Leinster v Ulster Sat 3rd December 19.35 TG4

[D4surfer]

It's because the 'ends' need to be easily removable for any gigs and the horse show isn't it?

I've never actually gone to the Horse Show, so I could well be wrong. In theory one end stand could be permanent.

They use the full arena for the Horse Show. There’s upper terracing on the Anglesey Stand that’s full for some of the events.

[Serb]

It's because the 'ends' need to be easily removable for any gigs and the horse show isn't it?

I've never actually gone to the Horse Show, so I could well be wrong. In theory one end stand could be permanent.

It makes sense that you could keep one stand permanent and move the other to create more space, assuming there’s enough space at the other end. I was also thinking that the RDS have just purchased the church at the top of Simmonscourt Road too which could give a bit of extra space.

I watched some footage from the horse show from last year to see what the actual set up was, I was pretty surprised to see that they’ve kept both the North and South stands in place for the horse show



This was covid era horse show however, but I think it’s interesting that any stand movement doesn’t seem to accommodate the actual horse show but spectator experience. Hopeful that some kind of permanent / semi-permanent structure could be added at least one end of the RDS.

[Serb]

Had a closer look for more photos and and actually does look like they extend pretty far in both directions into areas that would be covered by the north / south stands (from 2018)

[the spoofer]

Had a closer look for more photos and and actually does look like they extend pretty far in both directions into areas that would be covered by the north / south stands (from 2018)

That looks like its from two different years.

[Dave Cahill]

The Dublin Horse Show is a full 5* FEI Nations Cup event - that stipulates a minimum number of fences with a minimum amount of space between them which requires the full arena. Unless the layout and orientation of the arena is completely changed or the FEI change their regulations, there won't be any permanent stands at the north or south ends of the arena.

[riocard911]

"easily"

Very schmart! Having during my college holidays one summer fadó, fadó broken me little b****x putting up and taking down the temporary stands around the greens in Portmarnock for the Irish Golf Open, you are perfectly correct, that a certain degree of exertion would be necessary to carry out my suggestion about temporary awnings or canopies at the RDS. By "easily" I meant more where there's a will there's a way. But then you probably knew that already....

[The Doc]

It's because the 'ends' need to be easily removable for any gigs and the horse show isn't it?

I've never actually gone to the Horse Show, so I could well be wrong. In theory one end stand could be permanent.

Both ends are removed for the horsies. Also, if I recall - all stands other than the Anglesea are "temporary" for planning purposes. Essentially the equivalent of one of those work / office sheds in the back garden

[D4surfer]

Jordan Larmour just spotted boarding a flight to London. Tuesday afternoon at about 4:45. Does that mean he’s not playing on Saturday?

[mildlyinterested]

Jordan Larmour just spotted boarding a flight to London. Tuesday afternoon at about 4:45. Does that mean he’s not playing on Saturday?

I wouldnt say so, wednesday is a rest day so could be headed over something unrelated.

still I wouldnt say its a great sign.

[Ruckedtobits]

Spoke to a couple of Ulster boys last weekend and this is big one for them and they're well up for it. After Friday night's game, they came down to have a look at us v Glasgow. They felt it was like their game the previous evening, what was good was excellent but there were lots of things not great.

I pointed out we'd have a different team this weekend, they countered that you couldn't put a team together in a week. I pointed out that our team had been playing together for a month with green jerseys and they countered that except for 30 mins against SA, that hadn't gone too well.

SUFTUM, is alive and well and they believe. We parted after a pint when I wished them "Good luck with that" and they countered "Remember last year".

[deco]

While we're waiting on the rebuild/refurbishment, retractable awnings/canopies umbrellas could easily be put in place over the north and south ends in the winter and taken down again in the spring.

Fixed

[D4surfer]

Jordan Larmour just spotted boarding a flight to London. Tuesday afternoon at about 4:45. Does that mean he’s not playing on Saturday?

I wouldnt say so, wednesday is a rest day so could be headed over something unrelated.

still I wouldnt say its a great sign.

Maybe a Heineken Cup launch event.

[Dave Cahill]

"easily"

Very schmart! Having during my college holidays one summer fadó, fadó broken me little b****x putting up and taking down the temporary stands around the greens in Portmarnock for the Irish Golf Open, you are perfectly correct, that a certain degree of exertion would be necessary to carry out my suggestion about temporary awnings or canopies at the RDS. By "easily" I meant more where there's a will there's a way. But then you probably knew that already....

You have to anchor any roofing structure securely and that means foundations. That causes two problems. Firstly, foundations imply permanence, which may have planning implications (which took over a year to resolve for the Grandstand), and the other is big concrete lumps in the middle of a showjumping arena which are a no-no. Easily isn't a word that comes to mind.

[Xanthippe]

Jordan Larmour just spotted boarding a flight to London. Tuesday afternoon at about 4:45. Does that mean he’s not playing on Saturday?

I wouldnt say so, wednesday is a rest day so could be headed over something unrelated.

still I wouldnt say its a great sign.

Maybe a Heineken Cup launch event.

I wouldn’t imagine so Mildly - wasn’t that done this morning with Will Connors attending?

[curates_egg]

We should never have let ROL go.
Not quite as nuts as Munster letting Ryan go but not far off.

[Blue Man]

It's because the 'ends' need to be easily removable for any gigs and the horse show isn't it?

I've never actually gone to the Horse Show, so I could well be wrong. In theory one end stand could be permanent.

Both ends are removed for the horsies. Also, if I recall - all stands other than the Anglesea are "temporary" for planning purposes. Essentially the equivalent of one of those work / office sheds in the back garden

Obviously the Anglesea stand is a priority for redevelopment and there’s space to work with but we should also develop a proper stand at one end (likely the South) similar to the steep structures behind the posts at the Rec or Ravenhill.

[Blue Man]

Spoke to a couple of Ulster boys last weekend and this is big one for them and they're well up for it. After Friday night's game, they came down to have a look at us v Glasgow. They felt it was like their game the previous evening, what was good was excellent but there were lots of things not great.

I pointed out we'd have a different team this weekend, they countered that you couldn't put a team together in a week. I pointed out that our team had been playing together for a month with green jerseys and they countered that except for 30 mins against SA, that hadn't gone too well.

SUFTUM, is alive and well and they believe. We parted after a pint when I wished them "Good luck with that" and they countered "Remember last year".

The vibe I get is they reckon we were lucky in Belfast and are really targeting this match.
I’m worried about 12 but apart from that think we are set for a big performance and should win.

[naraic]

We should never have let ROL go.
Not quite as nuts as Munster letting Ryan go but not far off.

Do you think that we should have kept ROL instead of signing Nagati? I think Nagati is looking more and more like a good signing the more I see of him.

With all the respect in the world to ROL I think that both him and Nagati fill the non international utility back role and I reckon that there wasn't going to be budget for the two of them.

We are having to live with a smaller budget post covid and squad size is a sensible place to cut given that we have a 22 game regular season compared to say 2018/2019 (the last full season pre covid) where we had a 27 game regular season.

[hugonaut]

We should never have let ROL go.
Not quite as nuts as Munster letting Ryan go but not far off.

Locko probably made the decision himself to leave in order to play more games, and we would have had to overpay him to keep him.

He has played in eight of Exeter's nine games this season [6+2/512 mins]. He played in 12 games for us last season [11+1/867 mins]. We're not even into December and he has already accrued 66% of the number of games he played for Leinster last year and about 60% of the minutes. There's six months left in the season; we're basically a third of the way through it.

Last season he didn't play in any European games for us, having played in European competition every season for the previous five seasons. He had definitively been overtaken by both Jimmy O'Brien [18 games total, 8 European games] and Ciaran Frawley [21 games total, 6 European games], probably Tommy O'Brien [12 games total, 2 European games] and arguably Jamie Osborne too [13 games/878 mins].

Locko was a good player for us. I would be fairly certain that he wanted to play a lot more rugby than he was getting. I would say the same thing applied to Pete Dooley, Josh Murphy etc. They wanted to play games, not just train – be a pro rugby player, not a pro rugby trainer.

If you get to 26/27 years old and you've been in the Leinster system for six years or so and you are simply not getting to play in many games, it must become a bit frustrating. There are other options open to you where you could play pretty much every single week of the season, rather than play in 12 matches over 39 weeks.

The average salary for a centre in the Premiership last season was about £168k, €195k at today's exchange rate [source: https://www.planetrugby.com/premiership ... -published ]. Locko is probably getting that. The signing was announced in March of last year, probably agree in February, when he had played in just four games [and before Tommy O'Brien got injured].

Should we have paid him €200k to play him in 10-12 regular season games when the internationals aren't available?

[curates_egg]

We should never have let ROL go.
Not quite as nuts as Munster letting Ryan go but not far off.

Do you think that we should have kept ROL instead of signing Nagati? I think Nagati is looking more and more like a good signing the more I see of him.

With all the respect in the world to ROL I think that both him and Nagati fill the non international utility back role and I reckon that there wasn't going to be budget for the two of them.

Ngatai appears to have been a super signing. If we had a choice, it certainly doesn’t seem a bad one.

Locko probably made the decision himself to leave in order to play more games, and we would have had to overpay him to keep him.

That’s totally true and I understand his decision and that we couldn’t afford to pay that salary for a utility back when we also have young players coming through.

I guess I phrased it clumsily. It wasn’t a “mistake” to let him go.
We definitely have missed him and could have used him in half our games so far this season.

I’m glad for him it’s going well for him in Exeter. Moves by Irish players to the Premiership have had very mixed outcomes over the past 10 years.