ON THIS WEEK’S The42 Rugby Weekly, Bernard Jackman joined Murray Kinsella and Gavan Casey in The42 studios to discuss Jack McGrath’s prospective move to Ulster and the dangers of eroding provincial parochialism, as well as ‘body language’ and why we all need to calm down following Ireland’s laboured victory over Italy.
Connacht legend John Muldoon was this week’s feature interview.
We’re also confident that Gavan and Bernard combined to break the rugby-podcast record for use of the term ‘wanker’, albeit via an email sent to the show by a listener, which Bernard described as “brave” but ultimately “nonsense”.
But this week’s episode began with an atypically irate Murray, and the supposedly calming influence that is Bernard, providing their damning assessment of World Rugby’s proposed new international tournament, which was slammed this morning by the International Rugby Players Council, whose president Johnny Sexton described it as ‘out of touch’.
Murray Kinsella: “You’re just going to get the situation where, essentially what we’re saying is, really good players from Fiji, Tonga, and Samoa retire from international rugby because their club is going to pay them really well for that. And they’re not going to want to travel back for what are going to be Tier 2 Tests for the next 10 years.
“There’s no incentive for them to continue to play — obviously there’s national pride, but on a professional basis their clubs are going to have an even stronger hand to play by saying, ‘Listen, stay here, retire from international rugby’, which would just be a travesty.
“It’s not just them either. You look at the World Rugby rankings, and Georgia are number 12 at the moment. They won’t be involved.”
Gavan Casey: “They won’t be involved but Italy are 15th and will be in it.”
MK: “Fiji are ninth… They won’t be involved. Even some of the top-10 nations won’t be involved.
Bernard Jackman: “It depends on GDP. It doesn’t matter where they’re at [in a rugby sense]. Financially, the countries that can bring the most to the party rather than their rugby quality [will be involved].
Fiji have made strides, ninth in the world, and they’re incredibly talented and exciting to watch; rugby gives them a way out of Fiji, it changes their families’ lives, plus they’re incredibly proud to play for their country whether it’s at sevens or 15s level. But they won’t be in it because they don’t bring enough buck to World Rugby’s coffers.
MK: ”All rugby has done, really, with the Islands is just take from them. There’s nothing given back. The organisation is called World Rugby but this proposal makes it Traditional Nations Rugby because there’s no care for the wider world.”
You can listen to the full episode below:
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