IRFU decline RTÉ’s primetime slot for women’s rugby

Gavin Comiskey writes in today’s Irish Times that the IRFU declined RTÉ’s offer of prime time slots.

For their upcoming Six Nations campaign, the Ireland Women’s Rugby team will have to play their home games at Donnybrook on Sundays, despite RTÉ offering them prime time slots on Friday or Saturday night.

The IRFU’s main reason behind the decision is that they feel amateur players find it hard to get time off for Friday games as they reportedly outlined to Ryle Nugent of RTÉ Sport.

“Friday nights do not work, we were told, as they are amateur players and are going to struggle with taking time off work,” Nugent continued. “We fully accept that. We are not trying to cause a problem, we want to do the best we can for the women’s game in Ireland in terms of giving them a profile and an opportunity to engage with the largest possible audience. We were just told Saturday nights wouldn’t work.”

The IRFU also declined Saturday evening spots after the the men’s games, as all their games kick off at 2:15pm in the 2018 Championship in spite of the fact the Women’s side would then get an extra day of recovery before going back to work on a Monday.

“The reason is to allow time for team preparation and minimise disruption to players’ work and study schedules,” explained an IRFU spokesman. “Women’s games have traditionally been held on a Sunday since their games moved to Donnybrook.”

Since the Under 20’s and the Women’s moved to Donnybrook in 2013, 12 of the Women’s Six Nations games, out of 15 were played on Friday nights.

“I don’t think the team had any input on scheduling of matches,” said a recently retired Ireland player. “Sunday seems less than ideal in terms of recovery as most players are straight back into work Monday morning.

“You would think to maximise the audience some sort of double-headers would make more sense.”