving for the big island, or to Britain's larger former overseas colonies.

Scotland lost a lot of good people to the Clearances, Ireland lost a lot of good people to the Famine, but, while Ireland, t6he larger souther5n portion, has prospered as a member of the EU, the United Kingdom, under the bias towards English exceptionalism, has spat the dummy and left to an uncertain future.

In our game of rugby, since the decision to go open in 1995, England has surrendered real influence to a handful of clubs, while the three Celtic countries opted for a spell of more-centralised control.

In Scotland and Wales, the battle between the High Command at the top of the central Union and the clubs has been an ongoing squabble, while in Ireland, in spite of mutterings in the margins, the concept of provincial management under the central Union has, after a difficult start, prevailed.

It does of course help that in the whole of Ireland, North and South, there are a mere five full-time sports teams: Belfast Giants ice hockey team and the Connacht, Leinster, Munster and Ulster teams which compete in the PRO14.

Certainly,each weekend during a normal football (either Association or Rugby) season, a sizeable number of Irish fans cross the Irish Sea, heading mainly for Glasgow, Liverpool, London and Manchester for their football fix, but, the five professional teams, plus the thousands of GAA (Gaelic Athletic Association) teams continue to play and attract good crowds to their strictly amateur games of Gaelic Football and Hurling, while the leading football teams in the Irish League and the League of Ireland attract sufficient support to keep their semi-professional status alive.

So, by not blindly following the English pattern in sport, the impression is, Ireland has got it right.

However, articles in the Irish press this week have given the impression, all is not well in the smaller island, particularly in rugby.

IRFU CEO Philip Browne

In an hour-long interview with formerBritish and Irish Lion Keith Wood, on the Dublin-based Off The Ball media platform, Philip Browne, Chief Executive of the IRFU admitted:

“We simply can’t continue to operate on the basis of being dependent on the number of people we get through the stadium door and the ticket price we charge. In the case of the Aviva stadium it is 51,000 [capacity] – that’s as big as it gets. You can’t make it any bigger and there is only so much elasticity in ticket prices that the public will bear.

“So, we have to find new and additional sources of revenue. Certainy that whole digital space is where we believe there is a new return.”

However, later in the interview, Browne emphasised the dire financial need of supporters being allowed to return to stadiums.

“Certainly, the rugby economy is dependent on people coming through gates and watching matches. For the big international matches, if we don’t move back to a position where we have full houses pretty soon all major rugby unions are going to be in difficulty.”

The Irish management model is not that different from the one here in Scotland. OK, in Ireland, the four provincial unions seem to have greater autonomy from Dublin, at least as far as running the community game is concerned, although the four PRO14 teams also appear to have a lot more autonomy from Lansdowne Road than Edinburgh or Glasgow has from BT Murrayfield.

The model for funding Irish rugby is dependent on filling the Aviva stadium at least five times a year. The SRU model calls for filling Murrayfield five times per year. However, in the interview with Wood, Browne conceded: “This model is not sustainable in the short or long term.”

In the course of the same intervie, Browne indicated, because of this requirement to keep pulling the fans into the 51,000-capacity Aviva Stadium, the Irish are never going to agree to the oft-proposed first and second division Six Nations Championship, since one bad season and relegation would prove too-costly, the fans simply would not turn-up to watch Ireland v Portugal, Spain, Russia, Belgium or Romania – the current countries which, along with Georgia, compete in the tier below the Six Nations in European international rugby.

The Aviva is pretty-well unenlargeable, so the only way the IRFU would be able to squeeze more money out of there would be to increase the cost of tickets, and, as Browne admitted, there is a limit to how much more that might bring in.

There is always the alternative of having the GAA's Croke Park declared Ireland's “National Stadium,” hosting all football and rugby internationals, but, perhaps, given the history, best not go there.

However, perhaps the most-interesting, and also most-worrying thing which Browne said was: “Professional sport is a marginal business. We don’t bank huge reserves. We spent the money we earn [keeping the game in Ireland] going.

“The reality is cash is limited. Yes, we could go off and borrow but nobody should get engaged in borrowing funds unless they have some idea how they are going to repay them. At this point in time I have no idea how we would repay any debt we took on.”

Extrapolating that view across the Irish Sea to Scotland, and looking at the economics of sport in Scotland, I fear there is but one conclusion we could come to: