Posted: Fri Sep 26, 2008 9:54 am
I would agree with you that the most important thing is to be able to widen the support base beyond active club members. Many of the people I go to the games with, either last played rugby in school or not at all.
One element that is our favour in Dublin is that there is no competition from any other major sport. GAA is predominately a summer game and our soccer teams are woefull (I'll leave you to comment on standard of Hearts and Hibs).
From my point of view the best selling point to non rugby folks has been that it is an opportunity to see genuinely world class players performing week in week out. The likes of Mike Blair, O'Driscoll, O'Connell, Ryan Jones, Shane Williams are genuine world class players and understanding that is what seems to interest casual fans.
Hopefully now that you are past the whole Curruthers / SRU issue (which I don't claim to understand) you will build strongly year on year
One element that is our favour in Dublin is that there is no competition from any other major sport. GAA is predominately a summer game and our soccer teams are woefull (I'll leave you to comment on standard of Hearts and Hibs).
From my point of view the best selling point to non rugby folks has been that it is an opportunity to see genuinely world class players performing week in week out. The likes of Mike Blair, O'Driscoll, O'Connell, Ryan Jones, Shane Williams are genuine world class players and understanding that is what seems to interest casual fans.
Hopefully now that you are past the whole Curruthers / SRU issue (which I don't claim to understand) you will build strongly year on year