UK Stadia

[Em-Forcer]

Problem with summer season for NH rugby is people might be too busy already following their summer sport(s) of choice.
Plus it would leave us b*gger all to follow through the winter...
We're used to it - wrap up warm, jump around, stamp your feet, rub your hands together, drink your tea/soup/whisky, and celebrate/drown your sorrows in the pub after.

[prop53]

thats what we need more games and rec stadium

[shasta]

11 home and 11 away (18 for the Magners and 26(?) for the French), plus national cup competitions and most of the top teams are in one of the two european cups. A top side could play over 30 competitive games a year.

Do those stats plus the workload carried by the ZA players make a bit of a mockery of
the concerns that seem to be about in the SH? Or are they flogging their players and RUPA et al doing the righty?

[Sheikh]

Shasta: The players in the NH certainly get more top tier games than in the SH, although I'm not sure if there's much difference in quality between the Guinness Premiership and the Currie Cup.

Em-Forcer: What summer sports? The biggest sport in Europe is soccer and the soccer and rugby seasons are concurrent. League is a summer sport in that narrow band of England which plays it, but the main summer sports in europe are the international soccer tournaments (World Cup & European Cup) and the Olympics/Commonwealth Games. Were the NH to move to a summer season they'd have a much clearer field.
However, I agree, I grew up watching rugby in woolly hat, scarf and two pairs of socks, and that shouting at the players was something to do to keep you warm.

[domattw]

Anyone seen the new Dallas Cowboys Stadium, take a look at it, seat 80,000 plus has over 200 boxes is retangular largest retractable roof in the world looks awesome from the web site http://stadium.dallascowboys.com/ take a look, would sit well in perth as a multipurpose venue for all times of the year. Well we don't need 80,000 plus seats but be great to get something like this at 50,000 seats..

[Em-Forcer]

What summer sports? The biggest sport in Europe is soccer and the soccer and rugby seasons are concurrent...

Blink and you miss the soccer 'off-season' in UK - they have July off, I think. Except when World Cup is on.If you hate soccer, it's annoying how pervasive it is!
But - summer sports - tennis? (big in Europe too) and cricket?! (I'll admit this is mostly UK)
I'm not against changing season per se, but really need convinced that attendances and TV coverage wouldn't suffer in NH.

[Sheikh]

Tennis, well OK, but apart from the French Open and Wimbledon no-one in the big rugby playing countries (UK, France, Italy) apart from the players take any notice of tennis. It's big in places like Spain, Serbia, etc, but mainly because they're successful at the moment.

Cricket isn't really a competitor to either rugby or soccer, and again, apart from the Ashes (and only if England are winning) is there any attention paid outside people who would watch cricket anyway.

Athletics doesn't pull in much of a crowd in Europe, either.

Really, moving rugby to a summer season in the NH would annoy league (who moved to a summer season to get away from union!) and not much else. However, the NH fans are used to watching rugby during winter and would bitterly resist any attempt to move it. They'd see it as: "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" and playing on frozen pitches is what "makes a man of you!"

No-one said that NH rugby had to make sense!

[domattw]

Enforcer the Football season in the UK technically finishes after the FA cup final in mid May and then Starts again late August with the Charity Shield game. if there's international comp such as World Cup, European Champs, Asian Cup etc tI think hey get played in the mid June/ july window.